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Spotify Demos In-Car Integration (But MOG Got There First)

1:12 a.m. · September 12, 2011 · by John Capone

Spotify showed what its subscription music service might look like on a car's dashboard when it demoed an in-dash integration with a Ford at the TechCrunch hosted Hackathon in San Francisco this weekend. Using the Ford SYNC system, this particular integration (essentially a quick hack Ford hoped would highlight its SYNC feature to developers) might never make it outside the event hall. It did, however serve to show how such a connection might work -- the answer is better than plugging your smartphone into the radio. The access is all on the dash, so you aren't fumbling with another device; in the case of this demonstration, you could even control Spotify with your voice.

And while this is the first such in-dash integration for Spotify, it isn't the first in the increasingly crowded field of streaming music services. Back in March MOG, a direct competitor to Spotify that offers essentially the same service, unveiled a very similar in-dash integration with BMW's MiniCooper at SXSW. At that time, Spotify was not even available in the U.S. yet. 

Putting these sorts of services on car dashboards is a no-brainer, and nobody is suggesting MOG owns the road. 

The biggest difference between the two fancy-pants tech conference demos is that when MOG and BMW showed theirs they were announcing a burgeoning partnership and debuting the beta of the app they'd develop together. So while there are plans in the works to ship Minis with Mog installed, there's no intention for the Ford-Spotify hookup to continue past this weekend.