Photo: Spotify
As one of the world’s largest music streaming services, Spotify is already offering dedicated apps for pretty much every platform out there, including those running in the car.
As a result, no matter if the multimedia experience behind the wheel is powered by your mobile device, Android Auto, CarPlay, or Android Automotive, a Spotify app is there to make sure you get easy access to your favorite tunes.
Five months ago, however, Spotify tried to step into the hardware market as well with the intuitively-called Car Thing.
As anyone can figure out from its name, Car Thing is a device aimed at, well, cars, making it possible for users to listen to music via their mobile devices and a Bluetooth connection.
Spotify seemed very committed to making Car Thing a hit, and a few months ago, it even announced the general availability of the device, allowing any customer in the United States to buy it for $89.99.
Fast forward to this week, and here’s Spotify confirming in its latest quarterly earnings report that Car Thing is dead. That’s right, only five months after it launched the device with much fanfare and even released the device publicly, letting customers spend nearly a hundred bucks on it, Spotify is now pulling Car Thing once and for all.
In a statement, Spotify tries to explain that Car Thing was supposed to be just an experiment – well, this probably doesn’t sit well with customers who actually paid for it. However, the company claims things like the product demand and the supply chain issues made it very clear that Car Thing can’t be a long-term project.
This most likely means that few people actually wanted to buy Car Thing, and here’s why the company is giving up on it in the first place.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear how long the devices already on the market will continue to work. However, what’s certain is that they have an uncertain long-term future, and most likely, no new updates would be released.
Five months ago, however, Spotify tried to step into the hardware market as well with the intuitively-called Car Thing.
As anyone can figure out from its name, Car Thing is a device aimed at, well, cars, making it possible for users to listen to music via their mobile devices and a Bluetooth connection.
Spotify seemed very committed to making Car Thing a hit, and a few months ago, it even announced the general availability of the device, allowing any customer in the United States to buy it for $89.99.
Fast forward to this week, and here’s Spotify confirming in its latest quarterly earnings report that Car Thing is dead. That’s right, only five months after it launched the device with much fanfare and even released the device publicly, letting customers spend nearly a hundred bucks on it, Spotify is now pulling Car Thing once and for all.
In a statement, Spotify tries to explain that Car Thing was supposed to be just an experiment – well, this probably doesn’t sit well with customers who actually paid for it. However, the company claims things like the product demand and the supply chain issues made it very clear that Car Thing can’t be a long-term project.
This most likely means that few people actually wanted to buy Car Thing, and here’s why the company is giving up on it in the first place.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear how long the devices already on the market will continue to work. However, what’s certain is that they have an uncertain long-term future, and most likely, no new updates would be released.
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