Coming soon to Ford cars: Spotify.
Spotify, the streaming music service, has made its first move into the competitive world of in-car entertainment by adapting its mobile app for Ford’s Sync AppLink system. The system lets drivers operate their mobile apps through voice commands. The companies will announce the development on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Companies like Spotify, which has 20 million users and is available in 23 countries, are eager to embed their services in a range of devices to keep handy throughout a user’s day. In addition to its desktop and mobile versions, Spotify is also available — for subscribers to its premium service, at about $10 a month — on Roku set-top boxes, Onkyo stereo components, Sonos speaker systems and other electronics.
But for digital services of all kinds, the connected car dashboard has become a coveted destination. As radio broadcasters know, the car is often where the most uninterrupted and impressionable listening takes place, and as carmakers develop more sophisticated systems, there is more opportunity for digital media companies to reach customers.
Pandora recently announced that among its more than 1,000 partner integrations are 85 models of cars, and services like iHeartRadio from Clear Channel Communications have struck deals with carmakers to add their apps to the dashboard. Sirius XM Radio is now available in more than 60 percent of new vehicles, the company recently reported.
Ford’s Sync is a programming platform that lets users plug in a mobile device and operate an app by voice, to avoid distractions while driving. Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio and Amazon’s Cloud Player are already compatible with it, as are other apps including National Public Radio and Major League Baseball.
The system is available in about one million Fords in North America, but Julius Marchwicki, the AppLink product manager, said in an interview that the number would grow. And given Spotify’s rapid expansion, deals with more carmakers are likely.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 27, 2013
An article on Monday about Spotify’s adapting its mobile app for Ford vehicles misstated the title of Julius Marchwicki, a Ford executive. He is the AppLink product manager, not the Sync product manager.
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