Spotify launches hands-free dashboard accessory ‘Car Thing’

Spotify’s Car Thing, the dashboard accessory that controls Spotify on your phone, is presently broadly accessible to purchase in the US, the organization declared today. The accessory was first made available free of charge as part of an invite-only limited release last April, and in October, Spotify opened up a waitlist for individuals to get their hands on the gadget. Presently, Car Thing is going on general sale for $89.99 – a $10 increment over the advertised cost in October.

Spotify’s Car Thing is a dash-mounted gadget that allows you to control your Spotify music in-car with a negligible interruption from the street. Beforehand available only by invitation, the Car Thing is presently accessible for any individual who wants to get one in the US. Spotify is selling the Car Thing directly on its website for $90.

Spotify is entering the hardware market with Car Thing, a smart music player intended to sit on your dashboard. The organization released Car Thing to a limited number of subscribers in October, and it declared on Tuesday that anybody can purchase the gadget for $90-but you want a Spotify Premium subscription to use it. Spotify Premium at present costs $10 per month for people, with plans going up to $16 per month for six accounts. Car Thing likewise requires a connection with your phone for mobile data or Wi-Fi.

Car Thing is intended to offer a more advantageous method for controlling Spotify while driving. It doesn’t have a speaker, and it doesn’t have its own data connection, so it’s basically a Spotify remote that can output to your car’s speakers. It offers a combination of physical controls, a touchscreen, and voice controls through Spotify’s own “Hey Spotify” assistant, and it requires both a Spotify Premium subscription and a phone with a data connection to function.

As well as affirming a general launch for the gadget, Spotify says it’s attempting to bring a night mode and a new “add to queue” voice command to the gadget with future updates.

The gadget is intended to give a method for listening to Spotify in your car without the need to look down at your phone or manage inconvenient built-in car interfaces, which can be hazardous to use on the road. A 12 V power adapter connects with Car Thing and your vehicle’s assistant electrical plug, and the gadget then, at that point, interfaces with your phone through Bluetooth. At last, you interface the gadget to your car stereo via AUX, Bluetooth, or USB. The player additionally supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Voice control is the gadget’s most prominent feature; you can control Car Thing by saying, “Hey Spotify,” followed by a command, like “shuffle my liked songs.” The system doesn’t yet support a few activities, such as adding songs or podcasts to your queue, however, Spotify is working on adding more commands.

Still, Car Thing can bring hands-free media control to cars lacking the feature. Obviously, cell phones can likewise enable voice control, however, individuals who aren’t enthused about having their phone constantly listening may think about involving the feature through a dedicated gadget in their car.

Car Thing has near-field and mid-field microphones with adaptive interference cancellation to help block out the sounds of cars driving and honking. The gadget has a 4-inch touchscreen, a press-in rotary knob for scrolling, and a small “back” button south of that.

$89.99 gets you the Car Thing itself, as well as mounting hardware and a charging cable to plug it into your car’s USB socket (on the off chance that it has one) or an included 12V adapter. The gadget doesn’t have a rechargeable battery, so it should be plugged continually for power. The Car Thing interfaces with a phone through Bluetooth, and afterward you can either run an auxiliary cable between the Car Thing and your vehicle or have your phone associated with your car through Bluetooth.

In its testing, Spotify says it observed individuals with Car Thing listened to the service more while in their cars and that it made the process simpler for them. However, when Ashley Carman gave the gadget out last year, she observed it was anything but significantly better than her current solution of having her phone mounted to her dashboard.

Four physical buttons on top of the gadget are suggestive of traditional radio controls, with presets for your choice of a playlist, podcast, news program, artist, or album. A fifth button raises the settings menu or mutes audio. The gadget has a unibody design with “matte-textured rubber details” to “make it easy to navigate,” Spotify says.

Spotify says that it’s planning updates for the gadget in light of feedback from its initial limited release. These incorporate a Night Mode that dims the screen during evening drives.

Spotify’s Car Thing represents the music streaming service’s first foray into hardware. The organization is at present dealing with the difficulties of incorporating podcast distribution into its business model.