Spotify may dominate the streaming audio landscape, but Apple Music comes in as a close second. Third is Amazon Music, and YouTube, despite dominating video, is a very distant fourth. All this is according to reporting by Digital Music News, in case you were wondering.
Probably, if you’re a driver, a higher priority than video is listening to music, podcasts, news, etc., behind the wheel. And this sort of explains GM announcing today that they’ve inked a deal with Apple Music for cost-free high-resolution streaming in 2025 “select” Cadillac and Chevrolet models. Streaming in GMC and Buick models will likely be announced later.
Why this matters in the broader car landscape and, for GM in particular, speaks to the digitization of all things automotive. And makes us think about what’s likely to happen next for rival carmakers, too.
Commercial Free—But Not Free
Most Spotify peeps don’t want to pay Spotify—so we suffer through the ads. But one major advantage of Apple Music is that their millions of tracks, “radio” stations, playlists, exclusives, books and podcasts are all commercial free. This is possibly why YouTube trails in streaming music specifically, since we’re already stuck watching commercials on YouTube video and that’s an experience we want less of, not more of.
GM Subscription Specifics
As for GM’s tie-up with Apple Music, it’s coming as a no-cost over-the-air update to 2025 and newer Cadillac and Chevy cars, and will operate natively on the car’s system—no phone tethering required. This also means that some of the limits you might feel by needing a phone from a certain brand don’t pertain here, nor do you need to natively store songs on your phone.
This is part of OnStar Basics, a package that comes gratis for eight years for any GM customer. There is one catch, however: You need to be an existing Apple Music subscriber, according to a GM spokesperson. Or you could of course subscribe if you haven’t already been an Apple Music customer. Right now that costs 99 cents a month for three months, $5.99 a month for students, and $16.99 a month for families.
The Cadillac Experience Will Be Best
Thanks to their premium audio systems, Cadillac customers will have the best seat in the house for experiencing Apple Music streaming. Cadillacs featuring an AKG sound system have more digitally advanced audio processing that enables Dolby Atmos output. These cars also have not just more speakers but more strategically placed speakers, active noise cancelling and more thorough sound deadening to isolate the cabin from road and engine noise.
How Dolby Atmos Works
In cars like the Optiq and Vistiq, Cadillac’s 19-23 speaker array including headrest speakers can beam sound directly to each individual channel, and the mix is designed around creating a complete sound stage out of the cockpit. In other words, the processing has been engineered not just for the right mix for each song, but for the “studio” environment of the cabin. If you’ve been in any car where this is the case, such as a Porsche or Mercedes using Burmester audio, you know that the experience is without parallel—unless you happen to have a $300,000 home audio system.
GM Officials Underlined A Distinction
While you do need an Apple Music account, GM went out of their way today to mention that OnStar Basics, which includes automatic crash detection, voice assistance and navigation as well as remote unlocking all comes free for eight years. Both Lincoln and Volvo, as examples, offer some of these features, including streaming, but these are four-year packages when you purchase a new car.
The Apple In The Room
While some carmakers are getting more deeply enmeshed with Apple, including the Hyundai Group deciding to use CarPlay Ultra, which would replace instrumentation with an Apple-designed skin, General Motors has publicly and clearly stated their future won’t include CarPlay. For the moment, that’s solely in their EVs, but at least for now, the road map forward will ditch phone-based apps onboard.
TopSpeed’s Take
You can’t help but wonder if GM’s plan all along has been to reincorporate partners into their own OS while they sail away (at a glacial pace) from phone-based systems. They have some company, but bit players like Polestar (which finally relented) and Rivian (which has yet to) don’t seem like ideal role models. And then there’s Tesla. That company has been a pioneer at charging thousands extra for digital features, but it’s not fairing so well these days. Like we’re seeing in the realignment and tussles over video content providers and their affiliated studios, in-car digitization and the battle over this turf is only likely to continue. That said, we have experienced Apple Music using Dolby Atmos—and other car-specific, digitally engineered sound systems—and the experience is game-changing. So GM’s play is smart. And, almost for certain, other carmakers are going to follow GM’s lead.
Source: Digital Music News
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