Spotify Car Thing receives updates

Car Thing, a $90 device that went on sale in February, is Spotify’s entry into the device market. It offers one of a kind listening experience to the drivers and passengers through its multiple features designed for convenience. Yet, Spotify believes “there’s always room to make a great thing even better,” so the company introduced a new set of features geared toward easier execution of commands. The announcement came on Thursday with Spotify detailing four new features, allowing users to finally answer phone calls via Car Thing, queue songs and podcasts, and display and control other media.

“Bringing these highly anticipated new features to Car Thing is part of Spotify’s ongoing commitment to building a truly frictionless experience for users across devices—whether in the car, at home, or on the go,” Spotify writes in its post.

The highly requested feature among the ones released in this update, according to Spotify, is the device’s new ability to queue additional songs and podcasts. In its post, Spotify mentioned four different ways to access the feature, such as tapping the “Add to queue” icon next to the track in the tracklist or giving voice commands with the “Hey Spotify” prompt. You can also do it by viewing the queue via voice (“Hey Spotify, open my queue”) or pressing and holding the dial when in the “Now Playing” view. You can also use the dial to add an item to the queue when the track is highlighted through a simple press-and-hold action.

The update will also expand the usage of Hey Spotify commands to help users personalize their listening experience. Apart from using it to add an item to the queue, you can also now use it to make requests about specific songs or genres. For instance, you can say, “Hey Spotify, play cozy Sunday RnB,” and the Car Thing will do the work of arranging a personalized playlist based on the keywords you provided. 

On the other hand, to free the drivers from having to fish for their phones in their bags, the new update will also now enable Car Thing to show incoming calls and let users answer and dismiss them. Using the device, you can also play and control other media and then switch back to Spotify by using presets, voice, or simply tapping the screen.

Spotify assures iOS users with Car Thing and Spotify Premium that the features included in the update will roll out automatically. However, Android users would have to wait a little more for the features to arrive after the company said that the update “will be rolling out at a later date” for them.