Your automotive DJ: Five cars that play requests

Voice command systems in cars let you make phone calls, enter an address into navigation, and even request music by an artist or album name, all without taking your eyes off the road or your hands off the wheel. Voice command over music usually works with an iPhone or iPod cabled to the car, or a thumb drive plugged into the USB port. Most of the cars below rely on Gracenote’s music database to translate artist and album names into phonetics understandable by a voice recognition system. This database includes nicknames, so instead of saying “play Bruce Springsteen”, you can say “play The Boss”.

Here are five cars waiting to take your musical requests.

2013 Acura RDX A couple of years ago, Acura added a feature into its latest cars called Song By Voice. This system lets drivers request music by artist or album name. It is only included on cars with the navigation option, and only works for music stored on an iPod or iPhone plugged into the car, or on the car’s own hard drive, which includes space for locally stored music. Beyond the RDX, this feature is available on every Acura model, and some Honda models now, as well.

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Car Tech: An automotive blog from CNET