[jpsimon]

As you may or may not know Spotify is awesome. What's even more awesome is using your steering wheel controls to switch between songs, and even display the current playing song on your iDrive screen.

I have a 2008 335xi coupe, with iDrive and the iPod cable. You can do this is 3 easy steps:

- sign up for spotify premium and download the free iPhone app
- jailbreak your iPhone
- on cydia, buy Music Controls Pro ($5.99)


Next/Previous steering wheel buttons work, and the current playing song displays as if it's a real song on your device.

[Elliott@DetailAddict]

sweet info! Wish i had an ipod integration from the factory

[r3t1cal]

Thank You! Now I can convince myself to buy the integration, I wasn't going to do it if I couldn't control spotify and siriusXM app.

Track information display with the MOST iteration on a non iDrive DMW Professional stereo, correct?

[jpsimon]

I assume it will work the same way on non-idrive models. Also, this jailbreak app will work with i think 40 other 3rd party apps in the same way (pandora, etc).

[JayKay335i]

Interesting......

Wonder how long until throttling your connection kicks in.

Dirty bastard phone companies.

[jpsimon]

We shall see. I still have an "unlimited" data plan through ATT. The nice thing about spotify is you can sync 3000+ songs for offline use... so if the throttling gets bad this is always an option

[egash]

Thanks for the info. I downloaded Music Controls Pro. However, I can't seem to get Pandora or Tunein Radio to display on drive screen or to change channels via the car controls. I've got it running through the iPod Y-Cable. I must be doing something wrong. Any help is appreciated.

[jpsimon]

go in to settings and make sure controls are turned "on" for those apps. I turned everything off except for spotify, that probably isn't necessary but i did it just so I knew there would be no cross-app issues.

Also, one thing that might help: Before you plug the phone in to the car double tap the home button and quit out of whatever audio program you plan on running. Only once you're connected to the car should you open the app. If I didn't do it like that I usually wouldn't gain control of the program

[Steveo]

Pics?

[egash]

jpsimon - thanks for your suggestions. I ended up rebooting my iPhone 4 and now I get the Pandora data on my iDrive and can select next song. Thanks again for sharing!

[cptcrunch]

I'm interested in seeing pictures of the screen

[jpsimon]

No point in posting pics. The current playing song just shows up in your "songs" list as if it were an actual song you loaded from iTunes (with the play timer).

[Frank2808]

Thanks for the tip! Tried this out at lunch.. a couple of notes:

When you plug the iPhone into the USB in the armrest you have to open spotify and start playing a playlist on your phone to get the audio to switch over from the iPod to Spotify.

The track name is on the iDrive screen but you cant browse your playlists/songs etc. I suppose that's expected.

Turning off the car and removing the iPhone works as expected. Music pauses when unplugged, resumes when plugged in again. The app did stop working at one point when pluggin/unplugging but just reopened spotify on the phone, hit play again, and it started working again.

[e90Luis]

Would this work if I don't have iDrive?

[jpsimon]

Originally Posted by e90Luis

Would this work if I don't have iDrive?

I don't see why not

[e90Luis]

Originally Posted by jpsimon

I don't see why not

I have my iPod cable coming in this week and I'll give this a try

[B33M3R]

Spotify streams over Bluetooth and you are able to change tracks using the steering wheel controls on post 2011 Combox cars. You don't get track names displayed though. Perhaps a future update will allow this

[e93black]

I downloaded pandora and the music control pro. Do I need y3 cable or just a regular iPhone white cable is fine?

[jpsimon]

hey guys, be careful about updating to the newest version of Spotify. I updated today and when launching a notice pops up "music controls pro doesn't support this version of spotify. Only bla bla bla version is supported." So that being said, steering wheel controls still work... but it doesn't display the playing song.

MCP seems to be pretty good about updating to support latest versions of things, so it's just a matter of time before it's fixed. Just be weary about updating.

[lucas.kent]

Man, maybe I should jailbreak my phone. I really hate that spotify didn't show up on my idrive.

[B33M3R]

Hi

How about Paul coming on here and seeing if he can write a new app or mod MCP specifically to integrate things like spotify into the idrive just like the iPod does. Eg. Display playlists, album art etc.? I know I'd pay more than $5.00 for an app like that. I'm sure a few others would also?

Untapped market??

[Brenzo]

It's still not compatible with Spotify and wondering if that is going to happen in any time in the future? Anyone know anything?