![]() It has five preset buttons that you can use to save playlists, which makes it easy to get your favorite music going when you’re on the road. (WDIV) Using it in the carĬar Thing makes it pretty simple to pause music, change what you’re listening to or skip ahead. "I remember thinking: 'This is dead in the water,'" said Bajarin.Car Thing by Spotify. Veteran consumer electronics analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies said consumers are reluctant to add devices to their cars when 98% of new cars in the United States come with Apple's CarPlay already installed. Spotify CFO Paul Vogel told investors on Wednesday in addition to pricing challenges, inflation drove up component costs and a chip shortage made it harder to obtain parts. It also required free listeners to upgrade to premium subscription. However, Car Thing lacked the features of the other infotainment devices, from navigation to making calls, making it harder to justify the need for a device just for music. Spotify said its device was not designed to challenge these entertainment systems, but rather to provide an easier way for its users - especially those with older model cars - to listen to music or podcasts. ![]() While Spotify rules the music streaming niche, building a device for the car put it in a competitive arena with the likes of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto - both of which have the support of their own ecosystems of billions of devices. ![]() "When they created the iPod, they had people in the ecosystem," said Gillett, adding that launching a device without such an infrastructure "is extremely challenging." IDC research vice president Frank Gillett said he could not recall any content company making a successful transition to hardware.īy contrast, a hardware maker like Apple Inc was able to launch music and video services by building on its operating system and existing device relationship with consumers. It launched to mixed reviews, with critics raising privacy concerns. It also disappointed people with its phone that came out in 2013 in partnership with HTC. Meta Platforms Inc's Facebook plans to stop producing a consumer version of a videoconferencing device dubbed Portal, instead focusing on the business market. It announced a new type of Spectacles last year, featuring augmented reality. Snap Inc shelved its original Spectacles, $130 sunglasses that transmitted video directly to the SnapChat app, back in 2017. Spotify was not the first software company to seek to extend its relationship with users into the physical world through devices.Īlphabet Inc's Google was one of the early software companies to venture into hardware experiments with some major failures, including Google Glass - a wearable Android device resembling eyeglasses, which displayed information in the user's field of vision. After unveiling trials in May 2019, Spotify tested the device with a small group of people in April 2021, and then brought it to wider release in February this year. "So we decided to terminate this program in light of that."Ĭar Thing was a next-generation stereo designed to stream Spotify's music and podcasts from the user's phone through the car audio system. "We just can't get it to an attractive economical profile," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told Reuters. However, the company said it was unable to sell enough devices at a sufficiently high price to justify the investment. Spotify wrote down a $31 million investment in the device, which was aimed at increasing the number of users who listen to music or podcasts while in the car. In doing so, Spotify became the latest software technology company to stumble in an attempt to build hardware. The world's leading audio streaming service on Wednesday announced it would discontinue the device just five months after it became available to all users in the United States. LOS ANGELES/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Spotify Technology SA's Car Thing player is now a thing of the past.
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