After several months of rumors, it’s true: Spotify has created a voice-activated, in-car device that lets you listen to music and podcasts. Unfortunately, the Car Thing, as it is known, is not for sale. Instead, the company plans to give it to a limited set of users and use the resulting data to improve its services.
We’ve been following rumors for months now that all said that Spotify would soon launch some kind of in-car device. Turns out, those rumors were right. Well, sort of. 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.
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 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.
