The days of tuning a radio in your car may be numbered as online streaming music migrates from computer to the car.
Music service Spotify has partnered with Ford to develop "Spotify in the Car," a voice-activated version of the music service with access to a library of 20 million songs available on demand, making it the first time Spotify will be integrated into a car, Forbes reported.
"Spotify in the Car" will be available in the U.S. next month to any Ford with a Sync AppLink infotainment system. For now, however, drivers will also have to own an iPhone and a Spotify Premium account to make use of the new service, Forbes reported.
Of the 20 million active Spotify accounts, one quarter of them are the paid, premium accounts needed to use the service. There are also about 5 million AppLink-equipped Ford vehicles currently in the U.S., the report stated.
While the service is to be launched next month, there is no firm date for when the necessary update to the Spotify iPhone app will be released, the article stated.
"We're targeting the first quarter of this year," said Douglas VanDagens, the director of Ford's Connected Services division, according to the report.
Spotify is the latest audio app to be incorporated into the AppLink system, joining Pandora, Slacker, Amazon Cloud Player, MOG, Rhapsody and others, according to a report from Wired.
The in-car program will have plenty of driver-friendly features including voice commanded playlist sharing and being able to instantly switch to a newly received playlist when one arrives in a user's Spotify account.
Drivers can also tell the app to add a track to their playlist, pause a track, play similar music, start an album or track. Oddly, voice-control of the music's volume is not a feature, a report from Forbes states.
The requirement of an iPhone to act as the service's internet hub is a marked difference from General Motor's new initiative to make 4G LTE wireless available in its cars with a partnership with AT&T.
The Ford-Spotify and GM-AT&T partnerships were both announced Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the wireless industry's main event of the year.
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