Ford Motor Co. and music streaming service Spotify have partnered, allowing Spotify subscribers to access its music in more than one million Ford vehicles throughout America. Both companies made the announcement on Monday, Feb. 25.
This will be the first time that Spotify has teamed up with an automobile manufacturer. Spotify subscribers will be able to access the more than 20 million songs in the service's library via voice activation.
Spotify's global head of hardware partnerships, Pascal de Mul, says in an analysis by Bloomberg Businessweek that the updated Android and iPhone updates apps will soon be capable of connecting with the dashboard AppLink system, streaming music through the cars' entertainment systems.
As reported by Reuters, Spotify claims to have 20 million active listeners across the globe. Twenty-five percent of those listeners are paid subscribers.
With Internet access becoming better in cars overall, Spotify is expected to make more deals similar to the one with Ford. Another streaming music service, Pandora, has already made various deals of its own with such big-league carmakers as GM, BMW, Chrysler and, of course, Ford.
According to numbers quoted by Pandora in the same Reuters report, one million listeners have employed the Pandora dashboard integration that now comes available in 75 models of cars.
The SYNC AppLink had already worked with Pandora in the past.
"The way it works is simple — start off with the name of one of your favorite artists, songs, comedians or composers, and Pandora creates a personalized station that plays similar tracks," says Pandora's promo page about the device. "And Pandora has almost a century of popular recordings to play for you — new and old, well- known and some completely obscure."
Ford's music streaming apps in AppLink already support other services such as Amazon Cloud Player, MOG Music, Slacker and Rhapsody, as well as digital apps of radio stations.
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