Nevertheless, it shuttered the project and blamed several factors including product demand and supply chain issues. You control your car's audio via Car Thing using either "Hey Spotify" commands or the device's dial, screen, and preset buttons.Īs part of the company’s latest earnings release, Spotify revealed its decision to stop manufacturing Car Thing negatively impacted its gross margin and cost the company €31 million (around $32 million USD). It features a physical dial on the front along with a 4-inch touchscreen, four microphones at the top, and four preset buttons for controls. Many cars can access Spotify through Android Auto, Apple CarPlay or built-in apps - Car Thing was mainly helpful for people with older vehicles who wanted a music streaming upgrade, but didn't want to mount their phone.(Pocket-lint) - Spotify has quietly halted all manufacturing of Car Thing - its smart media player/dashboard accessory for cars - just five months after it finally made the product widely available for purchase.įirst announced in early 2021, Car Thing is designed to make it easier to control the Spotify streaming service on your phone from a car. It was effectively a Spotify player for cars that didn't have streaming functionality, and served as an informative experiment for the company. Spotify first shared word of Car Thing in 2019, but the finished product only reached the broader public early this year following several months of invitation-only sales. You can still buy the Car Thing for $50 (down from the usual $90) as of this writing. The company said it still "unlocked helpful learnings" from the device despite its brief history, and that the car remained an "important place" for audio. The withdrawal hurt Spotify's gross profits.Įxisting Car Thing units will still work as expected, Spotify said. In a statement to Engadget, a company spokesperson pinned the decision on "several factors" that included customer demand and supply chain problems. As part of its earnings data, the streaming service revealed that it stopped manufacturing its Car Thing player. Spotify's less-than-stellar quarter can be partly blamed on a decision to exit the hardware business.
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