That all changes today with the introduction of the Car Thing. That is, devices on which you can play Spotify’s selection of music, podcasts, news and entertainment. One area where it has yet to make its mark? Hardware. Indeed, we didn't even know for sure what it looks like, apart from a promotional image that Spotify shared when it was first announced - and any users who might have one don't appear to have shared any reviews or photos on social media.Since launching in 2008, Spotify has constantly expanded its influence in the streaming world, and on music at large. Since the gadget was first announced, Spotify hasn't said anything about the Car Thing or the results of its test in public. It also has voice controls so you don't have to look down to pause a track. That came as a disappointment to some Spotify users, who were excited at the prospect of buying a Car Thing for themselves: It has a built-in 4G/LTE modem to stream music without pairing to a phone, and it has a cache so that the music doesn't stop when reception cuts out. In other words, Spotify said, it had no plans to get into hardware.

The idea, Spotify said, was to give it to a select few users as a way to test how they listen to music and podcasts in the car, to give the company more data for future products and services. Spotify first announced the Car Thing in May, but said it was a prototype and that it had no plans to mass-produce it for consumers. We finally know more about Spotify's long-discussed Car Thing - a voice-activated music-streaming gadget intended for the car (naturally), representing the music-streaming service's first foray into hardware.

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