At the end of last year, Spotify carried out one of the most reprehensible movements in its history, by suddenly and without notice removing its Car View interface, that is, the one that automatically adopted its app for Android and iOS when it detected that the user might be driving. Car View, in case you don’t know it, offered an interface with only the basic elements to be able to use the app while driving, eliminating distractions and maximizing the size of the controls.
Car View was, and in this there is unanimity, one of the great successes of Spotify, which also even added a direct access to Waze which, in turn, allowed Spotify playback to be controlled from the map. The safety at the wheel provided by this mode, and I say this from personal experience, made the Spotify app the safest to control music playback while driving, and the reason why, I return to my case, I add some tens of thousands of kilometers listening to music from this service.
Just a few days ago, we learned of another similar move by Spotify, which also without notice decided to end the service’s compatibility with Pioneer and JVC-Kenwood car devices, despite the fact that these had previously obtained official support by the streaming service. With this measure, many drivers with this equipment suddenly found that they could no longer listen to music as they had done before.
The reason for all these changes? Well, you don’t have to be very clever, because coinciding with them, Spotify Car Thing arrived on the market, a device designed and marketed by the company which, coincidentally, comes to fill the gap left by the removal of Car View and support for Pioneer and JVC-Kenwood devices. A device that costs $99, which requires a premium account, and which is currently only available in the United States. A round move.
The criticism, of course, did not wait, to the point that not a few users with a premium account have seriously planned their stay in the service. And criticism and the risk of losing users must have worked the miracle in the offices of Spotify, since according to what we can read in 9to5Google, Spotify has started testing a new Car Mode in the service’s app for Androida test that, for the moment, would have reached a small part of its users.
From what we can see in the screenshots, this new car mode returns to the model with the basic controls and without extra elements that can distract the driver, but it also adds the possibility of controlling the app through voice commands that, among other things, allow you to carry out searches. Precisely one of the most outstanding functions of Spotify Car Thing, which with its voice assistant allows you to control playback without using your hands.
This is undoubtedly a good move by Spotify which, however, seems more like a response to criticism than anything else. And beware, I am aware that it is possible that everything is a huge coincidence, that Spotify had planned to redo car view and that this is not related to the start of the marketing of its own device. But luckily or unfortunately, the Principle of Parsimony (yes, the famous Ockham’s razor), pushes me to be somewhat distrustful.
