New Android Application Update - 2.0.40

[RomeE]

Good Evening everyone,

We are excited to release our latest version of the Slacker Android Application.

The biggest change for this version of the Slacker Application is the ability to Cache Stations to your phones SD card. To cache a station, just find the station in the station list, and press and hold until a menu pops up and choose "Cache Station".

To Manually refresh your Cached Stations, you just need to go to the Station Tree, choose the Cached Stations folder and then press "Refresh Cached Stations" at the bottom of the Cache Stations screen.

We will refresh via Wifi by default. You can change this to use your Cellular Network by going to the settings menu and changing Wifi to Auto. Auto will allow us to automatically use Cellular Network if Wifi is not available.

You can also turn on Auto Refresh in the Settings menu. This allows the phone to automatically refresh overnight while you are asleep. You will need to make sure that the phone is plugged into power for this feature to work.

Cache stations are a Subscription Feature. You will have 14 days to try out Cache Stations on a basic account. After 14 days, then you will be required to update to a subscription in order to continue to use Cached Stations.

We hope you are all as excited about this new version as we are. As always, if you have any problems, please let us know.

You can get the latest update from the Android MarketPlace now.

Best regards,
Rome E
Slacker Support

[PDR447]

Caching!!! trying it now! any developments with the audio quality?

[kalbri]

Still no word on AVCRP bluetooth remote control?

[johnsongrantr]

Caching!!! trying it now! any developments with the audio quality?

had to keep my mouth shut about this while it was being beta tested, since it's out i guess I can speak up, was pretty hard, I was very excited about this.

The better audio quality mp3 codec files are stored in this new cache where they are available to slacker. For me (hard rock) it is 100% of the songs I've heard so far hundreds and hundreds. I have to say the audio from the cached files is of beautiful quality, little to no skips or jumps, and almost seamless transisiton from song to song...this is exactly what I was expecting and hopeing for from slacker A+ job ;) Hopefully you all feel the same way.

[kalbri]

It appears that the new Slacker app apparently DOES have AVCRP remote control Bluetooth! AWESOME! Thank you very much!

[MikeV]

This is making my decision to get a Verizon Nexus One (when it becomes available in the Spring) a lot easier.... :)

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

I may be in the SmartPhone market by the end of this year. Will caching work in Canada (not just on this phone but any phone it is released on)?

[johnsongrantr]

I may be in the SmartPhone market by the end of this year. Will caching work in Canada (not just on this phone but any phone it is released on)?

this is for android phones, it's working (to my knowledge) on all android devices (some officially unsupported but still run) Can download and cache via wifi if you don't have an unlimited data plan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices

[fizzicist]

Cache stations are a Subscription Feature. You will have 14 days to try out Cache Stations on a basic account. After 14 days, then you will be required to update to a subscription in order to continue to use Cached Stations.

I ask this only because I'm interested: why is it a Radio Plus feature? Is it a matter of creating more value for the Radio Plus subscription, or is there something in the contracts with the labels which requires that to be the case?

As I said, I'm just interested. I've actually been on the fence about a Radio Plus subscription for a while, and I think caching in Android is going to know me off on the "yes" side of that fence.

I can't wait to give it a whirl and see how it goes. I'm at work right now and had it sync one station via my cellular network, but I figure I'll wait and do the rest of the ones I want to cache via WiFi at home tonight.

Thanks,

H.B.

[PDR447]

Cache stations are a Subscription Feature. You will have 14 days to try out Cache Stations on a basic account. After 14 days, then you will be required to update to a subscription in order to continue to use Cached Stations.

I ask this only because I'm interested: why is it a Radio Plus feature? Is it a matter of creating more value for the Radio Plus subscription, or is there something in the contracts with the labels which requires that to be the case?

As I said, I'm just interested. I've actually been on the fence about a Radio Plus subscription for a while, and I think caching in Android is going to know me off on the "yes" side of that fence.

I can't wait to give it a whirl and see how it goes. I'm at work right now and had it sync one station via my cellular network, but I figure I'll wait and do the rest of the ones I want to cache via WiFi at home tonight.

Thanks,

H.B.

My guess(and this is just a wild guess) is that they have to pay some extra to RIM. For a while there was a rumor(fact?) that RIM didn't want to share the caching feature. They wanted it exclusive to BlackBerry(and had a contract signed to ensure that). Maybe RIM decided to allow caching on other platforms if they got some $$$?

[RomeE]

Cache stations are a Subscription Feature. You will have 14 days to try out Cache Stations on a basic account. After 14 days, then you will be required to update to a subscription in order to continue to use Cached Stations.

I ask this only because I'm interested: why is it a Radio Plus feature? Is it a matter of creating more value for the Radio Plus subscription, or is there something in the contracts with the labels which requires that to be the case?

As I said, I'm just interested. I've actually been on the fence about a Radio Plus subscription for a while, and I think caching in Android is going to know me off on the "yes" side of that fence.

I can't wait to give it a whirl and see how it goes. I'm at work right now and had it sync one station via my cellular network, but I figure I'll wait and do the rest of the ones I want to cache via WiFi at home tonight.

Thanks,

H.B.

Caching does work in Canada, but you can only cache the songs that we have Canadian licenses for. These might be different than the US.

The reason it's a Radio Plus Feature is because of the contracts. Not that the contracts make us put it as a Radio Plus feature, but because of the rate we have to pay the Record Labels/Publishers for caching. It's substantially higher than streaming. Unfortunately due to the higher costs that we have to pay for this feature, it's something that we have to collect additional revenue for. This is something that advertising (Banner and Audio ads) just can not cover.

It's the same reason that after 30 days in Canada you have to sign up for a Subscription. Because in Canada all plays are licensed plays and so the costs is substantially higher. In the US, we have what is called Statutory Playback. This is something that allows services in the US to stream (not cache) radio stations at a set lower cost than Cache.

Best regards,
Rome E
Slacker Support

[nofreee]

Quick questions about the overnight re-caching..

I assume the app has to be left running in the background for the caching to take place, correct? Aside from it being connected to a power source, can you elaborate on the specifics of what is actually required to re-cache on its own? What time is it scheduled to update itself etc..

Thanks!


Edit:
Forgot to thank you for the incredible update. The sound quality on the cached stations are amazing. You killed two birds with one stone on this update for me. Cutting down my cell bandwidth used and fixing the audio quality issues. Fantastic job.

[RomeE]

Quick questions about the overnight re-caching..

I assume the app has to be left running in the background for the caching to take place, correct? Aside from it being connected to a power source, can you elaborate on the specifics of what is actually required to re-cache on its own? What time is it scheduled to update itself etc..

Thanks!


Edit:
Forgot to thank you for the incredible update. The sound quality on the cached stations are amazing. You killed two birds with one stone on this update for me. Cutting down my cell bandwidth used and fixing the audio quality issues. Fantastic job.

You need to go into Settings and turn on Auto Refresh to On.
If you want it to use Wifi, then you need to make sure that it's set to Wifi. If you want to use OTA then you need to set it to Auto and disconnect from Wifi.
You don't have to leave it running. In fact, last night I marked 4 stations for cache, I then pressed the Menu Button and choose "Quit" and it exited the application.
Then you need to plug it into power.
The next morning it should have a notification about the refresh if it was successful.

Note: If you have just refreshed, and not listened to the music, then the stations will not be marked as "needing updated" and so it will not auto refresh. It will only auto refresh if the stations actually need to be refresh (you have listened to a station or more, or you put a new station as marked to cache but didn't perform a manual refresh yet).

Best regards,
Rome E
Slacker Support

[nofreee]

Awesome! Thanks for the clarification!

[triclavian]

If you refresh/cache via 3G instead of Wifi, does it still download the same higher quality tracks, or does it switch to the lower quality ones used during streaming? I refreshed everything via Wifi last night and I'm extremely happy with the results. My Droid is now a better satellite radio than a standalone XM player, for a lot less.

[RomeE]

If you refresh/cache via 3G instead of Wifi, does it still download the same higher quality tracks, or does it switch to the lower quality ones used during streaming? I refreshed everything via Wifi last night and I'm extremely happy with the results. My Droid is now a better satellite radio than a standalone XM player, for a lot less.

The files used for Cache are the same regardless of Wifi or OTA.

Best regards,
Rome E
Slacker Support

[superdroid]

This release was a big disappointment for me. I have a samsung moment and my issues were:

I have two custom channels, they play plenty of unique content. I set them to cache. Did a refresh overnight. I went to play one of them today and it told me it didnt have enough content. Other than that I had no offline access to the channel what really perturbed was that there was no message saying that the refresh failed, no indicator on the icon that the channel wasn't full. Nothing. Just an error on play. It would be nice if I was made aware of this BEFORE i left a place with signal or wifi.

On the one that did work, the quality was worse. Normally on my moment, there is like no bass or a very small amount. However on the cached stations the bass was heavily distorted instead, enough that I didn't want to use it any longer.

I also noted the stuttering on song change is still there. I thought it was an issue of buffering but with caching enabled I guess thats just not the case.

Since I accepted the temporary registration, I'm wondering if I will have to pay when the next release comes out to test this feature.

I really really want to give you guys my money, but I only use my android phone with the service and so far my experience has not been that great.

[RomeE]

This release was a big disappointment for me. I have a samsung moment and my issues were:

I have two custom channels, they play plenty of unique content. I set them to cache. Did a refresh overnight. I went to play one of them today and it told me it didnt have enough content. Other than that I had no offline access to the channel what really perturbed was that there was no message saying that the refresh failed, no indicator on the icon that the channel wasn't full. Nothing. Just an error on play. It would be nice if I was made aware of this BEFORE i left a place with signal or wifi.

On the one that did work, the quality was worse. Normally on my moment, there is like no bass or a very small amount. However on the cached stations the bass was heavily distorted instead, enough that I didn't want to use it any longer.

I also noted the stuttering on song change is still there. I thought it was an issue of buffering but with caching enabled I guess thats just not the case.

Since I accepted the temporary registration, I'm wondering if I will have to pay when the next release comes out to test this feature.

I really really want to give you guys my money, but I only use my android phone with the service and so far my experience has not been that great.

1. You should get a notification in your Notification Bar if a refresh failed. It may not have failed though. Due to licenses, there might not have been enough tracks for that station to play. I can't tell you for certain without knowing more about your station.

2. This is the first time I've heard this about Caching. We do know that OTA has a problem. Google is aware of the issue and we hope they will resolve it. But Caching uses a different Codec, and so far all of the reviews and comments we got from users has been that Caching sounds great. Can you give us more information about this?

3. If it's stuttering while you are changing songs, then it's possible that your phone is having trouble with low resources. So when the song first starts up, and loads up, your phone is having to do alot to read it into memory and play it. If the stuttering goes away after a few seconds, that would make sense, because by then, it would be fully loaded into the Android Media Player, and then your phone wouldn't be short of resources.

I'll pass these on to the developer to see if they have any other comments.

Best regards,
Rome E
Slacker Support

[superdroid]

It said "refresh completed" i believe in the notification. There were no errors. It would be nice of the icon had like a red-x over it if it failed or something. Oh wait I'm looking at it now and I see a yellow check on the icon, over the failed one. A green check with a circle over the good one. Clicking on the yellow it says "not enough songs to play. please complete a refresh"

I'm hoping it was just a bad couple of songs I ran into(though they were the very first two songs on the station). After reading your post I've done another runthrough for my whole skip count and so far its been good. Though this time I didnt have the bluetooth connected to my car for handsfree on this run. Ill try again on my way home and see what happens. I'm hopeful its an isolated thing and it probably is based on your beta test group.

One thing too is that app always chokes(skips, stutters) when the screen rotates. I wish I could just turn off that feature entirely. Not to mention it takes like 2-3 seconds to flip as well.

I'd also like the ability to keep the screen on(and perhaps dimmed) when the power is not on. Since I use this in my car its a pain to unlock to change tracks. Or what would really be cool is if you could use the hard buttons for pause/next-track. I'm sure the power for screen requirement is a precaution so I can understand why thats the default.

Would it also be possible to get an update of how much of the cache i've listened to?

I really think the DAC in the moment sucks, so im not expecting the ultimate fidelity.

[superdroid]

My other station is the first Hip-Hip channel just fine-tuned to only play current songs.