Spotify officially discontinued their first and only hardware product – the Car Thing in December 2024, leaving us entering 2025 with a palpable car media player-shaped void in our hearts. But here’s a question – what if we just had other companies make Car Things instead of Spotify? This new ChatGPT AI feature allowed us to imagine what the Car Thing would look like if it was built by other iconic audio-related brands, both old and new.
Prepare to go on an absolute feels trip as we look at the Car Thing from brands as old and iconic as Sony Ericsson’s Walkman and VLC to fairly new kids on the block like Tidal and Audible. The format is simple – a car-mounted player that lets you, either through touch or through button control, play media on a streaming service of your choice. More analogue systems like the Walkman and the VLC player obviously have local storage playback, while others like YouTube and Audible tap into internet playback.
Designer: Sarang Sheth
This started purely as a nostalgia exercise, inspired by the retro gadgets series from last week. However, it later blossomed into a more rounded ‘what if’ experiment as the idea of a hardware player made more and more sense for most audio streaming giants today. We start with Sony Ericsson Walkman and VLC, absolute behemoths of the media space in the 2000s. VLC had two features – firstly, the ability to handle literally every file format on the planet, and secondly, the fact it was free. VLC Media Player could be found on every laptop and desktop on the planet, which is why making a VLC car media player made sense too. Simple interface – a nice volume knob, and controls that mirrored the skeuomorphic ones seen on the player.
While VLC reigned supreme on desktop, Walkman was the go-to for every non-iPod user on the planet. It was the iPhone before the iPhone was the iPhone. Sure, Nokia had some wild phones back in the day, but nothing beat the cultural impact of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones. The car media player mirrors the same cult impact, with a black body and bright orange accents like that gorgeous radial-brushed knob. Finally, the Sony Ericsson logo makes its way at the bottom too, just giving everyone absolute feels!
Sure, Sony had to butt heads with the iPod, which is why we looked at the Car Thing from an iPod lens too, with an iTunes player instead of the newfangled Apple Music. Everything about this player feels classic, from the design to the color finish to the gorgeous jog-wheel on the side that’s highly reminiscent of the iPod. Anyone who grew up in the 90s and 2000s will gush over this beauty.
The next player really needs no branding – the red play button on the bottom is branding enough. This one was a bit tough, because we deliberately didn’t want to include video players in this series – but the thing is a LOT of people use YouTube to listen to podcasts too (I’m an ardent TWiT.tv and Waveform Podcast listener), so we decided to go ahead with a YouTube-esque Car Thing. The screen gets priority here, so we moved the volume knob to the side, and the buttons on the bottom let you do everything from quickly control playback to even toggle video quality settings just in case you’re driving through an area with bad reception.
For me, the first ever truly addictive audio-only platform was Soundcloud. It was THE place for indie music, mixes, playlists, etc. I was quite the EDM lover and artists would upload their remixes, livesets, and entire albums directly onto the Soundcloud website. That’s why this one definitely deserved a player. The screen’s much more narrow, because the only thing that matters is the track itself, and of course you’ve got all the tactile buttons you need to control music playback on your car ride. Let’s just say I also asked ChatGPT to help me manifest my DJ career with a nice Levels remix!
Obviously, you can’t have online audio media today without having podcasts and audiobooks, which is why we took two popular players in this area and gave them their own hardware devices. Most people listen to podcasts or books while commuting, so this made a world of sense The Pocket Casts service gets its own hardware unit, with all the interface controls you need to listen to your favorite pod episode. Similarly, if you’re a book person, this Audible Car Thing is perfect for you, helping you get through your book collection while you’re stuck in traffic! They’re all conceptual, but I’d like to think that these devices do have on-board storage too, so you can listen to your favorite audio pieces even without an internet connection.
Finally, the last in this list is a bonafide Spotify competitor. Run by Jay-Z and a bunch of other Hollywood music execs, Tidal is touted as the world’s go-to for hi-fi music. You don’t stream MP3s here, you stream high-definition audio – which I assume some people definitely pay for. For the folks subscribed to Tidal (I honestly don’t know who you are), this car player is for you, bringing hi-fi audio to your presumably hi-fi car sound system. The design and interface seem very slick with the black-on-black design palette… and given that it’s Tidal, I had to put Beyonce on the Now Playing section… I guess I’ll thank her too, just in case.
Which Car Thing is your favorite? Would you like to see more? Hit us up on Instagram and let us know!
