Spotify has announced the company is “retiring” the car view feature it launched in 2019. The mode essentially offers enlarged play/pause and skip buttons as well as made the view page less cluttered to prevent drivers from getting distracted. The feature also inspired Amazon to roll out their own version of Car Mode on the Amazon Music app earlier this year. As per Spotify, the company is working on an alternative, but there’s no clarity on rollout. The Swedish company says users can use Google Assistant virtual assistant while driving to enable a hands-free control till Spotify rolls out its solution.
In a reply on its community forum, Spotify explained, “We can confirm that we’re retiring the car view feature. This however doesn’t mean we don’t want to improve on how our users listen to Spotify while driving. On the contrary, we’re actively exploring a variety of new ways to deliver the best in-car listening experience. Think of retiring car-view as something that needs to happen in an effort to make way for new innovations coming down the track.”
It is unclear why Spotify decided to retire the car view mode from the app, though it is plausible the feature was not widely used. Similarly, there are several ways (and even gadgets) to help handsfree control, so it is likely that Spotify is also working on a similar (if not better) solution. Additionally, several modern-day cars allow users to change or play music directly via steering controls or the inbuilt car audio system.
It makes more sense for company’s to now invest in hands-free control that will be particularly useful while driving. For instance, Google shut down Android Auto earlier this year for phone screens. The company replaced it with Google Assistant driving mode after unveiling Android 12. However, cars that directly support Android Auto can continue to use the app.
Read all the Latest Tech News here
Comments
0 comment