Pandora

[Spyder17]

Ok, what happened to Pandora (listened to it all the time and made riding much more enjoyable)? With the latest update Pandora is gone and all we have are a couple FEED.FM stations. Can't say much for the music that they are playing. Ended up turning music off. Hopefully if this is the way you are going they will add more stations or allow us to create our own. I know that it is suppose to be more accessable but if there is nothing to listen to, not of much use.

[digitaljackson]

Ugh yeah, I started up the bike and had some pop dance music coming through instead of my Rage Against the Machine Pandora channel. Available music channel selections are not for me. Going to make the workouts a bit more of a slog.

Update - I turned off the music and played Pandora from my browser, which worked... mostly. Pandora locked up once playing an ad. Also don't have the ability to change volume or station using the browser. Better than no music, but a step backwards.

[76561198295368552]

Pandora was removed for a combination of reasons. As I understand it, the thinking was that you should still be able to play it from a browser window in the background on PC (I'll have to ask whether there's anything in our game that would relate to the crash noted above), and we couldn't really support it in an ongoing fashion for technical and practical reasons. It was kind of an experimental, hacked-together implementation that very few users were able to get to work, and it would only ever work on PC. Unfortunately, Pandora doesn't supply an API we could use to make the feature easier to use or usable on all platforms.

The advantage to Feed FM is that it works easily and automatically for everyone in VirZOOM Arcade, but I understand that the station offerings are still pretty limited. I'm passing this feedback to the team, for what it's worth – my hope is that we'll be able to add more variety and customizability in the future.

[Spyder17]

Well shucks. Will try using Pandora or Sirius through PC. Was just so nice to have within App.

[hisui]

For what it's worth, Spotify has an API though it may only relate to playlist management and searching, not sure about actual streaming. I play on PS4 and use Spotify Connect to stream music from my phone to the PS4 so I'm used to having the music be "external" to Virzoom Arcade, not a big deal for me but I can see the appeal. I do often wish I could hit a button in game to skip tracks :)

[76561198295368552]

I know Spotify was mentioned as a possible route, but the team ended up not going with it for some reason. I'll pass along the suggestion, though.

If there's anybody here who actually likes Feed FM, too, that would also be helpful to know. :)

[Spyder17]

Don't think anyone likes Feed FM. I did try Pandora and it didn't lock up (had 1 ad play). Only tried it for about 30 minutes though.

[CrashFu]

I was pretty attached to my Pandora stations, too, but fortunately I haven't had any trouble running them from a minimized browser.

The Feed FM stations work really well functionally, so if we just get more genre options I'm sure I could work with that, too.

[smokedy]

Yes I like the feed fm station. Glad to have it.

[76561198295368552]

Thanks for the feedback, folks!