Your Uber or your Lyft arrives at your doorstep and you are ready to hit that concert venue. Or perhaps you are picking up a few friends along the way before you hit the local watering holes.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your ride could play your music playlist?
The beats and the grooves that you and your friends enjoy instead of the local programming or what ever music your Uber driver is in the mood for that evening.
Well, You can most definitely ask the driver to plug in your iPhone into the audio system of the vehicle.
But Wait…
What if you forget your device while exiting the vehicle? Now if the vehicle had access to a streaming music account, you could easily use your credentials and access your top countdown.
Then again, in circumstances where the user wishes to use the device for only a short period of time, however, authorizing the device to access the user’s account may be inconvenient or may present security risks.
What then..
Streaming music providers are thinking through these use cases. In a latest patent filed by Spotify, which was released this week, 9,402,093, the company has put forth a few ideas to circumnavigate these problems.
Spotify claims that it would be advantageous to provide systems and methods whereby a user can access and control media content on a device without having to enter account and/or security information to the device directly.
It plans on accomplishing this by integrating with the transportation service provider’s system. So in this case, when you make a reservation with Lyft or Uber, you can choose to pipe your music.
When the reservation is confirmed, your device id is passed onto the car rental folks who then associate a vehicle id with your device id. Once that information has been confirmed, a service such as Spotify can then provide access to the music associated with your credentials.
This is just another way Spotify is trying to think ahead of Apple’s ecosystem. When you cannot buy companies like Tidal, perhaps innovative thinking can be a strategic advantage. I wonder when Apple made the massive investment into China’s top ride sharing program, Didi Chuxing, if it has a trick or two for providing value to customers via synergies with the ride sharing program.
Only Time will tell.
Music is the strongest form of magic and how can you afford not to have these magical moments all the time? At least that;s the thinking on the part of Spotify for now.