Smart cockpit, as one of the important development branches in the field of automobile intelligence, is an important manifestation of the value of future smart cars. At present, major domestic and overseas car companies have deployed smart cockpit systems, and music playback is their current concern. One of the key points. How to help car companies improve their smart cockpits has also become a difficult problem facing all music platforms. In this regard, we have sorted out 5 core questions to discuss the significance and value of music platforms in car companies’ smart cockpits. Kuwo Music, which is currently outstanding in the industry, takes as an example to further explain how the music platform can smoothly "get on the car" and help make the car intelligent.
Q1: What role will the in-car music platform play in the smart cockpit?
Smart cockpit is a new opportunity for car companies to create brand and product differentiation in the fierce market competition. In the "2021 China Automobile Cockpit Intelligent Development Market Demand Research Report" by EO Think Tank, a smart cockpit is defined as a car cockpit that is equipped with a central control color screen, intelligent voice and OTA upgrade functions. Judging from the phased analysis results, as of October, among China's newly released passenger car models (including facelifts) in 2021, the penetration rate of smart cockpits reached 50.6%. Among them, the penetration rate of the central control color screen is as high as 97.9%, and it has become a standard feature of newly released models (including facelifts).
Nowadays, "software-defined cars" have become common knowledge in the industry. Car companies optimize the functions and applications in the cockpit through OTA upgrades, thereby improving the competitiveness of the vehicle's entire life cycle, and the OTA upgrade function Mounting has become the most important manifestation of the development of cockpit intelligence. The OTA penetration rate of newly released passenger car models (including facelifts) in 2021 is as high as 50.9%. EO Think Tank believes that the OTA upgrade function will become a standard feature of car cockpits in the future, and the new commercial model of "pre-embedded hardware + software subscription service" will gradually be implemented through the increase in OTA deployment rate.
It is not difficult to see from this that at a macro level, major car companies are building a huge hardware ecological network for users through smart cockpits to meet the latter's diversified expectations and needs for smart cockpits. . However, at the micro level, car companies cannot quickly and flexibly respond to market demand and provide the "end-to-end" applications and services that users really need. This provides the existence of in-car music platforms at the software level - music playback is It is an indispensable demand in driving scenarios, and using music as a link to connect cars and users is also the operating rule that major car companies have always pursued. From this, we can see that with Kuwo Music, Car music platforms represented by QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music have appeared in the car systems of major car companies.
Q2: What is the current development status of major in-car music platforms?
Before 2012, car owners could only use their mobile phones to connect to the car stereo to listen to music online in the car. If they needed to pause, change songs, etc., they had to do so on the mobile terminal. Since 2012, online music platforms represented by Kuwo Music have begun to develop in-vehicle products, using the in-vehicle system's own network to play online music in two main ways: account cloud synchronization list and mobile phone wired/wireless transmission of playlists. , and supports controlling music through the car system through voice, steering wheel buttons and other methods. After the basic model of in-car music was gradually established, each platform began to optimize product experience and explore new functions, such as adding new entertainment models such as smart song recommendations, live broadcasts, and karaoke.
In this regard, iiMedia Research (iiMedia Research) analyzed the current Kuwo Music, Kugou Music, QQ Music, and NetEase Cloud Music in the "Special Research Report on Analysis of the Application Value of China's Online Music Car Terminal in 2021" and other mainstream car music platforms were analyzed.
These four major mainstream platforms have accumulated a wide user base on both PC and mobile terminals, and have rich song copyright resources. However, in contrast, KuWo Music officially established the automotive division in 2016 , a pioneer in the field of in-car music, has reached cooperation with more than 60 car companies, with a market share of over 80%, a large number of active users, and ranks first in the industry.
Because Kuwo Music has outstanding service experience and product layout in the car terminal, and also has a professional operation team, it can make rapid and targeted adjustments to the needs of car companies, which is more suitable for building smart cockpits. Flexible and mature service capabilities. So in the following cases, we will give priority to Kuwo Music as an example.
Q3: When moving from the mobile terminal to the car terminal, what aspects must not be ignored?
Many users who are accustomed to mobile music apps are not adaptable to the operation of their car-side platforms, which leads many users to prefer to use Bluetooth to connect to the car system rather than directly operate the car music platform - —The reason is that the platform failed to fully consider the scene usage patterns of in-vehicle users and rigidly transplanted the functions of the mobile terminal to the in-vehicle terminal.
The design logic of the mobile terminal and the car terminal are different. This is a core issue that cannot be ignored by all major in-car music platforms with mobile terminals as the mainstream.
In terms of product design, developers of in-vehicle music platforms should gain insight into user usage habits, conduct in-depth analysis of needs, and create highly compatible, simple and easy-to-use products on the in-vehicle end; in addition, they also need to abandon the cumbersome functions of PC and mobile terminals. , actively cooperate with car companies' needs for smart cockpit functions such as voice control and recognition, and add corresponding functions to make the interactive experience in vehicle scenarios smoother.
Here is the cooperation between Audi and Kuwo Music as an example. As the first in-depth partner of Audi's Internet of Vehicles entertainment plan, Kuwo Music has joined forces to create a smart and connected digital human-computer interaction cockpit for car owners, providing a new human-computer interaction experience like a smartphone. According to media reports, the data algorithm intelligence technology provided by Kuwo Music serves as a strong support, which can not only maintain the linkage between mobile phones and vehicles at all times, but also present more intuitive and intelligent in-vehicle information to car owners. It not only provides guarantee for driving safety, but also reduces the inconvenience for car owners. In addition to greatly improving the user experience, KuWo Music has gained a good reputation in the industry.
Q4: What differentiated services should the music platform provide to meet the needs of different car companies?
Car companies need to use smart cockpits to achieve their strategic needs for advanced intelligence. This means that there must be differences in development directions among car companies. Therefore, for music platforms, can they be targeted? It is particularly important to provide differentiated services according to the needs of different car companies - it is obvious that music platforms must first realize the importance of smart cockpits to the strategic development of car companies, rather than just defining themselves as traditional partners. In addition to establishing a professional operation team, the platform must be able to establish exclusive algorithms for major car companies, and at the same time refer to user usage habits to customize functions and content that are unique to car companies and popular with users, so as to truly achieve the goal of meeting the needs of every car and every car. People with different faces help car companies better understand and meet user needs and improve the smart cockpit experience.
Take the cooperation between Cadillac and Kuwo Music as an example. Positioned as a luxury brand, all Cadillac models have excellent experience in vehicle software, NVH and audio-visual hardware, especially the ANC active noise reduction function and BOSE high-fidelity sound system are the most popular; for Kuwo Music , how to realize 1+1>2 through software matching has become the most important issue. CUE, a mobile Internet experience for Cadillac models, has an OTA smart cloud update function, 100G/year lifetime free traffic, and customized and in-depth integration with various hardware. It has built-in massive high-quality audio resources to enhance the seamless connection between people, cars, and the cloud. The Internet can achieve optimal matching with hardware systems to create a more comfortable entertainment audio-visual experience for users.
Q5: How can music platforms use their unique advantages to support smart cockpits?
The philosophy of car companies is to serve users. Good user satisfaction helps create a healthy car company user ecosystem, which coincides with the concept of in-car music platforms. Therefore, for in-car music platforms, how to simultaneously share the advantages accumulated on the mobile side to the car side has become an important step for car companies to measure the value of the platform and improve the smart cockpit.
The biggest advantage of the music platform lies in the massive user and content resource advantages it has gained through years of operating mobile and PC terminals. Here again, we take KuWo Music, which currently has the highest market share in the car, as an example. Through cooperation with major music record companies, KuWo Music has more than 30 million tracks of music content services, a huge music library of audio audio, and a total number of record company signings. There are more than 200; it has a rich and comprehensive content matrix such as music, audio content, news information, children, video and live broadcast, vinyl and karaoke. In addition, relying on a large user base, KuWo Music can also make personalized recommendations for different users based on massive data analysis in the background - for car companies, this can obviously become a major plus point for smart cockpits and provide users with Provide a richer car ecology.
As one of the first major partners, Kuwo Music joins Huawei in the Hongmeng Car OS ecosystem, providing Huawei Hongmeng with a rich content library of "music + long audio", with lossless sound quality matching Hongmeng native High-definition media playback brings an excellent sensory experience. At the same time, it can accurately respond to voice control needs and free up users’ hands. Through Hongmeng distributed dispatch, users can also quickly switch between mobile phones and cars with one click. Kuwo Music has thus opened up all scenes of life, catered for every user's needs, and provided the ultimate solution in car scenarios: Kuwo Music's music FM, storytelling and cross talk, humanities and history, business and finance, children's channels, etc. can perfectly satisfy users Audiovisual needs. For this reason, Huawei recently awarded the honorary award of Best Partner of Smart Car Solutions in 2021 to Kuwo Music.
With the accelerated development of intelligence in the automotive field and the increase in the number of in-car music platforms, in-car audio entertainment will become a new battlefield for online music, and competition will become increasingly fierce. The explosion of this market also has As cars become a true "third living space", it is particularly important for car companies to choose which car-side music platform to cooperate with in the future.