Tesla will stop providing the free “streaming” app and Spotify Premium with premium connectivity

Tesla has made changes to its premium connectivity offerings in Europe, Australia and North America. The company will no longer offer ad-free music streaming through the “streaming” app, now called LiveOne. In Europe, Tesla also previously offered a free Spotify Premium account in the vehicle, but now that account will also be restricted. Thanks to an insider tip, we first reported on this rumor last week.

These changes will be made starting December 1st^st2024, and users who previously took advantage of Tesla's premium connectivity to use either Slacker (now LiveOne) or Spotify Premium will now be directed to the free versions of those services.

North America – Streaming/LiveOne/Slacker

In North America, Tesla offered a free premium subscription to LiveOne (formerly known as Slacker) Radio through the “streaming” app with the orange icon. This subscription wasn't cheap – $10 per month. It offered unlimited song skipping and improved audio quality.

This feature has now been removed and users will be prompted to log in to LiveOne when they open the streaming/LiveOne app in their Teslas. Users can either continue using a free version of LiveOne or sign up for LiveOne Premium to continue using it.

LiveOne Premium will now cost $3 per month (a discounted price) for Tesla-specific use.

Europe – Spotify Premium

In Europe and Australia, Tesla instead offered a free premium subscription to Spotify as part of its Premium Connectivity package. This subscription was actually quite expensive compared to the North American equivalent – $10 per month and also offered unlimited song skipping and improved audio quality.

Just like in North America, this has been removed. Users must sign in to a Spotify account to continue using Spotify, or they can now use Spotify's basic tier, which includes ads, limited skips, and some other restrictions. A Premium account is required to use the Premium functionality.

Lifetime premium connectivity

However, these changes do not affect everyone. Before Premium Connectivity was introduced in July 2018, Tesla offered free lifetime Premium Connectivity with every Tesla purchase. Tesla also offers a lifetime subscription to Cybertruck Foundation owners. These owners will continue to receive the benefits of LiveOne or Spotify Premium in their respective regions. These lifetime plans are guaranteed until the vehicle changes ownership. At this time, Tesla will also not cover the ongoing costs of this vehicle's premium connectivity.

These changes are somewhat disappointing as they have been a core part of Tesla's premium connectivity for many years. The good news is that users can still use the same service, albeit with limited functionality and advertising. We're not sure if Tesla will introduce a new set of features to fill this gap or if they'll lower the price of premium connectivity to match the reduction in service, but in all likelihood Tesla just wanted to reduce costs.

There are a lot of competing apps that people are using, especially since Tesla introduced YouTube Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music in recent updates. Amazon Prime subscribers can enjoy Amazon Music for free as it is included in their membership.

Ashok Elluswamy, Head of Autopilot and AI at Tesla, confirmed on X that older Tesla Model S and Model^Th2025.

That's still a few months away, but it's still a sigh of relief for owners of older vehicles – because neither the release notes nor anywhere in Tesla's AI roadmap mentioned when and whether older vehicles would receive these functions.

Legacy vehicles

Specifically, these legacy vehicles were vehicles before the 2021 update but after the introduction of MCU2 (Intel) and Hardware 3. Legacy vehicles can be upgraded from MCU 1 (NVIDIA) to MCU 2 (Intel) and from HW 2.5 will be updated to HW3 so that all vehicles after 2016 could gain access to Actually Smart Summon.

According to Greentheonly, the cameras in these vehicles are implemented differently than in other Tesla models where raw camera feeds are supported. This will make it more difficult for Tesla to stream video from the vehicle's cameras to the Tesla app, which uses Indeed Smart Summon.

Live access in Sentry mode

Older vehicles also don't have access to cameras in Live Sentry mode – they can't upload that data live to Tesla's servers and then to the owner's app. In order to make Actually Smart Summon work on these older vehicles, Tesla will essentially have to implement Live Sentry mode – which could be a big win for owners of older vehicles.

However, the legacy vehicles lack more than just that. Due to hardware limitations, different screen ratios, and more, they also lack additional features like automatic seat heaters and blind spot/turn signal camera feeds. However, getting Sentry Mode Live access would be a very welcome feature if Tesla decided to add it with the addition of Indeed Smart Summon.

It is very likely that the entire camera rendering and upload pipeline is closely tied to Indeed Smart Summon and that the lack of processing capability is the limiting condition for these vehicles.

We're pleased that Tesla remains open to supporting legacy hardware and vehicles, especially considering that Hardware 3 will continue to receive support in the future and MCU1 vehicles along with FSD V12.3.6 improvements to Automatic Emergency Braking and Forward Collision Warning have received.

In fact, Smart Summon will be coming to the legacy S/X system in the fourth quarter.

— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 30, 2024

Tesla released FSD V12.5.4.1 with software update 2024.32.10, just one day after introducing FSD V12.5.5 in update 2024.32.20. This is good for a number of reasons, but there are also improvements made to Indeed Smart Summon that Tesla mentions in the release notes.

This build was released to early access testers last night and is expected to roll out more widely later this week.

Update 2024.32

Firstly, non-FSD builds have been available on 2024.32 for a while now, and it looks like this will be the big branch merge to move FSD V12.5.4 (and V12.5.5) towards the latest feature branch bring. Once mass rollout begins on 2024.32.10, owners in North America will soon be able to subscribe to FSD and receive the latest FSD version.

Additionally, 2024.32.6 brings a number of new features, including the major updates to Handsfree Frunk and Handsfree Trunks.

Available for Enhance Autopilot users

Update: This update is now rolling out to users who have purchased Advanced Autopilot, not just vehicles with FSD. This is the first step in expanding Indeed Smart Summon globally. Summoning features are included for vehicles with Enhanced Autopilot or higher. Advanced Autopilot is still available for purchase in some regions, but is no longer available in North America since Tesla lowered the price of FSD.

Actually smart summoning changes

The Actually Smart Summon changelog for this build is short, but adds a few items that users had already noted needed some work. Tesla is releasing all of these updates soon – all ahead of the upcoming Robotaxi event.

Improved crashes on public/high-speed roads: This is quite valuable as Actually Smart Summon does not work on public roads or other higher speed locations. With the current ASS version, the vehicle is simply stopped before turning onto a public road. We hope that the vehicle will either stop properly or turn around and head back to the parking lot if necessary.

Improved blocked camera cancels: The next update is improved camera break blocking, which should be similar except that ASS will not stop on public roads or high-speed roads, but will stop when the cameras are obscured. This improvement should reduce false stops and increase confidence.

Reduced aborts through false positive collision reduction: Third, we reduced the number of false positive collision mitigation aborts – again – ASS stops when it thinks a collision is about to occur. The current construction was done quite carefully and left a good distance from any obstacles. Now that Tesla has received training data from the many drivers who have used it since its release, there will be fewer false alarms in the future.

Refined Foolish Summons: We're not sure what improvements there are here, but it looks like there are general improvements over the previous forward/backward summoning version.

Last updated: Oct 2, 11:45 a.m. UTC

Custom sounds

Update: We first discovered new summon options in FSD 12.5.4 that now allow you to have the vehicle play a sound when the summon is completed or canceled. We treated the new options as an undocumented change in our release notes, but Tesla has now expanded its functionality.

With the 2024.32.10 update, Tesla now allows you to select a custom sound from your USB drive to play when Smart Summon actually completes. This is in addition to the previous sound clip options Applause, Ta Da, Ba-dum Tiss and a random sound. Tesla also added “Fart” as one of the sound options, which previously only played when “Actually Smart Summon” was canceled.

For now, FSD users can look forward to Indeed Smart Summon and feature improvements in Update 2024.32, and non-FSD users can look forward to subscribing to FSD and receiving the latest FSD build in the near future.