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Apparently, they’ve said all they’re going to say - for now. We reached out to Spotify’s PR team to see if there was anything more they were willing to share about Car Thing, but no dice. Other moves, like creating ad formats that let users interact with their voice instead of needing to use their phones, and a similar mechanism that lets podcast listeners leave voice feedback for creators, all point to a future in which voice, whether its the voice of its creators or listeners, will be central to Spotify’s products. With major acquisitions in the podcasting space and comments made during a recent quarterly earnings report by its CEO, Daniel Ek, Spotify has indicated in no uncertain terms that it sees podcasting as a very important part of its long-term strategy for growth as well as user retention. Interestingly from an in-car point of view, Spotify specifically called out curiosity about people’s podcast habits, a revelation that shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following the company’s activities as of late.

It might not be a one-off either, as Spotify has coyly suggested that we might soon start to hear rumors of a “Home Thing,” which doesn’t require much guesswork to figure out what it’s designed to do. So it will be distributing Car Thing to a limited number of its Premium subscribers and only in the U.S., to find out exactly what’s going on when listeners are on the road.Ĭar Thing is both voice-activated and judging from the company’s artfully colored render, will have a few buttons, too. In a blog post about the device, the company says it is, “trying to learn more about people’s listening habits and preferences,” specifically while they’re in the car. Instead, Car Thing is apparently Spotify’s in-car equivalent of the old Nielsen’s TV ratings boxes that used to track people’s TV watching habits. In a frustrating development, it turns out that Spotify’s first device, which it is calling “Car Thing,” isn’t a consumer gadget in the traditional sense, and the company has no plans to sell it. We’ve been following rumors for months now that all said that Spotify would soon launch some kind of in-car device.