Spotify announced earlier today that it will share major news in an event expected to take place on April 24th in New York. It’s not clear yet what the company intends to announce but speculation right now seems to allude that the streaming service will launch a new in-car controller. The device is expected to help drivers control music with their voice. It’s more like Siri for Spotify.
A number of Spotify users have already confirmed that they have received an offer from the company for a new device as part of their monthly subscription. The device has a circular design with a few buttons and an LED screen. This could actually be the in-car controller. Our attempt to get a comment from the streaming company was not successful.
There’s no suggestion yet though that the device will be released this month. Besides, many users who actually managed to see the offer back in February say that it quickly disappeared. Spotify has been actively testing voice commands on its smartphone app. The company has also listed jobs for hardware developers adding to the speculation that such a device could be released soon.
In addition to this, Spotify recently rolled out a native player app designed for Cadillac cars, and it seems that this is a market that the company is preparing to dive in. The native app for the Cadillac vehicles, however, lacks voice control. Many experts think that if Spotify wants to massively improve the in-car experience for the music player, adding voice control is inevitable.
We have also noticed that the device has been mentioned significantly on Spotify’s support forums. However, it really drew very little attention from the company. Forum administrators simply dismissed it as a test. One comment, in particular, said that Spotify is always testing new things to improve its service. The statement also went on to note that the company didn’t have any news on the device and that it had forwarded the feedback to the right department. This is a very common response in tech support forums, and it’s often used to stop rumors or speculation on something.
However, the April 24th event is almost here. Many people think that Spotify will unveil some new hardware. Whether it will be the in-car voice controller or any other hardware it’s something we can only speculate. The news comes barely a week after the streaming company went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Spotify has over 80 million subscribers and has often been touted as one of the best music streaming services. Primarily, Spotify was largely focused on software so venturing into hardware would be a completely different ball game. But experts think that starting off with an in-vehicle controller is a wise decision. The company already has a native app built for cars and it will be easy to build on that with the right hardware. Nonetheless, all this remains speculation but we all know there’s no smoke without fire.
