Gracenote, the music metadata company, showed off a new tool for integrating AM/FM radio into Apple CarPlay during CES 2018 in Las Vegas. The vehicle infotainment dashboard doesn’t normally support terrestrial radio, but Gracenote’s app contains several features for playing local radio within that interface.
The app pulls from Gracenote’s indexing of both streaming stations and AM/FM stations. It also maintains a list of favorited stations and station browsing by location and genre alongside access to streaming audio. The app promises easy shifting between the broadcasts and the streaming.
The Gracenote app isn’t being released directly to consumers. The company is only providing the technology to its partners, meaning that automakers would choose to integrate the service on a case-by-case basis. It’s unclear whether Gracenote would ever make the app commercially available, but stay tuned for which other car companies link up with this app option.