[Kylekramer]

I've idly thought that Spotify should get into hardware. Headphones and/or speaker, purchase it connected to your account, and one touch button to a stream of music you like.

Obviously a million times easier said than done, but has to be a better margin business than where they currently are and would be good lock in.

[askmike]

A headphone that only works with Spotify? My Bose QC that I can use for anything (including Spotify - with a single on button to connect to bluetooth controlled via my phone or laptop) isn't really inconvenient or anything.

[Kylekramer]

Yup, that is the idea. Obviously it would be less useful than standard headphones for a HN reader, but the mass market may disagree.

For example, to use the parent cliche, my sister got my father AirPods this Christmas despite me saying it is probably a bad idea. And it has gone unused because he doesn't grok Bluetooth even in the simplified AirPod way (also, his iPhone is too old to support it natively). But if I gave him a pair of headphones and said "press this button, it will play Van Morrison and Sly Stone", he would use it in a heartbeat.

[taurath]

A “single purpose music box” would be neat to me. Maybe it controls all the speakers in my house, informs me of concerts coming up, let’s me set a mood, and most importantly doesn’t care about anything else.

I feel like every gadget being in one is gonna start breaking down now that software interop is more of a thing.

[read_if_gay_]

> I feel like every gadget being in one is gonna start breaking down now

The smartphone has a huge advantage: you only need to have 1 device in your pocket to do everything. Not having to go get something from another room may not seem like a big deal but I think it really is. (Or I am just lazy.)

[mrguyorama]

Chromecast is $35 and will play spotify and other apps pretty darn well.

[rurp]

Three or four years ago I loved my Chromecasts, but it's crazy how much worse they have gotten in that time. They used to have a really simple setup and then "just worked" from there. Now though, they regularly disappear from every device we use them with in my household and have to be setup again. The setup flow has changed several times over the past few years, always for the worse. Once everything is (re-)setup, they still fail to connect or lose a connection often enough to be a big annoyance.

I'm not a fan of smart tv apps for all of the reasons discussed on HN, but they work so much better for me than Chromecast I've started using those instead whenever possible.

[mrguyorama]

That's strange. My Chromecast seemingly hasn't changed at all in the 4 years I've owned it.

[nathancahill]

They did a recent promo with Google where you get a free Google Home Mini if you're a subscriber. So I don't think they are getting in to hardware.

[taurath]

They have such economies of scale now, and such vertical integration that they can sell you things like speakers for free as long as it has voice integration and sucks up all of your data.

The only reason they don't sell a TV for $200 is they already get all that data from the current TV providers. Chromebooks at $99? Sure, why not.

And eventually nobody can compete. Users must be in google, or amazons ecosystem or be super rich to avoid it. Companies must hope that google or amazon never move into their space because they can be obliterated. This is a "kinder" version of what microsoft got anti-trusted for in the 90s.

[ObsoleteNerd]

Google does these promotions all over, to get more Home’s into... homes.

We got a free one with our YouTube Premium subscription, another free one with our Spotify Family Plan, and another free one from our ISP (though I’m not sure if that was paid for by google or the ISP).

[_bxg1]

The only way I could see that working is if they had a built-in cellular modem and the data usage was covered under your existing subscription. Just a direct-to-internet Spotify hose. Even then it would be a tough sell; single-purpose hardware rarely does well in a multi-purpose world.

[mhh__]

Sonos seems to get away with charging about a million pounds a pop so there's definitely money in it (They're good speakers but £349 - the price of a quality musical instrument or a whole computer - for a device that connects a Hi-Fi to the internet is daylight robbery).