The Car Stereo Wants Your Login

Getting into the car used to come with a small decision: radio, tape, or CD?

The radio was easiest. Turn the knob, pass through a burst of static and half a weather report, and stop when you heard something worth listening to. If the song was terrible, you kept turning. The car did not ask why.

A tape meant digging through a plastic case that never stayed organized. A CD might be in its case, or it might be in a different case, or it might be under the passenger seat collecting whatever lives under passenger seats. Then you pushed it in and waited to see whether you’d chosen well.

None of this was perfect. Stations faded. Tapes needed rewinding. A favorite CD could develop a skip right through the best part of the song. Still, once you found the music, the stereo played it. That was more or less the entire arrangement.

Now you can get into a car and have an enormous music library waiting on the dashboard. No case full of discs. No song disappearing when you drive out of range. That part is pretty good.

But consider the setup for a Spotify app available in certain Audi vehicles. You find the app in the car, install it, and sign in using your phone. After that, it can play without the phone connected.

That last bit is presented as the convenient part, and it is. But first, your phone has to introduce you to your car stereo. We used to put music in the dashboard. Now we have to make sure the dashboard knows whose music it is.

And this is one version of listening, not the only way to play a song in a car. You can still use the radio. Which makes the contrast stranger. The simple option is sitting right there, while the more capable option may need you to stop and remember a password before you leave the driveway.

A CD under the seat could be a pain. You’d have to reach down, find the right case, discover the wrong disc inside it, and start over. The modern version keeps the songs neatly out of sight. It also keeps them behind an account.

The old stereo sometimes made you work to find something to play. The new one can find almost anything. First it has to find you.