Xperi is integrating the radio stations of German public broadcaster ARD into DTS AutoStage, a global, in-vehicle hybrid radio platform to be commercialised around the world.
ARD’s radio stations, which reach more than 52 million people and represent more than 74% of all radio listening in Germany, will join the DTS AutoStage ecosystem free of charge. The platform features imagery, station logos, songs, artist and album information including personalisation features. DTS AutoStage also enables continued listening from local stations when the vehicle drives out of terrestrial broadcast range.
“As ARD, we are committed to providing our listeners with a progressive radio experience, and we are happy to partner with DTS AutoStage to achieve that goal,” said Alexander Sasse, Head of ARD Partner Management Audio and Voice. “We are looking forward to integrating with partners to help our broadcasters meet the needs of our listeners in the rapidly evolving connected vehicle landscape. Editorial control and user-simplification are important for us and we are happy that DTS AutoStage offers broadcasters those features while enabling a broad and consistent content delivery.”
The ARD/DTS AutoStage integration offers seamless, accurate and consistent delivery of all ARD broadcaster metadata in the vehicle dashboard, with the key benefit that the stations can manage their services, station information and streams all in one place, according to Xperi, adding that ARD and DTS AutoStage systems support broadcaster services to provide security, reliability and data compatibility with car companies.
“We are pleased to join with ARD to deliver the most innovative, visually-immersive in-vehicle entertainment experience to Germany’s owners of vehicles supporting the DTS AutoStage platform, such as the latest Mercedes-Benz S-Class, EQS and others,” said Gereon Joachim, VP, Automotive Sales and Strategy for EMEA, at Xperi.
Joe D’Angelo, SVP, Broadcast at Xperi, further stated, “We know that providing the digital dashboard’s best content and maintaining editorial control is critical to broadcasters, and our system has been designed to facilitate just this. Keeping radio front, centre and aggressively competitive in the dash is key to our platform. We know that this is exactly what consumers want, and we are proud to deliver it.”
DTS AutoStage, currently available in more than 85 million automobiles across 60 countries, offers content from over 80,000 radio stations, 100,000 plus broadcasts, more than 40 million tracks, four million albums and one million artist bios – aggregated, curated and personalised. DTS AutoStage already has content partnerships with major broadcast groups and aggregators including BBC, Bauer, Cumulus, Global Radio, NPO, Audacy, Beasley, Cox Media, radiko, Radio Maria and FM World.