Fresh Content

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
9,434
149
63
Louisiana
I did something I've not done in awhile today. I removed all my stations off my Slacker G2 and then selected some new stations, along with many of my regulars and had them download again. WOW, I was shocked at all the fresh new content.

I don't care what anyone says, I think once music gets on the G2 unless you remove it yourself it stays. I am in shock at all the songs I've not heard in a long while playing. I can see this will be necessary from time to time.

It is a pain in the ass though because it took several hours to reload all my stations. Well worth the wait though!

I was always told that the device removed songs and added songs. I do not buy that at all. I think it may add some songs, but I do not think it removes any content unless you totally run out of space. Even then I think it is very limited in what it removes. Otherwise I wouldn't have notice such a dramatic difference in my stations. This mainly seems to be on the Slacker created stations, because my custom stations are all pretty deep, but I have heard some new songs tonight on a few of those too.

Just sharing another user experience!
 

bjordan

New Member
Aug 31, 2009
6
0
1
Thanks for the heads up. I got a Slacker G2 about 2 weeks ago and I was beginning to wonder. I refresh it daily and listen to it all day at work and it seems like I hear the same songs over and over again. Especially on the built in stations as you mentioned.

I could probably type out the list of songs from memory that it plays on the Indie Hits, Hip Hop & Hard Rock stations.

At first I thought it was a fault or my misunderstanding of the "favorite system". So I cleared all my favorites from premade stations, refreshed but saw no real change.

Perhaps I should refavorite some songs and do a full refresh.
 

bjordan

New Member
Aug 31, 2009
6
0
1
Sorry to double post. I think I just missed my edit window. :/

DAB: Did you remove all stations, refresh (to clear), add new ones and old ones back and then refresh again?

Or did you edit your stations, factory reset and then refresh?
 

xan_user

Banned
Dec 16, 2008
3,234
74
48
Nor-Cal
I guess I was already kind of doing this. I Change my staions online and resave under a new name, then remove old ones from my g1 and refresh with the newly named/tweaked stations.
 

bjordan

New Member
Aug 31, 2009
6
0
1
DAB ... wow nice find. I tested it this afternoon and you're right I got a ton of new content.

I removed the "Indie Hits" station, refreshed, added it back and refreshed again. I was shocked at all the new music.

After testing it I did the same thing with several other stations. It looks like I'll make this a weekly thing. I wonder if refreshing without removing is even worth it. :scratch:

There for a while I thought favorites were why I was hearing the same music over and over so I stopped using favorites. Looks like I can start using them again.
 

Bigrock

Member
Oct 15, 2008
62
1
8
My G2 seems to refresh every time I just turn it on in the house and it connects to my neighbors open wifi. Is this normal? I did not go to the connect screen and when I did it was downloading...?
 

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
9,434
149
63
Louisiana
S
DAB: Did you remove all stations, refresh (to clear), add new ones and old ones back and then refresh again?

Or did you edit your stations, factory reset and then refresh?

Since I have about 25 custom stations that I created myself, I removed some old one and added some new ones to the G2. But I also removed some that I simply removed and then just re-added back. I was amazed at how much fresher the content was after doing this.

I am not sure why Slacker support tells folks that the service removes music and adds music, but maybe it does just not enough to make a big difference. The real deal is that by just totally removing them and re-adding you get a lot of new music.


DAB ... wow nice find. I tested it this afternoon and you're right I got a ton of new content.

After testing it I did the same thing with several other stations. It looks like I'll make this a weekly thing. I wonder if refreshing without removing is even worth it. :scratch:

I am glad you find this helpful. I will certainly periodically do this from now on in order to keep my music a bit more fresh.

My G2 seems to refresh every time I just turn it on in the house and it connects to my neighbors open wifi. Is this normal? I did not go to the connect screen and when I did it was downloading...?

You have your G2 set to auto refresh when you plug it in and charge it more than likely. So each time you plug it in away she goes. I have that turned off as I prefer to download the content when I want too and when it is convenient for me.
 

hjsiemer

New Member
Aug 13, 2009
13
0
1
Maryland
I have emailed Slacker customer support in an attempt to find out what the algorithmn is that is used by the Slacker when refreshing - I was told that they would get back to me. If we can discover the algorithm, then maybe we can get fresh content without having to reset the slacker or save the current stations under different names. What I am hoping is that there is a series of "button pushing" that makes the slacker believe that it needs to be completely refreshed...
 

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
9,434
149
63
Louisiana
I have emailed Slacker customer support in an attempt to find out what the algorithmn is that is used by the Slacker when refreshing - I was told that they would get back to me. If we can discover the algorithm, then maybe we can get fresh content without having to reset the slacker or save the current stations under different names. What I am hoping is that there is a series of "button pushing" that makes the slacker believe that it needs to be completely refreshed...

They aren't going to tell you that information. They will tell you what they want you to hear. Reality is that it works they way it works! Once music gets on the device unless you manually purge it, you won't ever get all of it replaced. My understanding is that if you have a lot of space that stations can get up to 500 songs in them. This is great for variety, but can still become stale. If you then add more stations or you quit listening to some of your other stations, it will slowly remove some of those songs in order to continue building up to the 500 songs cap in the stations that you do listen too. This is the only time I've found that it actually MAY and I use that term loosely MAY remove songs.

When you've got Slacker not being totally upfront and honest about their license agreements on which songs or artist may be available and may not be available this tells me they aren't going to tell us anything, but what they want too. They have never really been totally upfront about the difference between their portable players and streaming. Just to say that they have difference license agreements. Some asked them to provide more specific details about this, but they never have.