Spotify Car Thing Explained: What Is It, Price, & Release

After dominating the world of music streaming, Spotify is now launching its first hardware release with Car Thing — an accessory that allows users to safely control their Spotify listening while in the car. Car Thing is an odd device designed with a very specific use case in mind, but for regular Spotify users that spend a lot of time on the road, it looks to have a lot of potential.

Leading up to this official announcement, Car Thing was something Spotify had been working on for a long time. The device was first leaked back in April 2018, with product renders showcasing a circular, monochrome display with two playback buttons. Then, in May 2019, Spotify officially announced its Car Thing experiment. The device looked much more complete than the first leaked render from 2018, with Car Thing now featuring a color display and multiple buttons for controlling music playback. During all of that time, however, Car Thing was never released as a consumer product. Fast forward to April 2021, and Spotify Car Thing is finally a reality — kind of.

First of all, what exactly is Spotify Car Thing? The final product looks much different from its previous iterations, featuring a rectangular body with a touchscreen display, four preset buttons, a rotating navigation dial, and buttons to go back and mute/open settings. The display measures at 4-inches, the whole thing is 4.6-inches long and 0.7-inches wide, and it needs to be connected to a car via Bluetooth, a USB outlet, or AUX cable to sync up with the vehicle’s speakers. Spotify says Car Thing also needs to be connected to the user’s phone via Bluetooth to actually power the Spotify interface that it shows (think of Car Thing as a sort of remote to control the Spotify app from the phone). Once everything is all set up and ready to go, Car Thing makes it easier and safer to use Spotify while behind the wheel. In addition to controlling music playback via the touchscreen and buttons, there are also built-in microphones that allow for ‘Hey Spotify’ voice commands.

How Much Spotify Car Thing Costs

Spotify Car Thing has an “anticipated retail price” of $79.99, but Spotify users can get it for free for a limited time by signing up for a waitlist. They’ll still need to pay shipping and handling if chosen, but that brings the cost of Car Thing down to just $6.99. It’s unclear when exactly Spotify Car Thing will be available for a broader audience, but anyone interested can sign up right now.

As for whether or not Spotify Car Thing will be a hit, that remains to be seen. This is a very niche product by design. It’s pretty redundant for anyone with a newer car with a good touchscreen interface (such as Android Auto or Apple CarPlay), meaning that Car Thing is only beneficial for folks who have an older vehicle without a good in-car Spotify experience already. Not to mention, Spotify Car Thing can only be used by people that pay for Spotify Premium.

That leaves a fairly narrow audience for Spotify Car Thing, but as someone that does have an older car and pays for Spotify Premium, Car Thing looks pretty fantastic. It’s designed to do one thing and nothing else, and based on what Spotify has shown off so far, it looks to do that one thing — controlling Spotify — incredibly well. Whether Car Thing is a one-off from Spotify or opens the door to other possible hardware releases, this is a move from the company that’s worth paying attention to.

Source: Spotify

About The Author

Joe Maring
(1559 Articles Published)

Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he’s happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.

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