

We have been very conscious about the challenging environment in the car.

However, Cedborg explained that this was all considered during the development process, saying: But cars can be a particularly noisy environment and aren't necessarily the best place to issue voice commands. One of the best things about Car Thing is the "Hey Spotify" voice commands that let you control Car Thing with your voice. Hey Spotify, Make Voice Commands Work in Cars
WHAT IS SPOTIFY CAR THING SOFTWARE
We are continuously evolving Car Thing and conducting regular software updates to ensure we provide the best possible listening experience for users. We also wanted to know if Spotify had any plans to keep on evolving the product over time, to which Cedborg told us:Ĭar Thing was created as a broad alternative for the majority of current cars on the road. The product we created is highly relevant to a large number of people, who are looking for ways to elevate their current in-car audio experience through new tools.

The average age of a car in the US is more than 12 years old, and the average age of individuals buying new cars is over 50 years old. But this only accounts for a small part of the market.

If you look at it from a wider car industry perspective, automotive entertainment systems are evolving fast for a limited number of cars - new car models. How Car Thing Caters to Owners of Older Cars The dial needed to become an effective control mechanism: providing easy rotation to scroll through a large amount of content quickly and easily.
WHAT IS SPOTIFY CAR THING DRIVER
When entering a car, the amount of opportunities for a driver to attentively engage with the interface is limited to a few occasions, so we needed a tactile interface offering easy navigation, where all different parts come together. It was obvious to us from the start that the context of in-car audio entertainment is complex, and that providing the right functionalities for the right moments were key. We then moved onto asking about the product design itself, and especially that oversized dial that can be used to quickly and easily scroll through lots of content. The end result is the Car Thing device we’ve recently made available to users in the US which makes it possible to enjoy Spotify’s vast catalog of audio content in a seamless way. We worked through a number of different solutions and prototypes, thinking through visual, touch and voice interaction entry points. We spent a lot of time working to better understand driver needs and the contextual differences that take place when looking for audio entertainment in the car. Just as we offer countless ways to listen to Spotify at home and on the go, we want to ensure we’re providing our listeners with numerous ways to listen to Spotify in a car setting. The car experience is an important one for Spotify, since a large portion of music listening happens in the car. Where did the idea come from and how easy was it to take Car Thing from being just an idea to a working product people would want to buy? He told us: We started at the beginning, asking Cedborg about Car Thing's origin story.
