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Another smart speaker?  I don’t know if I can handle it.  Honestly, we don’t need any more smart speakers.  No, I’m not talking about Facebook again.  It would seem that Spotify is thinking about creating their own smart speaker.  Is this in an attempt to compete with the HomePod?  How do we know that they’re thinking about a home speaker?  Well, they have a new job posted that would suggest they might be gearing up for some manufacturing.  Spotify is looking for an Operations Manager to oversee Hardware Product development.

Under “What you’ll do” the first sentence is “define and drive the hardware operations process within Spotify”.  So yes, this is really happening.  Or at least, they’re planning a strategy around it, so when it will be available is anybody’s guess.  But if they’re just looking to hire someone now, it doesn’t seem possible that they would have something in place anytime soon.  To me, that’s a really important aspect of all of this.  Especially with the likes of Amazon and Google to compete with.  So why wait so long?

Spotify

Unfortunately, I think what is going to happen is that every company is going to have their own version of a smart speaker.  Which is the way that streaming services are going also – everyone seems to be getting their own streaming service.  On one hand, you can’t blame them.  But on the other hand, this creates a lot of unnecessary competition.  This will be weird, right?  I mean, Facebook and Spotify have a close connection already, so is there a bigger reason behind this?

The role includes handling “distribution, supply, logistics, fulfillment and customer service”.  These are all functions that the company would need, but not until after production.  So this definitely sounds like Spotify is in it for the long run.  But why? That’s something that we still don’t know.

amazon echo

You are able to use Spotify on your Amazon Echo (or other Amazon devices), as well as on any of the Google Home devices, which is a huge market share.  So what’s the big deal?  Well, Apple refuses to allow Spotify to join their smart speaker – the HomePod.  And I mean you can’t completely blame them, but at the same time Spotify is a service, why are they getting into the hardware game at all?

I honestly don’t know if I have an answer, other than what I said earlier, which is – everyone is getting into this game, so why not Spotify?  More and more organizations are getting into territory that is kind of outside of their own.  Home speakers are a huge deal, and they’re only becoming more popular. So while this is likely a smart move in the long run, I wonder how long it will take them to get there and what this will mean for Spotify working on all the other devices.

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