According to D

This is article highlights some pretty cool stuff that Ford is doing.  Apparently, you’ll now be able to download popular apps to the MyFord Touch system.

This is a big step in getting internet radio into cars, and as I recall, this is the first car that will allow you to do it through the car itself instead of hooking up an iPhone.

It won’t be long before all cars have internet radio, especially with the iPad- check out this video of an iPad car installation: http://mashable.com/2010/04/05/ipad-car-install/.  While I don’t think we’ll be seeing many of these in the near future since you’ll be losing a ton of use out of the iPad, I think that if we combine what they’re doing in this video with what Ford is doing, we’ll kind of see the future.

In five years or so, I expect each one of us to have a single OS that we use, and we’ll be able to access it through different mechanisms: TV, Computer, iPad, Car dash.  They’ll all be seamlessly connected making our media intake much quicker and more efficient.

That’s a little time away, however.  Until then,  I’d like to take a moment to think about what is going on with the radio industry.  With the shift to bringing radio internet to cars, what will happen to traditional radio?  Satellite radio?

I kind of see them fading away.  Although there is an iHeartRadio app, on which you can find over 750 live streaming radio stations, I don’t personally know anyone who uses it.  The great features about services like Pandora and Grooveshark are that the station is personalized, and  advertisements are virtually non-existent.  That makes this service much more attractive in my eyes.

What do we lose? Well, I’m a huge Q104.3 fan (New York’s Classic Rock).  However, I wasn’t always.  I started listening to classic rock a few years ago, when I finally stopped listening to all the garbage that fills the radio waves today.  My classic rock experience wouldn’t be the same, however, without the likes of Ken Dashow and the other DJ’s doing their thing at Q104.3.  They’ve added so much personality to the station and taught me so much about music that I never could have learned using a service like Pandora.

Is that enough? I don’t know if that is enough to sustain the traditional radio model.  I hope it is, because I’d love to have my choice between Pandora or traditional radio.

What does that mean for the business model?  Either way, traditional radio’s business model is going to have to change.  There is absolutely no way I could put up with five minute commercial breaks when I know I can switch over to Pandora, and the greatest amount of time I would have to wait it about 30 seconds.  One thing is for sure: their revenue model is going to have to change, perhaps to resemble the internet radio sites.  Any, if people know that there won’t be any commercials, maybe they’ll stick around to hear our favorite radio personalities.

We’ll have to wait to see what happens, but Ford’s inclusion of these apps is a big push for internet radio to take over the industry.