Spotify rolls out its first physical product for your car — but don’t call it a hardware biz
![Blasting Billie Eilish on the Car Thing [Jose Luis Pelaez Inc. / Digital Vision via Getty Images]](https://cdn.robinhood.com/static_content/mwphzyq69oso/en-US/assets/files/mWyb7tBbhn5th5CjQzlCn_1_GettyImages-bldjp022005_256.jpg)
Blasting “Good 4 U” in your ’97 Civic… Spotify’s Car Thing is now a real thing. Its first physical product — it’s literally called Car Thing — went on sale in the US yesterday after a limited release last April, when 2M people joined the waitlist. The $90 dash-mounted gadget is meant for cars without infotainment screens, and lets drivers control their Spotify tunes via touchscreen or voice control: It works only with Spotify Premium and requires a smartphone with Bluetooth or an aux cord.
Hard(ware) right turn… Spotify has twice as many listeners as its closest streaming rival (Apple). Now it joins a long list of tech companies that’ve attempted to make the jump from software to hardware. Those efforts have had mixed results:
- Hail Mary hardware projects like Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player and Google Glass AR glasses were discontinued after falling flat with consumers.
- But connected gadgets like Amazon’s Kindle and Google’s Home Speakers succeeded by offering simple integrations with their parent companies’ other products and services.
Not all products are designed to be huge sellers… Since most new cars come with either Apple’s CarPlay or Google’s Android Auto preinstalled, Spotify is launching a product into a market that’s shrinking, not expanding. And it knows that. Car Thing isn’t meant to create long-term revenue — it’s meant to build loyalty and encourage more Premium listening at home, at work, and on the road now. Looking ahead, Spotify says it's focused on audio, not hardware. Its execs have even described Car Thing as a “means to an end.”