"Car Thing" installed on the dashboard
On February 22nd (US time), Swedish Spotify launched its first hardware product, the Car Thing, in the United States. Similar to the Spotify remote control installed on the dashboard of a car, it costs $89.99 (about 10, 000 yen). Plans for a listing outside the United States have not yet been determined. Adapters installed on dashboards and power cables connected to cigar sockets are not used separately, but require auxiliary service Spotify Premium accounts and iOS or Android devices equipped with Spotify applications. In addition, because there is no battery, it needs to be supplied with electricity from cigar sockets and so on. Connected to a terminal equipped with a Spotify application via Bluetooth, music selection, playback and pause can be performed through the physical controller and touch screen of the "remote control" instead of the terminal screen through its own voice assistant (Hey Spotify). Spotify released Car Thing in May 2019 and began to implement the invitation beta test in April last year. In this test, users began to listen to Spotify in the car than before, the company said. The corresponding models of Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto in the United States do not seem to be needed, but there seems to be still demand for old vehicles.
