For many of you who are still hoping that it’s just a flick or some late April Fool’s prank, let’s break the bubble, that no it’s not! The giant music streaming service has released a new gadget which is a glorified Bluetooth remote to be used with your phone. But the rising concern is whether or not the crowd will take to it.
The latest Spotify gadget has been built for the consumer’s phone and is named ‘Car Thing’. After years of processing and technological development, it seems that the aggressive yet ordinary place holder is here to stay. But the chosen name for the device is amusedly useful. How? Well, on one hand, the company can now finally claim itself as quirky, somewhat like- We are fun and cool, wink wink! And, on the other hand, it has smartly sidestepped the question about what the device does, which is the ‘Car Thing’. The message has been so brilliantly designated that it has the power to make Spotify whatever it intends to be, now and tomorrow!
So, for all those curious souls who are constantly digging at what precisely is this Car Thing? On April 13, Spotify officially announced that ‘Car Thing’ is a Spotify controller that can be easily placed in your car. The device features a touch screen, four-inch-long, four microphones that can be used to deliver voice commands, and a dial for menu navigation. The user can power it with a USB and connect it with their phones over Bluetooth.
They can then connect the phone to the car stereo in whatever way they have been doing so far, which could be Bluetooth, USB, or Aux input. Additionally, the user needs a Spotify Premium account to use this fancy ‘Car Thing’. And, for now, it’s a limited release that is only available for free to selected users who sign up to receive it and shall have to pay the shipping charges. In case the device gets a wide release in the future, it will retail for $80.
A common question: how is this different from simply mounting your phone on the dash?
Well, unlike other infotainment dashboards that remain enabled with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, which gives access to other services, and maps, this device does only one thing that is Play Spotify.
Going with the appearance, the ‘Car Thing’ can be summed up as an attractive remote control for an app that the user can effortlessly control from the phone but only that they have to plugin.
Now, speaking of the usefulness, the ‘Car Thing’ is here to prove beneficial for the drivers of older cars that go without dashboard systems. The older Spotify users who prefer simplicity or are music fans who are tired of swapping between the navigation apps and Spotify while being in the driver’s seat, this device is going to be a blessing.
But in recent times, smartphone-compatible dashboards have become a constant in many modern cars and according to the latest reports, almost 82% of the new cars that were sold in 2019 came attached with a touch screen. So why it is that Spotify has spent so much time and effort on a product that for many users would prove to be unnecessary?
The answer to which is that step is perhaps a major part of Spotify VP of PR which Dustee Jenkins calls a larger ubiquity strategy. The availability of a device like ‘Car Thing’ will encourage more and more people to browse through Spotify for their podcasts, music, and other audio, and would instigate the current subscribers to use it more. Furthermore, the device would draw in potential listeners from the terrestrial radios, which have somehow taken a sharp dive during the pandemic.
Having radio in the car is one of the most common ways in which the audience consumes music and Spotify’s latest investment in the live audio market makes it transparent that they want it all.
The release of physical hardware gives Spotify a completely new hold in the marketplace that it previously didn’t have and it shall also help the company gain and retain new subscriptions in the coming years.
The other answer as to why Spotify took such a step lies in the company’s patent filings. In the past few months, copyright was approved that stated Spotify is intending to use its proprietary tech to switch audio from the users’ microphones into metadata points like gender, age, emotional state, accent, or even how many people the user is with as a means to serve them better music recommendations.
As of now, the Spotify app already provides the option to enable the always-on assistant for phone, but the new ‘Car Thing’ will offer four mics into the user’s car, the place that reportedly the Americans most frequently tune into their favorite music.
The Verge has reported that the device comes with a digital setting that allows disabling the microphone, even though a built-in privacy switch seems to be lacking. It shall also enable to share of voice data with the advertising partners and as per Spotify’s privacy policy, in case the need arises then it can be used to comply with the legal obligations and other law enforcement requests.
With this debut ‘Car Thing’, Spotify is surely making a bet for which then the user is ready to sacrifice their privacy just for the mere sake of convenience. The company is also copying from the playbooks of Amazon and Google who had previously got their respective smart speaker lines, Alexa, and Nest into more homes in part through means of giveaways that includes partnerships with Spotify.
And, now Spotify bahs embarked on the same route with this initial restricted release, driving to adapt the users to the buzzing concept of ‘Car Thing’ with a promise of giving a free unit. But is anything in life truly free? Guess we just have to wait to figure it out!