Spotify Inks Its First In-Car Deal, Will Stream Music To Ford Via SYNC AppLink 

Smartphones have long been an important distribution platform for music streaming service Spotify, and today it is taking that to the next level of mobility: today it is announcing a deal with Ford to provide in-car streaming music services, via Ford’s new SYNC AppLink service in Europe and North America. The deal will initially cover one car model, the EcoSport.

This is Spotify’s first in-car deal, but it’s not Ford’s: the company also works with Pandora in the U.S., a key competitive battleground between the two companies and others for consumers willing to pay and interested in listening to streaming music services compared to older media like CDs and radio, and downloads from iTunes.

It looks like Ford may be taking a more regional approach to their in-car services: it is also announcing Europe-only partnerships with Kaliki Audio Newsstand, the Glympse social location sharing app, and Aha audio entertainment channels for its European service. It’s aiming for the service to go into to 3.5 million cars by Europe. 

In the rush to make Mobile World Congress more and more relevant — even as some companies scale back their presence, or choose other venues for their big product launches — the GSMA has been bringing in increasing numbers of other players into the fold beyond its traditional base of handset makers and carriers. That has included car companies like Ford and General Motors, as well as apps/content companies like Spotify.

Although services like AppLink are still in their infancy, signing up brands like Spotify are important for raising consumer interest. Spotify in December 2012 announced 5 million paying subscribers, with 1 million of them in the U.S., and 20 million users overall including non-paying users.