I imagine the amount of cars on the road without integrated OSes represents much higher than those with.
This seems like an affordable way for Spotify to gather more subscribers or "lock" in those who already use Spotify by offering more incentive (as this is only for Premium customers)
As someone who drives a vehicle from 2013, I actually wouldn't mind having this! The big knob is nice :)
If we're actually considering the final non-promo price of $70 it feels like a pretty awful deal.
Depending on the car $100-$200 will get you a cheap Android headunit with Carplay emulation, which gives you a similar interface and everything else Carplay does.
This feels like a fun experiment, which is fine, but I don't think it makes sense as a normal product
TL;DR: Spotify made a sleek new gadget that presents a nice Spotify interface designed for mounting on a dashboard. It connects to your phone and uses its data plan. No maps or navigation. Just Spotify.
My reaction is that this isn't helpful for anyone who has a newer car that likely can connect to a phone via CarPlay, Android Auto, or Mirrorlink. And for those who don't, the device is sorely missing navigation. If my car couldn't connect to my phone, I'd be looking for a $20 plastic thing to mount my phone to my dash so I could get nav + music.
hot take is this came from some internal expectation that cars would more and more be using Apple/Android car OSes and so spotify app would be installed by users naturally -- but that hasn't panned out, so they have to create their own hardware to run the spotfiy app now. Gotta get that lockin from customers, on as many avenues as possible.
Not even, it's a BT controller for one app! That said, I do like the big knob, it's maddening how bad the physical controls (if there even are any) can be in modern cars.
So, Spotify is noticing that with streaming music every extra customer costs them extra money (in royalty payments). If you don’t turn a profit with 100.000 users, you won’t with 10.000.000 or 100.000.000 either.
So now they are trying to emulate Apple: stream music at a loss, but use that service to sell devices with healthy profit margins.
Except instead of a class leading technical marvel smartphone they bring out a...thing? For in your car? That already has Bluetooth?
This seems like an affordable way for Spotify to gather more subscribers or "lock" in those who already use Spotify by offering more incentive (as this is only for Premium customers)
As someone who drives a vehicle from 2013, I actually wouldn't mind having this! The big knob is nice :)
Depending on the car $100-$200 will get you a cheap Android headunit with Carplay emulation, which gives you a similar interface and everything else Carplay does.
This feels like a fun experiment, which is fine, but I don't think it makes sense as a normal product
My reaction is that this isn't helpful for anyone who has a newer car that likely can connect to a phone via CarPlay, Android Auto, or Mirrorlink. And for those who don't, the device is sorely missing navigation. If my car couldn't connect to my phone, I'd be looking for a $20 plastic thing to mount my phone to my dash so I could get nav + music.
For example, a cellular kindle can do anything.
This reality is why I still have an iPod in my car.
Doesn't work for every car, but works often enough that there are hundreds of products out there that do the same
So now they are trying to emulate Apple: stream music at a loss, but use that service to sell devices with healthy profit margins.
Except instead of a class leading technical marvel smartphone they bring out a...thing? For in your car? That already has Bluetooth?