Spotify Disconnects Car View Feature, Has No Hands-free Alternative, Report Says

Spotify is taking away the Car View feature, a report says, just as users began to notice it unexpectedly missing.

Car View, available through the Spotify app for iOS and Android, had a more streamlined interface and playback controls to make for a better way to play music while driving.

“We can confirm that we’re retiring the car view feature,” a moderator on Spotify’s forums wrote. “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.”

The move was viewed with skepticism by some users, who have posited that the company is instead just trying to push its upcoming “Car Thing” program on users. Car Thing is an $80 smart device player, designed for use in cars, which isn’t available except for preorder in the U.S. as of right now.

The aforementioned moderator said on the forum that the company was looking for the best way to have an in-car listening experience.

Spotify has not offered any alternatives as of press time, though a moderator has said users could make use of Google Assistant for hands-free music control, along with a Google Maps feature to allow for listeners to control music playback.

Spotify premium subscribers have soared this year, up 20 percent in Q2, PYMNTS writes – which showed a sizable growth in subscribers overall.

Read more: Spotify’s Premium Subscriber Base Expands To 165M Amid Push Toward Monetizable Content

The management said Spotify is “confident in the underlying health of our user funnel, and our existing user retention activity remains consistent with historical trends.”

Europe has 40 percent of the premium subscribers while North America has 29%. Meanwhile, Latin America has 20% and the rest of the world divides up the remaining 11%.