Today Radio Ink reported that Pandora is being dropped from Toyota’s dash display. The report was based on an email sent to Toyota Entune users by the carmaker. Is this dire for Pandora? Should radio be celebrating? No. And no. I own a late model Toyota and I received that email. First, anyone who is forced to suffer Toyota’s miserable Entune entertainment system knows it’s easily the worst thing about their Toyota which, fortunately, can be easily circumvented by accessing t

The evolution of the car dashboard: It’s all some folks in radio want to talk about. Understandably, since such a large fraction of radio listening happens while driving. But isn’t it just the nature of disruption to change the conversation all at once? And that’s what happened today with the news that consumers wanting Android Auto no longer need to wait to buy a compatible car to use the platform. Now the platform is coming to them!Look out #radio: #android #auto is coming

Remember when buying a new car meant more than buying an entertainment system that also happened to contain wheels? In other words, remember when you bought the car, not the entertainment system? No longer. Watch this TV spot for the new Kia Optima. It compares the entertainment system “in most mid-size sedans” to a Rubiks Cube. The solution to that problem? Apple CarPlay! So doing stuff via your entertainment system in your car “is as easy as it is on your iPhone.” This stra

Ford is going all-in on bringing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to the auto dashboard: Ford is making Apple CarPlay and Android Auto available on all 2017 vehicles equipped with Sync 3 in North America, starting with the all-new Ford Escape. Owners of 2016 vehicles equipped with Sync 3 will get an opportunity to upgrade “later in the year,” the company said without providing details. What this means is that, beginning with 2017 auto models, the new car will essentially become

There’s much interest and much consternation about the entry of Google and Apple into operating-system extensions for the car dashboard with Android Auto and CarPlay, respectively. According to BI Intelligence: By 2020, nearly 40 million cars will be using Android Auto and 37.1 million will be using CarPlay, and that will cover nearly all cars launching connected car services, according to BI Intelligence estimates. That conclusion springs from a premium-priced report from BI

In a preview of CES, The Hollywood Reporter cuts to the chase – the most fundamental reason why the technology of the car dashboard is bound to change no matter what the power players of the radio industry desire: Car buyers—particularly millennials—are no longer as susceptible to the [auto] industry’s traditional marketing tropes of styling, horsepower and handling. Instead, they see the car as an extension of their digital lives, and increasingly demand that it mesh seamles

Last week, Google announced Android Auto, which – like Apple’s CarPlay – aims to fully fulfill the promise of the so-called connected car. Watch this video to see an illustration of how the platform integrates music, both from Google Play and from third party apps like Pandora or iHeartRadio: So what does this mean for radio? Well let’s take a step back. Broadcasters have been obsessed over the dashboard lately because they smell big trouble. But the trouble is much bigger th

By now you’ve heard about Apple’s new CarPlay platform which is gearing up for battle with Google’s Open Automotive Alliance, not to mention all the other platforms making a land grab for that whitest of spaces, the car dashboard. The Apple platform – coming soon – will only be available on a few new car models and will be integrated with only the newest iPhone models and features only a few non-Apple app partners (notably excluding Pandora). But this is how change comes, one