Waze’s new audio player supports Pandora, Stitcher and more

Drivers can now listen to their favorite tunes without having to leave the Waze navigation app.

This week, Waze added an audio player to its crowdsourced navigation app that aims to deliver music, podcasts and other content from seven major platforms, including Pandora, Deezer, iHeartRadio, NPR, Scribd, Stitcher and TuneIn. These partners have integrated their audio experience into Waze by using a new suite of developer tools, called the Waze Audio Kit.

A beta version of its Android and iOS apps that include the embedded audio player, called Waze Audio Player, was released this week to members of Waze’s beta community. Waze Audio Player will begin rolling out to all Waze users in the coming weeks, the company said.

The decision to bring audio into the popular navigation app was inspired by the positive feedback the company received after its first audio integration with Spotify that launched in March 2017, Waze said.

Here’s how it will work. Once users open Waze, the app will detect any of the supported music apps installed on their smartphones. Users can tap the music note icon to select their audio app within Waze. To switch from one audio app to another — say from NPR to iHeartRadio — users tap the music note icon again and then hit “change app.”

Users will be able to control whichever content they’re listening to using forward, backward and pause icons. They’ll also be able to save content to a library.