Spotify finally coming to US Tesla vehicles?

[Knightshade]

Seems odd that it would just be "not a priority", seeing that European cars have spotify integration already and apparently the code is already in place

FWIW, slacker sure seems to think they have an exclusive contract with Tesla in North America-


LiveXLive Media Announces Key Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2018 Achievements, Including New Festival Streaming Deals and Subscriber Growth in Slacker Radio

Slacker's exclusive partnership with Tesla in North America is proving to be a valuable customer acquisition channel and a model that we plan to replicate

That's from a bit over a year ago.

 

[dave999z]

The Q&A on this topic in the RTL podcast was weak. (I'm a fan of the podcast!) Elon's answer was a copout. Slacker sucks, and getting Spotify is a HUGE priority for many customers (much more than video games). We deserve a true explanation other than "it's not a priority."

Wish Ryan McCaffery had actually followed up rather than let Elon off: "Aren't a lot of customers asking for this? When will you get to it? Would it even require significant resources since it's already part of the UI in Europe? So the exclusive deal between Tesla and Slacker is not what's preventing Tesla from adding Spotify in the U.S. today? When does that deal end?"

 

[favo]

It could be that part of the exclusivity deal with Slacker is not talking about when it will end and what Tesla will do at that point. I mean, if Elon said, "Slacker deal ending in January. Planning to switch to Spotify," that would put a hurt on Slacker's bottom line. Back when Tesla signed that deal they were pretty small, so the terms were probably slanted towards Slacker.

 

[groovidad]

Pandora would be nice too. Options are great to have

I access Pandora through my phone link with the 3. Don't you?

 

[Wooloomooloo]

Don't remember the wording and it was Musk simple. But he basically said they could at anytime but it just wasn't a priority.

Exactly, unlike 35-year old Atari games and fart noises.

Translation: This would be trivial for us to do and we already did it in Europe, but a sub-standard rival (Slacker) paid us some money not to do it.

I access Pandora through my phone link with the 3. Don't you?

Yes, but you have to initiate it from your phone, same with the thumbs up/down which have to be done on your phone. If you've used AA or CP and got used to doing this on your car's screen, it feels like a significant step back.

 

[lCELess]

I access Pandora through my phone link with the 3. Don't you?

Yes of course but a native experience is always better. Plus the quality from Bluetooth after listening to what slacker puts out is quite noticeable

 

[Don TLR]

This is why I have a love/hate with Electrek. An entire article built on a totally vague, two letter tweet by Elon. Quality "journalism" there.

That's how the blogger gets all his content,, well OK lots of it. Just adds lots of filler words to the articles from 1 or 2 that Elon usually replies

 

[SpudLime]

im not trying to be snarky when I ask this... Why does this matter so much to people? I pay for apple music and stream off my phone. Its simple and easy. why is this such a big deal to have it on the screen in the car?

 

[DDotJ]

According to the dev from TesPlayer, he/she can further confirm Spotify is coming to NA vehicles with some exciting features.

I knew days before, and I wasn’t going to mention anything, but with Elon now confirming that Spotify is coming... I have been told about what’s in the works (it’s awesome). I will be abandoning server side implementations, dropping logins and trying to add artists and search.

I don’t know if I’ll stop working on this when we get native implementations. But I will be open sourcing it as soon as native launches.

Thank you all for taking this journey with me. If Tesla doesn’t implement a popular music service I could shift to supporting the missing one.

And in the comments:

The media team reached out to me, can’t share anything but I’d put faith in the tweet.

Yeah. I’m really exciting for what the media team has in store for us.

 

[DDotJ]

im not trying to be snarky when I ask this... Why does this matter so much to people? I pay for apple music and stream off my phone. Its simple and easy. why is this such a big deal to have it on the screen in the car?

For me, the Spotify app on my Pixel 2 XL is a bit janky and pretty buggy. Sometimes when I hit play/pause via the steering wheel, it won't actually stop on my phone.

Basically, it would be the convenience of it and the integration between my Spotify account and the car. The ability to repeat a song or start it over would also be really nice. Also would love to be able to ask the car to play an album and have it actually play the album all the way through.

If it could also play podcasts from Spotify, that would also be a huge plus too.

 

[SpudLime]

understood. i just say hey siri and it plays any album I want also. i guess im just not as easily annoyed by such things.

 

[DDotJ]

understood. i just say hey siri and it plays any album I want also. i guess im just not as easily annoyed by such things.

For me, I pretty much have to yell at my phone to activate the assistant especially at highway speeds due to road noise.

At the end of the day, it's not a huge inconvenience. It would just make my media experience a lot easier in the car. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the curated DJ series from Slacker with the intros and background info. If Slacker goes away, I might miss those unless Spotify has something similar.

 

[PoitNarf]

According to the dev from TesPlayer, he/she can further confirm Spotify is coming to NA vehicles with some exciting features.


And in the comments:

Nice! Coming from the TesPlayer developer makes this seem like this is coming sooner than later. I’m hoping it will be more than just Spotify. If they can get in streaming from SiriusXM and/or Apple Music I’ll be ecstatic.

 

[pitabun]

im not trying to be snarky when I ask this... Why does this matter so much to people? I pay for apple music and stream off my phone. Its simple and easy. why is this such a big deal to have it on the screen in the car?

It's not simple when you have to pickup your phone while driving to change playlists.

 

[Knightshade]

Nice! Coming from the TesPlayer developer makes this seem like this is coming sooner than later.

Well, I guess this answers the long-brewing question "how long was the slacker exclusive contract for".... 7 years.

 

[hydro 481]

According to the dev from TesPlayer, he/she can further confirm Spotify is coming to NA vehicles with some exciting features.


And in the comments:

Awesome news!!! Knowing Tesla it'll take another year before it gets to us lol.

 

[DJVoorhees]

Elon says a lot on twitter, not much of it comes to fruition,.

 

[Kognos]

im not trying to be snarky when I ask this... Why does this matter so much to people? I pay for apple music and stream off my phone. Its simple and easy. why is this such a big deal to have it on the screen in the car?

I have been thinking about this a lot. I've got a ton of music and podcasts available via my phone, but I find some of the integration points bad. If you don't have Siri integration or voice integration into your playback it gets more challenging. For example if you had everything on a Plex library.

That's why I've generally gone toward USB media and just have a large library in the car.

Plus my passengers (kids, wife) can scroll through that stuff without having to unlock a faceID or touchID phone. It just gets cumbersome to a degree to assume you can easily manipulate data on your phone. My kids absolutely love just finding what they want to play and choosing it.

I guess after writing all this out, it's just easier to have media available via that large, unlocked screen you have in your Tesla compared to the small and usually more secured screen in the charging cubby or your pocket.

 

[Glamisduner]

Well that's something to look forward to!

 

[hydro 481]

C’mon guys it’s not that hard to understand why people want Spotify intergrated into the system...

It’s safer and easier to use the car’s 15” touchscreen than it is to fiddle with your phone’s 6” screen.

You will be able to search for songs or artists via voice button on steering wheel.

You won’t need to bring your phone in the car to use Spotify. I know most people carry their phone anyways so this is a moot point but sometimes I like to carry only my Apple Watch. Also it’s less wear on your phone/battery.

I assume there is lost of audio fidelity when you stream via bluetooth vs a native built in solution. Although it’s probably too marginal for most people to notice.