Spotify Debuts “Car Thing,” Its First Consumer Gadget

For those who traveled in 2020, it was a year for road trips—which meant it was also a year for reluctantly handing over the music controls to your passenger.

Spotify wants to put that behind you. Yesterday, the company released its first-ever gadget: Car Thing. It’s a standalone screen with voice recognition and Bluetooth connectivity, designed to be mounted in your car as a “Spotify remote” of sorts.

• Car Thing is a limited “exploration,” meaning there’s a wait list to try it and no guarantee of a large-scale rollout.

The flip side: Saying, “Hey Spotify, play Dua Lipa,” can get you right to “New Rules,” but as Gizmodo reports, asking for rock duo “Xiu Xiu” will likely confuse the algorithm. It’s a problem with many smart assistants, and it doesn’t bode well for fringe or diverse artists.

Zoom out: This isn’t just about consumer comfort. Spotify has been looking into voice-powered ad interactions for about two years, and in January, the company was granted a patent for suggesting songs based on a user’s emotional state, gender, age, or accent. If that type of data is collected, it’ll likely be monetized, too.