The Nagging Problem of Infotainment Interfaces

I had a major revelation a couple of years ago when it came to getting music out of the dashboard of a car.

A few years ago and completely by surprise, Audi Canada offered me the opportunity to drive an S6 with a V10 for a week.  All I had to do was pay for the gas.  What would you do?

The car was decked out with all the options, including a top-of-the-line factory Sirius satellite radio.  I had satellite radio in my car, but the receiver was an after-market Audiovox unit with a black-and-white LCD screen that couldn't display any more than 20 characters at a time.  The buttons were small and fiddly and the thing was hard to program and tune.  The unit left me unimpressed with the satellite radio experience.

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The Future of Satellite Radio Lies in Personalization

I have satellite radio in my car. My wife has it in her car. I have it in my office, too.  And while I enjoy the service a lot, I've often wondered where it's going.  Like its terrestrial counterpart, satellite radio is one-way communication with no way for the end user to customize things.  And custimization/personalization is the way of the future.

SiriusXM knows this, which is why they've got a skunkworks dedicated to ways of making the satellite radio experience personalized.  Radio consultant Mark Ramsey looks at what they're doing.

Personalization is a rainbow extending all the way from “lowest common denominator” to “all mine.” The former is what you get on the radio while the latter is what you find in the iTunes store.

SXM’s version of personalization, which appeared in the iTunes store this past weekend, is closer to the former than the latter, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Want to skip songs or create your own custom channels? Sorry, Charlie. This isn’t the place for you (assuming you’re listening “live,” whatever that means) – but then you knew that already.

But if you have a favorite Sirius XM channel or two and want to tweak those channels this way or that, your dreams have officially come true.

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Las Vegas Radio/Tech Summit Looks at the Connected Car

Kurt Hansen, the head of Accu-Radio and publisher of RAIN (the Radio And Internet Newsletter) is in the midst of a gathering he organized in Las Vegas called RAIN Summit West.  A panel was convened to talk about the connected car and what it means for radio and entertainment for the motorist.

Delivering Internet audio to the car is hard. Everyone on the "Dashboard Discussions" panel, which led off yesterday's RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas, agreed on that.

So far, implementatation are all unique and different, and it's expensive to work with carmakers.Entercom Director of Digital Operations Amy Van Hook (top right) explained that's why her company is sticking with aggregations likeTuneIn, or Entercom's mobile apps, to connect to cars for now. Chia-Lin Simmons, Aha by Harman VP/Marketing & Content, said it can cost amillion dollars to get integrated into the car "head unit." Moderator Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics verified that automakers make hard to "scale" integrations.

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Yes, Musicians Still Should Try to Get Their Music on the Radio

Despite what the naysayers may, uh, say, radio is still the number one place for music discovery for the majority of the population.  And once you get your radio on the air, it's the best way to reach the most people in the least amount of time.

New research confirms this.  From Hypebot:

Though research studies often conflict, recent research related to music listening habits make it clear that traditional radio, including traditional radio being streamed on the web, remains a dominant source of streaming music and music discovery. Yet pure play internet radio's audience is growing and younger people are gradually shifting away from traditional AM/FM radio to listening to such services even in autos. Aggregated data points indicate that musicians should continue to seek traditional radio play while exploring newer internet-based services.

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GM's New Infotainment System Functions More Like Your Smartphone

This is the car radio of the future--although "radio" doesn't really describe it because there's so much more going on with this thing.

From Gizmag:

Scheduled to launch later this year on an unspecified model or series of models, the app framework will allow you to download and utilize apps built specifically for your GM vehicle. Gizmag caught up with GM at the New York Auto Show to take a closer look.

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