Two days ago Mighty Audio popped up on Kickstarter and we were intrigued. It looks like an iPod Shuffle and is almost exactly the same size. But that Apple-only music player doesn’t play nice with the current zeitgeist that even Apple is ceding to—streaming rather than buying music. Nope, a Shuffle cannot take a favorites list or playlist from Spotify and let you play it in your car.
Mighty was born to do exactly that.
Here’s how it works: While connected to Wifi, turn on the Spotify app as well as the Mighty app. Queue up a Spotify playlist, or several, since Mighty has the capacity to stream up to 48 hours of music and download them for offline play. Because you’re linked to the Mighty device over Bluetooth, all those tunes will begin to port over to the tiny, 1.5-inch box even as they’re downloading. Within the Mighty app you can manage the playlists to add or delete them. (There’s no screen on the $79 device because screens are expensive, hence the need for an app instead.)
Yes, this requires the Spotify Premium subscription ($12.99/month) but you probably already have that because you probably already use Spotify a lot—probably in your car already. But that isn’t just costing you $12.99 because that streaming data ain’t free. We like Mighty as a hack to quit that bad, data-vaporizing habit, and output should work even in older cars because in addition to Bluetooth connectivity there’s also a standard headphone port and USB charging port. Battery life is decent, at five hours, so obviously Mighty also makes sense for the gym or anywhere else you want music but don’t want to expose your phone to damage—the beach, a the ski resort—or lug that big brick of a mini-tablet-sized phone around.
All this explains why in three days on Kickstarter Mighty has already reached $112,000 of its $250,000 goal and has earned a coveted Projects We Love thumbs-up from Kickstarter. Two thumbs up from us, too.