Please help. Slacker skips every song.

[scodella]

Some quick background - I don't have internet access at home, only at work. I first heard of Slacker in January of 2008 and listened to it at work all the time. I loved it. I created my own station and everything and was to the point where I was going to buy a portable player and upgrade to the premium package. Several of my friends and co-workers also started listening to it earlier this year.

Well, sometime in March or April I started having problems. Slacker would play about 10-15 seconds of a song and then just skip to the next one. I posted a message on this forum and others were experiencing the same thing. Well a fix was evidently made and many people said they were no longer having problems. But that didn't include me.

I just forgot about it and moved on to other internet radio options. But today I decided to come back to Slacker and see if it would work. The answer was no. It still plays 10-15 seconds of a song and then skips to the next one.

I deleted my cookies and flash cache, as recommended in the sticky post - but that didn't work.

Here is the kicker though - all of my co-workers are experiencing the same problem. My friends who use Slacker on their home PC's don't have any issues. So it doesn't take a genius to realize that the problem I'm having has something to do with my company and my work PC. My best guess is that there was some sort of company-wide installation or update done in March or April that caused this issue. All of my co-workers are having the same problem.

So, I'm hoping someone can help me. I'm running Internet Explorer version 6.0. I'm also on Windows 2000 Professional. I was running this earlier this year when Slacker was working fine. There have been no major changes to my PC, other than perhaps company-wide installs that they run periodically.

I don't have any problems with other internet radio stations. I have no problems with streaming radio, youtube, or anything else for that matter.

One other note, when I go to Slacker.com and click "Play", you know how it shows the song an artist and then underneath that it has the time of the song - well, mine always shows 0:00/0:00. It plays for 10-15 seconds and then goes to the next song, but the time never updates. It just always stays 0:00/0:00.

I would really appreciate some help. I love this website and like I said, would really like to sign up for the premium service and buy a portable player. But when I can't get it to work and my place of employment, that makes me weary of getting it. If there is a number I can call to talk to someone in support, that'd be great too.

Thanks
Matt

[CharlesB]

scodella,

Thank you for bringing our attention to this. It does sound like you are having an issue in the office. If you can try the fix posted here and if it works then we know where to go from there.

Please try typing the following command in the Artist search box in the Slacker Web Player bbiCommand_usePlaybackEngine_flash (make sure there are no spaces at the beginning or end) and then hit enter and it should give you a confirmation box on the screen that will say that it has been changed to Flash.

Please reply to this post and let me know if that fixed the issue for you.

[scodella]

Hi Charles - thanks for the reply. I tried what you suggested and got a confirmation box like you said I would. Unfortunatley, it did not fix my problem. I even tried closing Explorer and opening it up again - going to slacker.com - but it still didn't work. It still does the same thing - skips to the next song after 10-15 seconds.

Thanks

[CharlesB]

scodella,

Ok so we know its not a Windows Media Player or Flash issue. At this time I would ask if you could speak with IT to make sure that they have not limited bandwidth to the terminals? Also you may want to ask have they blocked flash or java on the network?

[daniel]

Try using Firefox if you can install it.