Spotify Car Thing was officially discontinued in July, 2022. After December 9th, 2024, this device is no longer operational. To continue listening in your car, you can play Spotify directly on your phone and connect to the car stereo via Bluetooth or a cable. Some modern car models also offer a built-in Spotify app, using their own 5G connection. As an alternative, connect your phone to your car with CarPlay or Android Auto, or play offline music in your car via a USB with your favorite Spotify tracks.
Related: Play Spotify Offline in the Car without Premium
Apple CarPlay is a smarter, safer way to use your iPhone in selected cars. Once connected to your iPhone (iPhone 5 and later with at least iOS 7.1), Apple CarPlay allows you to get directions, make calls, send and receive messages, and listen to Spotify on your car’s built-in display.
How to use Spotify on Apple CarPlay?
To use Android Auto, you need an Android Auto compatible vehicle and an Android phone running 5.0 (Lollipop) or higher. When you connect your Android phone to the compatible vehicle, Android Auto will display Spotify on the vehicle’s screen.
How to use Android Auto?
Extra tip: How to fix Spotify not working on Android Auto?
You can play Spotify offline using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, provided that you have a Premium account and have downloaded songs with the Spotify app on your phone. For free users, the best way to listen to Spotify in the car is to download Spotify to MP3 in 320 kbps with Pazu Spotify Converter. By doing so, you can get rid of all Spotify’s free limits: ads, limited skips, no offline playback, and low quality. You can even transfer the songs to a USB drive to play in your car and save battery on your phone.
Pazu Spotify Converter is specially designed for you to download Spotify music to common formats with either a free or premium account on Mac/Windows. Pazu Spotify Music Converter allows you to convert Spotify songs to the most popular formats, such as MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, AAC, and AIFF. With the adoption of advanced encryption technology, it’s able to keep all the converted audio files with 100% lossless audio quality and the original ID3 tags and metadata information.
Key features of Pazu Spotify Converter:
Download, install and run Pazu Spotify Converter on your Mac or Windows. Log in to your Spotify account with the built-in web player.
Click the gear button in the top right corner. Here you can select output format (MP3/M4A/AAC/FLAC/WAV/AIFF), output quality, customize the output path, organize the output files in various ways, rename output files and more.
Select the songs, album or playlist you want to download. Spotify Converter will detect and display all songs. Uncheck the songs you don’t want to download if there are any. Click “Show All” icon to toggle “Hide Converted” on in case some songs have been downloaded before.
Click the Convert button to start downloading Spotify songs in MP3 format.
Once the conversion is done, click the folder icon to find the downloaded MP3 songs. You can then transfer the Spotify music to Apple Music or Amazon Music, or play them with your favorite music player for iOS/Android.
Note: The free trial version of Pazu Spotify Converter enables you to convert the first three minutes of each song. You can remove the trial limitation by purchasing the full version.
If you are a Spotify lover and your car does not have Android Auto or CarPlay, you can consider getting the Car Thing. Car Thing is Spotify’s hardware device designed for your drive. Spotify Car Thing is a small touchscreen device, about the size of your palm, that’s designed to give your car radio a touchscreen to make listening to music from your phone in the car easy and safe.
If your car doesn’t support Android Auto or Apple CarPlay and you want a touchscreen to easily control Spotify in your car, you can try the Spotify Car Thing. Remember that you must have Spotify Premium to use the accessory.
1. Connect Car Thing to power
Use the cable and power adapter to connect the device to a 12V power outlet.
2. Connect your phone to Car Thing
Connect your phone to Car Thing via Bluetooth in your phone’s settings.
3. Connect your phone to the car stereo
Connect your phone to your car stereo via Bluetooth settings in your car, AUX or USB cable.
4. Mount the Car Thing in your car.
There are 3 mounts to choose from: CD mount, Dashboard mount and Vent mount.
Once installed and powered on, Car Thing connects to your phone via Bluetooth and communicates wirelessly with the Spotify app, displaying album, artist and playlist information on its 4-inch color touchscreen. Car Thing uses the data and Spotify account from your phone. You get all your saved music and podcasts, recommendations, and can save to your library while you drive.
After connecting to the Spotify app on your phone, Car Thing lets you browse through your playlists and control music with just a few taps. It’s also got a physical wheel for managing the volume, and buttons on top that you can save specific playlists or podcasts to — press one, and the saved tracks will immediately start. The other button on the front lets you switch between the song you’re currently playing and the browsing menus.
If you don’t want to use your hands at all, the Car Thing also supports voice controls. Just say, “Hey Spotify, play today’s top hits”, “Hey Spotify, pause”, “Hey Spotify, show me similar artists”, “Hey Spotify, shuffle my liked songs”, “Hey Spotify, follow this podcast”, etc. and control all your favorite music hands-free.
Spotify says device owners will now be able to see incoming calls and dismiss or answer them through the Car Thing interface. They’ll also be able to play and control other media in the car using the device, then switch back to Spotify using either presets, voice commands or by tapping the screen.
The Spotify Car Thing is not a way to add audio streaming connectivity to your car. It’s just a remote control and so requires that your phone connect directly to your car’s stereo, either via Bluetooth or an auxiliary input.
Car Thing requires a Spotify Premium subscription plan along with a phone with a mobile data connection. If you’re already a Premium subscriber and you’re frustrated with the Spotify app interface on your phone or car, then sure, go for it. But don’t switch to Premium just for the privilege to buy the $90 Car Thing.
To sum it up, Car Thing connects to your Spotify account on your smartphone via Bluetooth. You power the device through the car’s power source, where you’ll need an adaptor. You then have to connect your phone to your car stereo via Bluetooth, AUX or USB cable. The most important thing is that you have to be a premium subscriber to use it. It is not available to Spotify free users. Besides, if your car has Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, Spotify’s separate screen mounted above the dashboard screen doesn’t make sense.
Download and convert any Spotify songs, albums, playlists to MP3/M4A etc.