Spotify to begin testing ‘Car Thing’ voice assistant auto accessory soon
Spotify — a popular music streaming service — is making its foray into hardware, with an auto accessory, dubbed Car Thing. The company has announced that it will start testing the device next week with a small group of Spotify Premium users in the US. Essentially, the Car Thing is an accessory made by Spotify, to learn people’s listening habits and preferences, like the music and podcast they listen to while driving.
The all-new auto accessory features a circular display with four touch-sensitive control buttons and Bluetooth. It plugs into the car’s cigarette lighter port and connects to the car and phone over Bluetooth. Similar to voice assistants like Google Assistant and Siri, Car Thing is also capable of responding to user commands to perform tasks. However, the company has not revealed or demoed the kind of tasks that can be performed using the assistant. Apparently, Spotify does not have any plans to roll-out the product to the public. And as of now, it has invited a small group of Spotify Premium users in the US to test out the device.
According to The Verge, the Car Thing might now be the only product coming from the music-streaming giant. As, according to some of its sources, the company has also trademarked the names ‘Voice Thing’ and ‘Home Thing’, which suggest that it might be interested in creating a few other devices as well.
Spotify has mentioned more details about the Latest Test on its blog. According to which, it is “trying to learn more about people’s listening habits and preferences to help create an unparalleled experience for our users.”
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Here are the five points from Spotify’s blog post that it used to summarise the Latest Test-
- We’re testing how people listen in the car through a voice-controlled music and podcast device called “Car Thing.”
- While we know there has been some speculation about our future plans, Car Thing was developed to help us learn more about how people listen to music and podcasts. Our focus remains on becoming the world’s number one audio platform — not on creating hardware.
- The test will be done in the US only, with a small group of invited Spotify Premium users.
- We might do similar voice-specific tests in the future, so don’t be surprised if you hear about “Voice Thing” and “Home Thing.”
- We don’t have any current plans to make this specific device available to consumers, but the learnings from our test will dictate how we develop experiences everywhere you listen.
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