Jaguar Land Rover with Spotify transforms in-car music experience
Jaguar Land Rover is on a mission to transform the way we listen to music in cars. Today, it has announced a unique collaboration with Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming service, to offer an app with readily available ‘music for every moment’ radio and personalised playlists based on users’ tastes and in-car listening habits.
Musicians Ricky Wilson from Kaiser Chiefs and Elliot Gleave, aka Example, were first to try the app in the car before its official release, going head to head in a battle of music tastes. Each created a Spotify playlist featuring their top driving songs and took to the road in the new Range Rover Evoque Convertible and the Jaguar XE to pitch their playlists against one another.
The artists’ playlists feature recent and classic tracks and include their latest singles, Kaiser Chiefs’ ‘Hole in My Soul’ and Example’s ‘Later’. Both driving playlists are available now via the official Kaiser Chiefs and Example Spotify profiles.
Example said, “It’s great to be the first to try the new Spotify app in a Jaguar. It worked really well and I had fun setting up my winning playlist and chatting with Ricky, even if I did have to listen to his jokes.”
Ricky said, “I listen to music every day so it’s important I’m now able to use the app while I’m on the move. I respect Elliot’s music tastes, we’d even both included Jamie T, but my playlist was the best by miles.”
Spotify, which launches this month in Jaguar Land Rover’s Incontrol Apps library, delivers the best in-car Spotify experience. It mirrors the Spotify interface users will recognise from their smartphone with touch and swipe gestures to navigate content.
Tapping into Spotify’s ‘deep learning’ which recognises listening habits, users can access personalised ‘Just for You’ playlists containing recommended tracks in the car, saving time scrolling through music on the move. Drivers in low-signal areas don’t need to worry, as Spotify’s ‘Offline Mode’ will display downloaded content despite poor Internet connection.
Spotify for Jaguar Land Rover is the result of a year’s worth of collaborative development between the two companies. The design teams set out to create a familiar and immersive experience designed for use in-car. Users can swipe horizontally to scroll through menus, which display rich album artwork tiles, all of which minimise distraction while driving.
Jaguar Land Rover Director Connected Technologies and Apps Peter Virk said, “Spotify currently has over 100 million active users and over 40 million subscribers, a proportion of whom drive Jaguars or Land Rovers, so we recognised that Spotify was at the top of our customers’ apps wish list. From the beginning we wanted to create a Spotify experience that users would really love. The Spotify design team worked closely with us to create the best in-vehicle experience and have spent many hours with us at our Gaydon HQ running user studies with our employees. The app is now available in our Incontrol Apps library and we will continue to work with Spotify to add new features such as predictive search over the coming months.”
Spotify Business Development Jonathan Tarlton said, “Partnering with Jaguar Land Rover brings Spotify a family of amazing premium vehicles with a user interface designed to look and feel like the Spotify our users already know and love. As we continue to innovate and shape the future of how music is consumed in the car, it’s great to have a partner in Jaguar Land Rover to come along for the ride.”
Incontrol Apps subscribers can download Spotify from the Apple App Store if it’s not already on their device. From September 27, once downloaded, the app will automatically show up on the vehicle touch screen when the smartphone is connected. Users do not need a premium subscription to access Spotify via Incontrol Apps.