They leveraged what each streaming service already provides on the web and made it available in the car.įor audio, it's a similar concept, except Tesla wants to provide a consistent user interface regardless if you're listening to TuneIn, SiriusXM or Spotify. When Tesla rolled out their video streaming services in Tesla Theater, they took the web route and loaded the streaming service’s website in a Chromeless browser, creating almost zero development for the Tesla team. A web-based solution doesn’t require the end user to download a software update either, so Tesla can fix any issues on the fly. Web applications also have the advantage of downloading new data when a user connects, so it’s much easier to roll out new features, updates and bug fixes. The APIs, streaming protocols and all the details needed are already available in these web apps and Tesla just needs to adapt the application to work with their user interface. Since most streaming services like YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, SiriusXM and many others already offer web-based players, adapting these to work in Tesla's web player is a much easier process than porting the music service to work in another language. The user interface is quicker to build and changes can also be implemented faster. While web apps aren't a good choice for intensive tasks, a simple audio player could be.ĭeveloping web software is usually much quicker and easier when compared to developing in a native language such as C or C++. The answer is development time and ease of updating.

So the question is why move to an HTML-based player when Tesla already has a working audio player and there are downsides to web-based apps, such as reduced performance? While Apple Music is the only audio service leveraging Chromium for its interface, we believe Tesla will move all their music services to leverage this new player. The HTML-based audio player interface is almost identical to the native audio player in terms of design and behavior except for some small design changes. Apple Music appears to be the only music service utilizing the new player at this moment, but it appears that Tesla is transitioning Spotify to their web-based player as well.

Amazon music player app