Slacker Radio Plus - data usage

[shane_c]

Does anyone else have a subscription to Slacker? I pay 3.99/month and am enjoying it but have an issue with data usage that I can't figure out. When I'm in the house I listen over WiFi and when I'm in the car I stream my offline stations that I've downloaded (using WiFi). The problem is that over the last 2 weeks I've used about 180mb of data when playing offline in the car. I only have a 300mb plan so that hurts. The only reason I subscribe is so I can download and play offline without using data but that doesn't seem to be working. I read online about opening the app when in airplane mode and then turning it off again but that didn't help. Any ideas?

[To Be Quite Honest]

Originally Posted by shane_c

Does anyone else have a subscription to Slacker? I pay 3.99/month and am enjoying it but have an issue with data usage that I can't figure out. When I'm in the house I listen over WiFi and when I'm in the car I stream my offline stations that I've downloaded (using WiFi). The problem is that over the last 2 weeks I've used about 180mb of data when playing offline in the car. I only have a 300mb plan so that hurts. The only reason I subscribe is so I can download and play offline without using data but that doesn't seem to be working. I read online about opening the app when in airplane mode and then turning it off again but that didn't help. Any ideas?

Turn off data or put it in Airplane mode while driving. See what that does.

[shane_c]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried both out on the drive in and neither worked.

Airplane mode kills Bluetooth so that doesn't work. Turning cell data off made Slacker unhappy. It would play one or two songs but error messages would come up on the phone saying that Slacker wasn't responding. Sometimes it would also stop in the middle of the song and shut off. I'll likely just cancel my subscription because 'offline' doesn't appear to be offline.

[Slacker]

I'm not a subscription.

P.S I have no idea about the topic, just wanted to make presence

[shane_c]

Heard back from Slacker Support.....

"Stations, by default, will always play the streaming version of a station when started up. You will only listen to the downloaded version of a station if you explicitly select the downloaded version of the station from the offline section each time (having the station auto-start when the app starts up, or selecting the station from the Recent menu will all restart the station in streaming mode) or having the phone in Airplane mode when you start the Slacker app (as this will only allow access to the downloaded content)."

I've turned off autostart and will manually pick the offline station each time to see if it makes a difference.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by shane_c

Airplane mode kills Bluetooth so that doesn't work.

You can turn bluetooth and wi-fi back on after you switch to airplane mode> Phone will still stay off cell data.

[shane_c]

Originally Posted by shane_c

Heard back from Slacker Support.....

"Stations, by default, will always play the streaming version of a station when started up. You will only listen to the downloaded version of a station if you explicitly select the downloaded version of the station from the offline section each time (having the station auto-start when the app starts up, or selecting the station from the Recent menu will all restart the station in streaming mode) or having the phone in Airplane mode when you start the Slacker app (as this will only allow access to the downloaded content)."

I've turned off autostart and will manually pick the offline station each time to see if it makes a difference.

This seems to have worked. I did not use any data during my drive this morning.

[BigNumbers]

I think the greater question is why do you only have a 300MB plan, and who offers such a low plan?! I'd call and see if you can sweet-talk retentions into a 500MB/1GB plan...

[shane_c]

Originally Posted by BigNumbers

I think the greater question is why do you only have a 300MB plan, and who offers such a low plan?! I'd call and see if you can sweet-talk retentions into a 500MB/1GB plan...

It's with Koodo. I don't go over so don't feel the need to pay for more.