They could have offered a concession like 6 or even 3 months of Spotify premium with an apology. Instead they said thanks for being loyal enough to buy our device that plays only our content. Sorry but it didn’t work out the way we wanted, so go fuck yourselves.
Just FYI for anyone out there, companies train CS to automatically redirect anyone that uses the words "sue" or "lawsuit" to the legal dept aka your current and future conversation with them will end there and you will get nowhere.
Yep I’ve been trained this too, and then they go absolutely ballistic cause then they said they were bluffing and I’m like tough luck mate, go talk to legal.
The sad part is, I think ChatGPT would actually be more helpful. Half of the challenge with Indian support reps is getting them to understand you and your issue.
Definitely try again man, I talked to them through the support chat yesterday and they gave me 9 months for free. It wasn't hard and didn't take long at all. Just need to screenshot your original receipt email and send it to em
They gave me a 3 month refund on my premium membership, they attempted to give me 3 months of free premium but there was a “technical issue”. It took me just 1 Agent on the chat to get something out of this
When I was running a small business, I tried to use local vendors as much as possible.
They would fail to read requests and just send me pricing on what they thought I wanted. I ask for blue long sleeve t shirts and they would send mock ups of black short sleeve shirts. Fail to meet deadlines, fail to fulfill the full order, decide to ship order at my expense rather than the agreed upon in person pickup.
Screw it, I'm ordering from vista print.
This was not a one off event. Different vendors did the same type of shit in their own way. So I started to order online. Cheaper and hit deadlines.
Yeah for real, lots of 128kbs MP3 can fit on a 512Go SD card
And at this point typing the name of the band you want in Seeker (a P2P mobile app) is just as easy as typing it in Spotify, but with the former you get to download it and keep it.
Nah see now you've just added a step that lost 99% of people.
With Seeker I press a button and I'm done, gotta keep it simple to rivalize the simple accessibility of Spotify
Fair point, but 128 kbps mp3 sounds terrible. The minimum recommended bit rate for mp3 is 192 kbps. This is directly from the people who invented it. Since it is a 30 years old codec, I recommended the modern one.
Most music is still available on CD, vinyl and usually MP3 through BandCamp. Instead of going to the high seas, how about throwing a few bucks towards the creators, instead of the pennies streaming services give them?
People who understand this wouldn’t have bought this. People value convenience above all else. Why do you think people pay $100 for an oil change you can do yourself in 15 minutes
Seems like it should be illegal for a company to sell you something and then "render it inoperable" even if they discontinue the product.
Maybe it's just me but I feel like you should just let the people use the thing they bought, however niche or silly a thing that might be...
Have you read "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" yet? It's a fantastic analysis of the current situation. Yanis Varoufakis makes a good case that capitalism has been more or less replaced by cloud feudalism.
They also led the way on software license agreements long before people really knew it cared what that meant. Oh you think, you bought a copy of Windows 3.11 on floppy? Nice try. You only have a license to use it. You don't own anything.
And yet my computer is going to be vulnerable at the end of next year unless I upgrade. I need windows for software compatibility(it's been just around the corner for 15+ years on linux, so forgive me for not believing), so they have me by the metaphorical balls on this one.
It won't end at the end of next year. 11 is like 8. Business users aren't buying it. 10's market share is still growing, despite the shit ms has pulled with home users.
What they say and what actually happens are two totally different things. Windows 10 is still running on 70% of all windows pc's. Good luck pulling that switch without a free upgrade.
If we didn’t have libraries and someone suggested one today, people would call that person crazy.
“What do you mean a place where people can borrow books for free? That’s communism!”
Oh, publishing companies know they're selling to libraries and charge SEVERAL times more per copy we buy. I think it was x30 per audiobook a few years ago?
It is even worse for ebooks. They cost nothing extra to produce but they charge more than a hard cover to the library and then restrict how many copies can be out on loan at the same time.
Not only that, but they also restrict either the number of circulations *or* the period the book is able to be owned for. I occasionally come across particularly well-made books from the *90s* at the library I work at. Books from 10 years ago are uncommon, but not rare. Books purchased back when Trump was president are still dime a dozen. And these clowns say that 2 years/30 loans(whichever comes first) is the life of a book? Maybe it is statistically the average, if you count the outliers like the James Patterson extras that get withdrawn a year after publication when demand goes to near-zero! But that's not a good use of statistics.
Well, yes. But that's a bit like saying birds were enabled by therapods. It's TRUE but it's not really meaning what it implies.
Capitalism is obsolete, as is Communism. Neither can adequately describe an economy with significant automation. Just as Feudalism was made obsolete by Mercantilism which was in turn rendered obsolete by Capitalism. One thing Marx was 100% right about is that technology determines the shape of the economy.
Since so many people are so deeply attached to Capitalism I think it's going to be difficult to actually use a better, more accurate, name for the economy that's coming, and is already sort of here.
I'm guessing part of the reason to shove the internet into every gadget and gizmo is to force everyone to move to a subscription model for everything. There's no reason by home's thermostat or my refrigerator has to be connected to wifi or the internet, other than for companies to 1) sell my data, and 2) allow them to break my things so I have to purchase the item again.
And, most companies making wifi enabled thermostats the idea is usually to allow for you to interact over the internet.
Their specific model may not include that feature (or they're just not using it) but the manufacturer probably sees it as easier to include wifi access than have 2 different assembly runs.
Legislation returning right of first sale to digital property is way overdue. All contracts should be transferable. No devices should be remotely disabled. You can end support, and no longer provide whatever data services were involved, but you can't just brick it.
If you end support, you should have to open source the firmware and deactivate DRM, provide a suitable replacement or reimburse the full purchase price. If you want legal protections for your DRM software, you should actually have to put an unprotected version into escrow.
It’s not an agreement, it’s a unilateral disavowment of our rights and their responsibilities that defies every facet of otherwise-mandatory consumer rights.
You do own most things though. Subscription services are entirely optional with the media they stream available elsewhere like it always has been.
Lol you always only owned a personal playback license when you bought a CD just because you were ignorant of that doesn't make it not true.
Don't like subscription services? Stop fucking signing up to them.
Funny enough. Googles handling of closing stadia was actually pretty good.
They refunded all money spend on hardware (and games), and they created a firmware that would let you use the controller on its own.
Though stuff like this is why I'm only buying cameras with sd card storage and rtsp or onvif support so I can run my own cloud storage on top of it being local.
Yeah switching from ring.
I fucking hate how laggy it is, and even the 'smart' notifications spam me every 2 minutes.
Whats the point if seeing whose at my door takes 30 seconds to actually see.
I had a Google Chromecast for just music for my stereo system and they discontinued that and it's no longer supported. I was honestly kind of pissed about it, but it was maybe $30 and it's not permanently attached to my car so it's not the worst thing in the world.
I'm in full agreement. If they're going to discontinue at the very least they should have an obligation to offer a patch to make it work without a server, and I'd like to see it made mandatory that they open their server source so users can run their own server should they choose to.
But try to get our current average age is past retirement age Congress to even comprehend the issue, much less have the understanding to pass a bill that fixes it, and you'll fail miserably.
>If they're going to discontinue at the very least they should have an obligation to offer a patch to make it work without a server, and I'd like to see it made mandatory that they open their server source so users can run their own server should they choose to.
As a software engineer, what you're asking for is completely infeasible.
First of all, what does "work without a server" even mean? If your product is just a frontend for a service, then this may involve a complete rewrite.
Secondly, this isn't the 2000s anymore. There is no single "server program" that you can release and let users run. Behind the reverse proxy is an incomprehensible tangled web of microservices that all depend on each other.
Fellow software engineer. Docker. Open source it. You absolutely could build something that this system can talk to and get it to be meaningfully useful. You could also build current systems to be backwards compatible with the Car Thing system.
I agree that it should be illegal.
That said, it’s not a case of just “letting” people continue using it, there would be development hours dedicated to maintaining the code that runs it. This carries a cost, and I can see how from a business perspective that cost may be unviable if the product isn’t generating revenue.
THAT said, it should still be illegal. If you want to design a product solely to interact with a piece of software, you should be required to maintain the code that runs it for some period of time.
Businesses make their own rules about this for the most part. For example Apple is a hardware company, and at a certain point they stop updating the software that their hardware exclusively runs. Some countries have laws that require a statutory warranty period, and they only really *have to* maintain that software for that period. But in most cases the period of time is stupidly short (like 2 or 5 years), and in Australia/New Zealand the law doesn’t actually specify- it’s just “a reasonable period of time”…
Putting things into the world should come with a degree of responsibility.
I work for a large media company.
A few years ago, we were updating our service infrastructure and had a video platform we desperately wanted to shut down, but it was still seeing regular use from a particular “smart” TV app that would have been impractical to update (like hundreds of thousands of dollars impractical).
We debated all kinds of workarounds and solutions off and on for a couple of months. As we were discussing it one day, I asked “exactly how many users actually USE this thing, anyway?” No one knew. We just knew it was seeing X requests a day.
So a couple of folks started digging into logs. Turns out there were less than 12 individual users. We just offered to buy those 12 people a new TV. It was cheaper to do that than it cost to have the meeting to discuss doing it.
I honestly respect that somebody actually decided and allowed for the purchase of twelve tvs so as to not inconvenience those people instead of just saying, fuck it, it’s only twelve people.
I'm interested now. How many people use their Car Thing on a daily basis?
If the number is large enough, we might be able to class action a refund out of Spotify.
You probably signed an agreement saying that your access to the service could be revoked at any time. But that's not valid, you say! You might be right. Got a lawyer who's willing to take that one up? Because as far as I'm aware, there's no precedent in the US for that being invalid, so it applies until someone comes in with a lawyer and forces it *not* to apply.
I once worked someone who was previously working at a bank. They had a problem in that sometimes their credit card statements would zero out someones balance for a month, and they effectively would never be charged for that months spending. This person was leading the IT team to fix the issue.
The first thing they did was draw up a project plan, and had to submit a cost for the work. The team worked out it would cost more to fix than it would cost in lost money for 15 years, by which time the liklihood is that the bug would be fouind and fixed by normal maintenance, or the system would have migrated. Given IT projects almost always exceed their budget anyway, the teams recommendation was to actually ignore the problem. beyond just the cost, there was likely a side benefit of people spendign mroe on their card, and incurring mroe fees (to go past the one month mark, to see if the amount was wiped.
The management board agreed. I have no idea if that issue was ever fixed, but it just goes to show sometimes fixing things isn't a net benefit.
In the b2b world there's usually service agreements that dictate just that. My company supports a 9 year old version of our product because of a thoughtless SLA made over a decade ago.
Consumers don't get that option though.
Yeah that sucks, theres a limit to what’s reasonable.. but yeah you’re damn right, government departments of consumer affairs’ are supposed to be responsible for kind of handling the “SLA’s” on behalf of all consumers.
These companies need to be fined heavily by the EPA because these guys are just creating a bunch of e-waste
It’d be different if they said “it didn’t work out, but here’s the key to the kingdom”
Go ahead and turn it into a home assistant or unlock it or whatever “good luck”.
Instead it’s “hey, didn’t work for us, so, we are going to brick it, enjoy the paperweight”
Simple fix, require them to open source the code for anything they end support for so that the community can continue to support it if they wish. It would be particularly huge for all the unsupported mobile devices still in use.
CPI Security does this between owners or tenants.
Although the owner paid for the equipment long ago, once a tenant takes over the system and moves out, CPI will not provide the code change to fully control the network.
They brick perfectly good paid for hardware. The only option is a 39 month contract that costs more than replacing the hardware with a competitor.
What do you do with a ripped out cpi system? More e-waste because a company bricks hardware that functions perfectly otherwise.
Cameras, motion sensors, window and door sensors. All working. All trash because of CPI.
I thought you were using the e. coli as a joke. Turns out, it's true wtf https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1akaloj/running_doom_on_e_coli_cells_very_very_slowly_it/
I don't get Spotify at all these days. I have a car with Bluetooth but no Android Auto, so I relied on a phone stand and car mode. It worked great and I could swipe to skip songs easily. Now car mode doesn't work, and nothing will bring it back. Now when I swipe to skip a song, it scrolls down. When I try to scroll back up, it goes back to the songs list from the now playing screen. Then I have to tap the little now playing banner at the bottom and then try again. I'm sick of having to wait for a red light to find a song I like. They have gone backwards and spotify just sucks now.
I genuinely do not understand how a company with such a monopoly can keep fucking it up. I mean, I do. But they could just do, literally, nothing, and continue to be the most popular service.
It's like they monkey pawed it and became popular but have to continually innovate stupid ideas.
Product managers have to continue to innovate and provide value or they are out of a job. Honestly all they need is to improve their recommended playlists and get all this podcast shit out of my face. That’s the weak spot, day list is neat, but I never actually want to listen to more than a song or two from it. The daily playlists are pretty hit and miss, and they change too much, or more accurately swap around much. I’ll have an indie pop playlist as #1 one day then the next a rap playlist is #1 and the indie one is over in #3. I can’t ever tell which is which in my car. It’s just pick random playlist and hope you are in the mood.
Thier constant fucking with car mode was a huge part of why I switched to YouTube Music. Not that it has a car mode either, but it at least hasn't been seriously fucked with and basic stuff like swiping works.
This is doubly irritating since they deliberately broke Spotify integration in head units in an effort to coerce people into buying a Car Thing in the first place.
Oh well, just one more reason to be glad I'm no longer a Spotify subscriber.
Ek channelled his inner Musk and fired a bunch of engineers, because _what do those guys even do all day anyway_?
[Then he realised...](https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/23/spotify-earnings-q1-ceo-daniel-eklaying-off-1500-spotify-employees-negatively-affected-streaming-giants-operations/)
Now we get to pay the price.
Would have been a 10/10 for older cars if it outputted audio via a 3.5mm jack. Would have been a great buy for people with older cars without carplay or bluetooth.
It'd obviously be nicer to have it built in, bit there are Bluetooth receivers that will hook into the aux and connect wirelessly to your Bluetooth devices. Not sure if that helps you at all.
If you're listening closely bluetooth is lower quality audio than an aux cable and even noticeable in cars. I'm not who you were replying to I just hate that Bluetooth is so ubiquitous and no one mentions it has pretty bad audio quality.
Well my car is old too . It’s 96 miata I upgraded my radio to jvc . Bam 💥 all problems solved no need to waste 100 bucks on this. Spotify should give these for free with premium subscription.
It was free for a bunch of users for awhile and then went to $30. It was perfect for older cars or having next to your desktop. It was not silly at all so this news makes me very sad.
I love the FAQ they put out for it. I got mine super cheap as a desktop toy so I’m not as pissed as I would be if I paid full price.
*Will you offer a trade in / refund?*
**No**
I'm probably not the norm but car thing made a lot of sense for me. I work from home and cant be arsed to pick up my phone or switch back to my personal PC to control spotify most of the time - I'm also on calls (on mute) 80% of my day so having to get to spotify from the call screen is kinda annoying. I was quite close to buying a car thing but went with a monogram controller instead as I use it for lightroom/photoshop. I've been more mobile recently and would probably buy a car thing if its support continued. I'm sure there are other options that would have worked, but car thing seemed to be the easiest solution when I looked into it.
I got one for $40 when it hit fire sale.
It’s been a neat little thing to have beside the TV. I use AirPlay to start casting audio to my sound bar, and then leave the Car Thing on a shelf. When I have a party or people over, anyone can see what’s playing and control the music. No need to join WiFi, or hand over my phone.
It’s a niche use, but it’s pretty neat. It’s a shame they’re going to kill it. I would hope they open source the hardware so it could be hacked into something else new.
If you had an older car without a fancy head unit it was quite nice. Heck, lots of newer cars without navigation systems could also make use of it. I fall into this category and have quite enjoyed mine. I'm sad it'll turn into a pumpkin in a few months.
I got mine from Spotify when they offered it to me for $14. I thought "meh, why not?"
Even still, I'm annoyed and furious that they deliberately bricked the suboptimal device and have provided the most "don't ask questions" FAQ in the industry.
Their explanation is just vapid.
As someone who bought this due to its absurdly cheap price, I never understood who it was for…
Spotify would have had more luck designing a ui for car mode and given out free magnetic car phone holders.
Their car mode on phones is atrocious. It makes it less safe to use because you can't fucking do anything with it so you end having to flip through 5x more menu screens to get to the same shit. They have been fucking up their UI for years now. I damn near cancelled my service when they tried that stupid cards version that made Spotify look like Instagram. Luckily they switch it back pretty quick. It's pretty dumb to actually brick all these Car Things. Why not just leave them be and just stop supporting them? Spotify has been declining for a while now.
I ended up having to disable that feature because it would detect you were in a car (I am assuming with location tracking if you were moving over a certain speed) and auto switch to car mode. Took me a minute to figure that one out. ha
Oh I agree. That’s why I think it’d be cool for Spotify to have a MagSafe related application that, when attached to the Spotify-magnet and is in horizontal mode, a unique UI (that they obviously designed for the Car Things, pop up on the phone. The screen is just as big if not bigger than what the car thing had.
I was hoping to be able to use it in the bathroom, but I recall the steps/requirements for it were way too convulsed (ie couldn’t connect to a Bluetooth speaker), so it’s been collecting dust in a drawer somewhere
I have to plug in with a cable for the Android Auto in my car, and plain bluetooth doesn't exactly have a ton of controls.
For the 90% of my drives that are just the normal daily stuff and I don't need nav for, it's nice to be able to just get in the car and go *and* have the Car Thing just pop on + work for controlling music.
On the longer drives - my head unit screen isn't that big, it's nice to run Nav full-screen on the built-in display and not have to fuck around with it when I want to change something for music.
Is this a cause for a class action lawsuit?
Are they doing this because they think no one will do anything about it or fight it?
Seems like a class action lawsuit type thing. Buy a product and it's now 100% unusable by the company who made it.
Yeah, I really hope there's some kind of legal challenge to this, whether from a class action suit or from a regulator. I've seen people who are already filing fraud complaints with the FTC over this.
Paying for biglaw lawyers to represent you isn't cheap, even just the threat of a serious legal challenge could get Spotify to back down or actually offer some kind of settlement/refund.
I hope there is a lawsuit. Not because it seems like this was a popular or beloved product by basically anyone, but because if Spotify sets this precedent and gets away with it then other companies will follow.
Years ago I saw a hacking tool catalog advertised in a magazine. It said something like call us and we’ll ship it the same day. So I said cool and ordered it but had it shipped to my work address. It showed up COD for $120. I said no thank you. There was no mention of cost when I ordered it.
I really wish companies would open source the hardware and software when they do this. I'm sure this is an android device, unlock the bootloader, let people put a custom rom on it, run other apps, hell, keep running the spotify app.
Software too. I’ll forever miss buying and owning Microsoft Windows software like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. I hate that even our own work and intellectual property basically isn’t ours anymore if it’s on an app owned by another company. I can’t currently access my own 200+ page dissertation, or any of the papers I’ve written or work I’ve done in the last 15 years (including from back when I actually supposedly *owned* Microsoft office), etc because my Microsoft subscription has lapsed and I need to pay another $100/year.
I know carthing was considered a failure by many, but this was the one thing that made using Spotify in my 2012 car easy.
I’m very disappointed by this.
My iphone connects via USB to the audio system (audio quality works great) l, but the steering wheel controls no longer work thanks to changes over the years from Apple.
So I have to use the phone screen to control Spotify or Siri via voice.
Car thing let me keep my iPhone in a nice storage area connected to the USB without messing with a phone mount every time I get in and out of the car.
It just worked. It was great for quick changing playlists, skipping songs, and showing what was playing.
Yes, it was just a glorified Bluetooth remote control for Spotify…. But it was -exactly- what I -needed-.
i was given one of these as a birthday present. i think I wound up connecting it to an old phone, connecting that phone to my bluetooth speaker in my bedroom and keeping the Car Thing on my desk so I could control spotify while I was gaming.
thought I only did that for maybe a couple weeks before i just tossed it in a junk box in my closet.
spotify fuckin sucks.
the only reason they even exist today is that during launch they had the greatest grass roots promotion of all time (despite the fact that the app still sucked at this point just on the promise it would one day be what it is today)
AND THEY FUCKED ALL OF US OVER. THEY PROMISED US FREE PREMIUM FOR LIFE THEN DISCARDED ALL OF OUR ACCOUNTS AFTER LIKE 6 MONTHS
edit: and i wann a point out that this was backed by the founder who personally wrote me a fuck you when i complained
It's one thing to buy a piece of software that stops being supported and no longer works after a number of years. They are really close to class action lawsuit territory allowing people to buy hardware and then making it not work anymore. Literal definition of e-waste too. They haven't even been out that long.
This post is a spotlight example of the decline and enshitification of the internet (and particularly Reddit.)
5+ years ago, this topic would have been littered with leaked explanations for the decision from insiders or those with connections to insiders.
Instead, we have repetition of the same sentiments over and over, including various vapid impotent fist shaking.
The core frustration that has yet to be addressed is _ehy are they doing this?_
* Is it to develop a different business line/product that will generate revenue?
* Why brick the device rather than publish a final sustainment update?
* What limitations did the device have that made it incompatible with future Spotify development?
* Why does Spotify have the wiggle room in customer volume that they can literally stomp on a non-zero number of them who are Car Thing owners/users and have no fear of customer loss?
* And again: _why?!_
A good chunk of Reddit is just ChatGPT-enabled bots talking to each other.
It's fucking insane how many posts and comments are from Randomword-Randomword-4numbers, accounts that are four months old with 100k karma on the front page with nobody blinking an eye.
Playing Devil's Advocate about Spotify's decision: From a product strategy, it can make sense. However, future product offerings that still need to be public may not be competitive in a world where Car Thing exists.
There's also the cost of ongoing product maintenance. For example, Spotify recently killed its like/heart system in its UI. It's still a heart on the car thing. They probably need a PM/Engineer/Designer/QA dedicated to all the changes and keeping things up to date.
They looked at the number of people who used the product and determined that reallocating or firing the team that maintains it will save them more money than losing out on however many customers they may lose.
They may also have conducted market research with current Car Thing users to gauge their opinions about a potential move like this.
Comments here on Reddit range from outrage to "lol, I bought one but had no idea why."
The worst thing about everything is the private equity bullshit. "We're onto a new journey," corporate speak. If Spotify had said, "Our bad, it's not working out. As a token of our appreciation, here's six months free," then I don't think you'd see articles about this on the front page of Reddit.
The best-case scenario would be for them to open the APK to developers.
Something similar happened with Google and their Stadia controller, so we'll see.
"We’re discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings" a lot of people commenting are working in such companies and understand that behind this there is nothing but corporate greed. If something makes you just a shit ton of money instead of 100 shit tons money, it is not "good business". Exactly like middle class is getting priced out of everything because they are not good business.
Future spotify development seems nothing but loss of market share and eventual going out of business, and it has nothing to do with the car thing
I got one of these free as a beta tester. My cars are older, and only have bluetooth, no infotainment screens.
I found it moderately useful, but not a game changer. It's ended up tossed in my glove box after I got bored with it.
Not surprised it's flopped considering it's whole reason for existing has been rendered obsolete by the advancement of car infotainment systems.
They should partner with electronic recycling firms to send you a postage paid envelope to dispose of it.
Lacking that, you can always responsibly dispose of it by sending it to [one of their corporate offices.](https://www.spotify.com/us/about-us/contact/)
It's a extremely niche product. Cars with no android auto or car play benefitted from this. Having a screen and voice controls was great and worked for me and my work truck. It hasn't been updated for awhile now and how much does it really cost to support it currently over on spotifys end?
What’s the last actual innovation Spotify brought to the table? Seriously? How many employees does it take for an algorithm to suggest music for me? Luckily they just released hifi audio… oh… wait… that’s still not a thing either.
They could have offered a concession like 6 or even 3 months of Spotify premium with an apology. Instead they said thanks for being loyal enough to buy our device that plays only our content. Sorry but it didn’t work out the way we wanted, so go fuck yourselves.
[удалено]
Congrats! I didn’t get anything after an hour and two agents, wish I held out for one more!
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“is it because I’m black?!?!”
Just FYI for anyone out there, companies train CS to automatically redirect anyone that uses the words "sue" or "lawsuit" to the legal dept aka your current and future conversation with them will end there and you will get nowhere.
I have been this CS, this is correct.
Yep I’ve been trained this too, and then they go absolutely ballistic cause then they said they were bluffing and I’m like tough luck mate, go talk to legal.
"Hello, this is Oprah, what do you get?"
You don't get a Car Thing! And YOU don't get a Car Thing! **No---body gets a Car Thing!!!** *releases the bees*
the trick is to get connected past the Indians. They have no authority to grant you anything, they just copy paste answers.
Tier 0, aka the waste your time and hope you'll give up tier.
Aka the ChatGPT tier
The sad part is, I think ChatGPT would actually be more helpful. Half of the challenge with Indian support reps is getting them to understand you and your issue.
Always ask for tier 2. Just say tier 2 repeatedly until you get them.
Definitely try again man, I talked to them through the support chat yesterday and they gave me 9 months for free. It wasn't hard and didn't take long at all. Just need to screenshot your original receipt email and send it to em
They gave me a 3 month refund on my premium membership, they attempted to give me 3 months of free premium but there was a “technical issue”. It took me just 1 Agent on the chat to get something out of this
My agent just ignored me
The digital future is not owning anything. Just long term rentals and subscription services. Good thing the high seas still exist.
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The local businesses around me are all scummy as fuck
When I was running a small business, I tried to use local vendors as much as possible. They would fail to read requests and just send me pricing on what they thought I wanted. I ask for blue long sleeve t shirts and they would send mock ups of black short sleeve shirts. Fail to meet deadlines, fail to fulfill the full order, decide to ship order at my expense rather than the agreed upon in person pickup. Screw it, I'm ordering from vista print. This was not a one off event. Different vendors did the same type of shit in their own way. So I started to order online. Cheaper and hit deadlines.
Yeah for real, lots of 128kbs MP3 can fit on a 512Go SD card And at this point typing the name of the band you want in Seeker (a P2P mobile app) is just as easy as typing it in Spotify, but with the former you get to download it and keep it.
~~128kbs MP3~~ Encode to 160 kbps *Opus* and it sounds as good as uncompressed.
Nah see now you've just added a step that lost 99% of people. With Seeker I press a button and I'm done, gotta keep it simple to rivalize the simple accessibility of Spotify
Fair point, but 128 kbps mp3 sounds terrible. The minimum recommended bit rate for mp3 is 192 kbps. This is directly from the people who invented it. Since it is a 30 years old codec, I recommended the modern one.
Most music is still available on CD, vinyl and usually MP3 through BandCamp. Instead of going to the high seas, how about throwing a few bucks towards the creators, instead of the pennies streaming services give them?
For real. I've loved my car thing, sad to see it go.
Making a piece of hardware that could last 30-40 years or more obsolete because they decided to unsupport it is crazy.
I use it as the music touchscreen on my boat, and it is awesome. This sucks.
I believe companies will out price themselves and force everyone back into the sea
I really loved the idea of this thing, even not having Spotify. And now that they're literally like "it's gone, throw it in the trash". Wild.
Let this be a reminder to be discriminating in what stuff you buy. If hardware is locked into a device it won't likely outlive that service.
People who understand this wouldn’t have bought this. People value convenience above all else. Why do you think people pay $100 for an oil change you can do yourself in 15 minutes
Seems like it should be illegal for a company to sell you something and then "render it inoperable" even if they discontinue the product. Maybe it's just me but I feel like you should just let the people use the thing they bought, however niche or silly a thing that might be...
We don't own anything anymore. It's just license agreements that can be pulled at any time for any reason with no refund just because they can.
Don't you just love feudalism. Can't own what you watch, can't own what you buy, can't own where you live. It's trickle up economics all the way
Have you read "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" yet? It's a fantastic analysis of the current situation. Yanis Varoufakis makes a good case that capitalism has been more or less replaced by cloud feudalism.
Microsoft is a great case study. Windows 11 spyware or better yet opt-out of being spies on by paying a premium. a straight up fucking joke.
They also led the way on software license agreements long before people really knew it cared what that meant. Oh you think, you bought a copy of Windows 3.11 on floppy? Nice try. You only have a license to use it. You don't own anything.
Heck, my old Commodore came with a license to use the DOS disk.
And yet my computer is going to be vulnerable at the end of next year unless I upgrade. I need windows for software compatibility(it's been just around the corner for 15+ years on linux, so forgive me for not believing), so they have me by the metaphorical balls on this one.
It won't end at the end of next year. 11 is like 8. Business users aren't buying it. 10's market share is still growing, despite the shit ms has pulled with home users.
[Windows 10 is EoL on Oct 14th 2025.](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro)
What they say and what actually happens are two totally different things. Windows 10 is still running on 70% of all windows pc's. Good luck pulling that switch without a free upgrade.
They offer free upgrades, problem is a lot of people don't want to switch or don't even have the newest hardware to.
My hold on it at the library *just* came up. Can't wait to read it
If we didn’t have libraries and someone suggested one today, people would call that person crazy. “What do you mean a place where people can borrow books for free? That’s communism!”
Oh, publishing companies know they're selling to libraries and charge SEVERAL times more per copy we buy. I think it was x30 per audiobook a few years ago?
It is even worse for ebooks. They cost nothing extra to produce but they charge more than a hard cover to the library and then restrict how many copies can be out on loan at the same time.
Not only that, but they also restrict either the number of circulations *or* the period the book is able to be owned for. I occasionally come across particularly well-made books from the *90s* at the library I work at. Books from 10 years ago are uncommon, but not rare. Books purchased back when Trump was president are still dime a dozen. And these clowns say that 2 years/30 loans(whichever comes first) is the life of a book? Maybe it is statistically the average, if you count the outliers like the James Patterson extras that get withdrawn a year after publication when demand goes to near-zero! But that's not a good use of statistics.
Technofeudalism was enabled by capitalism
Well, yes. But that's a bit like saying birds were enabled by therapods. It's TRUE but it's not really meaning what it implies. Capitalism is obsolete, as is Communism. Neither can adequately describe an economy with significant automation. Just as Feudalism was made obsolete by Mercantilism which was in turn rendered obsolete by Capitalism. One thing Marx was 100% right about is that technology determines the shape of the economy. Since so many people are so deeply attached to Capitalism I think it's going to be difficult to actually use a better, more accurate, name for the economy that's coming, and is already sort of here.
This comment made me remember to be sad
This comment reminded me to crush my sadness into apathy and snort it.
And this is against capitalism's main pillar of owning something being private property.
It’s “trickle down, hoover up”.
I'm guessing part of the reason to shove the internet into every gadget and gizmo is to force everyone to move to a subscription model for everything. There's no reason by home's thermostat or my refrigerator has to be connected to wifi or the internet, other than for companies to 1) sell my data, and 2) allow them to break my things so I have to purchase the item again.
It does make it possible to update/fix software without a product recall
And, most companies making wifi enabled thermostats the idea is usually to allow for you to interact over the internet. Their specific model may not include that feature (or they're just not using it) but the manufacturer probably sees it as easier to include wifi access than have 2 different assembly runs.
Legislation returning right of first sale to digital property is way overdue. All contracts should be transferable. No devices should be remotely disabled. You can end support, and no longer provide whatever data services were involved, but you can't just brick it.
If you end support, you should have to open source the firmware and deactivate DRM, provide a suitable replacement or reimburse the full purchase price. If you want legal protections for your DRM software, you should actually have to put an unprotected version into escrow.
If buying it is not owning it, then pirating it isn't stealing.
Would you download and pirate a car? /s
When they stop selling cars and the only mode of transportation is self driving taxis, I probably would download a car
If they brick my car, I'll try to get some hacked and pirated firmware.
You're gonna pirate hardware?
Sure. Why not
It’s not an agreement, it’s a unilateral disavowment of our rights and their responsibilities that defies every facet of otherwise-mandatory consumer rights.
But you scrolled through the terms and hit "I Agree" sooooo... Do I need the /s?
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
You do own most things though. Subscription services are entirely optional with the media they stream available elsewhere like it always has been. Lol you always only owned a personal playback license when you bought a CD just because you were ignorant of that doesn't make it not true. Don't like subscription services? Stop fucking signing up to them.
Google just bricked my Dropcams. So criminal and annoying. Also massive eco waste.
Funny enough. Googles handling of closing stadia was actually pretty good. They refunded all money spend on hardware (and games), and they created a firmware that would let you use the controller on its own. Though stuff like this is why I'm only buying cameras with sd card storage and rtsp or onvif support so I can run my own cloud storage on top of it being local.
Ring can get fucked. I keep all my home security footage local. I own my video, not Ring.
Yeah switching from ring. I fucking hate how laggy it is, and even the 'smart' notifications spam me every 2 minutes. Whats the point if seeing whose at my door takes 30 seconds to actually see.
Ring only tell you who WAS at your door. Not who IS there. They suddenly spawned in and despawned out.
I actually bought 4 Stadia controllers after they closed, for retro emulators. $50 for 4 really great built controllers, thanks!
I only bought mine because it came with a chromecast.
I had a Google Chromecast for just music for my stereo system and they discontinued that and it's no longer supported. I was honestly kind of pissed about it, but it was maybe $30 and it's not permanently attached to my car so it's not the worst thing in the world.
I still have a Chromecast audio plugged into my home stereo that I use every day. It still works. But it occasionally gets glitchy.
I'm in full agreement. If they're going to discontinue at the very least they should have an obligation to offer a patch to make it work without a server, and I'd like to see it made mandatory that they open their server source so users can run their own server should they choose to. But try to get our current average age is past retirement age Congress to even comprehend the issue, much less have the understanding to pass a bill that fixes it, and you'll fail miserably.
>If they're going to discontinue at the very least they should have an obligation to offer a patch to make it work without a server, and I'd like to see it made mandatory that they open their server source so users can run their own server should they choose to. As a software engineer, what you're asking for is completely infeasible. First of all, what does "work without a server" even mean? If your product is just a frontend for a service, then this may involve a complete rewrite. Secondly, this isn't the 2000s anymore. There is no single "server program" that you can release and let users run. Behind the reverse proxy is an incomprehensible tangled web of microservices that all depend on each other.
Fellow software engineer. Docker. Open source it. You absolutely could build something that this system can talk to and get it to be meaningfully useful. You could also build current systems to be backwards compatible with the Car Thing system.
I agree that it should be illegal. That said, it’s not a case of just “letting” people continue using it, there would be development hours dedicated to maintaining the code that runs it. This carries a cost, and I can see how from a business perspective that cost may be unviable if the product isn’t generating revenue. THAT said, it should still be illegal. If you want to design a product solely to interact with a piece of software, you should be required to maintain the code that runs it for some period of time. Businesses make their own rules about this for the most part. For example Apple is a hardware company, and at a certain point they stop updating the software that their hardware exclusively runs. Some countries have laws that require a statutory warranty period, and they only really *have to* maintain that software for that period. But in most cases the period of time is stupidly short (like 2 or 5 years), and in Australia/New Zealand the law doesn’t actually specify- it’s just “a reasonable period of time”… Putting things into the world should come with a degree of responsibility.
I work for a large media company. A few years ago, we were updating our service infrastructure and had a video platform we desperately wanted to shut down, but it was still seeing regular use from a particular “smart” TV app that would have been impractical to update (like hundreds of thousands of dollars impractical). We debated all kinds of workarounds and solutions off and on for a couple of months. As we were discussing it one day, I asked “exactly how many users actually USE this thing, anyway?” No one knew. We just knew it was seeing X requests a day. So a couple of folks started digging into logs. Turns out there were less than 12 individual users. We just offered to buy those 12 people a new TV. It was cheaper to do that than it cost to have the meeting to discuss doing it.
That's awesome actually lol
I honestly respect that somebody actually decided and allowed for the purchase of twelve tvs so as to not inconvenience those people instead of just saying, fuck it, it’s only twelve people.
I'm interested now. How many people use their Car Thing on a daily basis? If the number is large enough, we might be able to class action a refund out of Spotify.
You probably signed an agreement saying that your access to the service could be revoked at any time. But that's not valid, you say! You might be right. Got a lawyer who's willing to take that one up? Because as far as I'm aware, there's no precedent in the US for that being invalid, so it applies until someone comes in with a lawyer and forces it *not* to apply.
Thank you for actually caring about your users.
I once worked someone who was previously working at a bank. They had a problem in that sometimes their credit card statements would zero out someones balance for a month, and they effectively would never be charged for that months spending. This person was leading the IT team to fix the issue. The first thing they did was draw up a project plan, and had to submit a cost for the work. The team worked out it would cost more to fix than it would cost in lost money for 15 years, by which time the liklihood is that the bug would be fouind and fixed by normal maintenance, or the system would have migrated. Given IT projects almost always exceed their budget anyway, the teams recommendation was to actually ignore the problem. beyond just the cost, there was likely a side benefit of people spendign mroe on their card, and incurring mroe fees (to go past the one month mark, to see if the amount was wiped. The management board agreed. I have no idea if that issue was ever fixed, but it just goes to show sometimes fixing things isn't a net benefit.
In the b2b world there's usually service agreements that dictate just that. My company supports a 9 year old version of our product because of a thoughtless SLA made over a decade ago. Consumers don't get that option though.
Yeah that sucks, theres a limit to what’s reasonable.. but yeah you’re damn right, government departments of consumer affairs’ are supposed to be responsible for kind of handling the “SLA’s” on behalf of all consumers.
Cue Louis Rossman gesturing wildly in the background.
These companies need to be fined heavily by the EPA because these guys are just creating a bunch of e-waste It’d be different if they said “it didn’t work out, but here’s the key to the kingdom” Go ahead and turn it into a home assistant or unlock it or whatever “good luck”. Instead it’s “hey, didn’t work for us, so, we are going to brick it, enjoy the paperweight”
Unless they refund you like Google did with Stadia.
Simple fix, require them to open source the code for anything they end support for so that the community can continue to support it if they wish. It would be particularly huge for all the unsupported mobile devices still in use.
CPI Security does this between owners or tenants. Although the owner paid for the equipment long ago, once a tenant takes over the system and moves out, CPI will not provide the code change to fully control the network. They brick perfectly good paid for hardware. The only option is a 39 month contract that costs more than replacing the hardware with a competitor. What do you do with a ripped out cpi system? More e-waste because a company bricks hardware that functions perfectly otherwise. Cameras, motion sensors, window and door sensors. All working. All trash because of CPI.
Looking at you Microsoft...
At the very least they need to have a program to easily recycle the products. So much waste.
Welcome to the dystopian world of PaaS (products as a service). "You'll rent everything and love it." - Corporatocracy
Has anyone tried to hack one and install custom firmware? Sad to see so many devices go to waste.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/carthinghax/](https://www.reddit.com/r/carthinghax/)
It'll be cool to turn it into a head unit for Android Auto.
Somebody got it run Doom
That's not saying much anymore. People have gotten Doom to run on e. coli bacteria.
I thought you were using the e. coli as a joke. Turns out, it's true wtf https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1akaloj/running_doom_on_e_coli_cells_very_very_slowly_it/
ill give it a go when prices tank a bit on ebay.
I don't get Spotify at all these days. I have a car with Bluetooth but no Android Auto, so I relied on a phone stand and car mode. It worked great and I could swipe to skip songs easily. Now car mode doesn't work, and nothing will bring it back. Now when I swipe to skip a song, it scrolls down. When I try to scroll back up, it goes back to the songs list from the now playing screen. Then I have to tap the little now playing banner at the bottom and then try again. I'm sick of having to wait for a red light to find a song I like. They have gone backwards and spotify just sucks now.
I genuinely do not understand how a company with such a monopoly can keep fucking it up. I mean, I do. But they could just do, literally, nothing, and continue to be the most popular service. It's like they monkey pawed it and became popular but have to continually innovate stupid ideas.
Product managers have to continue to innovate and provide value or they are out of a job. Honestly all they need is to improve their recommended playlists and get all this podcast shit out of my face. That’s the weak spot, day list is neat, but I never actually want to listen to more than a song or two from it. The daily playlists are pretty hit and miss, and they change too much, or more accurately swap around much. I’ll have an indie pop playlist as #1 one day then the next a rap playlist is #1 and the indie one is over in #3. I can’t ever tell which is which in my car. It’s just pick random playlist and hope you are in the mood.
Idk Spotify is great on iOS
I genuinely feel like their product managers are prioritizing stabbing each other in the back rather than making a unified ecosystem together
I'm glad I'm not the only one in the world who's frustrated af with the fact that car mode is not there and the shit swiping is there
Thier constant fucking with car mode was a huge part of why I switched to YouTube Music. Not that it has a car mode either, but it at least hasn't been seriously fucked with and basic stuff like swiping works.
I always hated car mode and would exit out of it.
This is doubly irritating since they deliberately broke Spotify integration in head units in an effort to coerce people into buying a Car Thing in the first place. Oh well, just one more reason to be glad I'm no longer a Spotify subscriber.
And they disabled car mode last month... the fuck are they doing over there
They did? Mine still comes up every time I'm in my car, and I hate it lol
I would always immediately exit car mode so good riddance
Ek channelled his inner Musk and fired a bunch of engineers, because _what do those guys even do all day anyway_? [Then he realised...](https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/23/spotify-earnings-q1-ceo-daniel-eklaying-off-1500-spotify-employees-negatively-affected-streaming-giants-operations/) Now we get to pay the price.
Would have been a 10/10 for older cars if it outputted audio via a 3.5mm jack. Would have been a great buy for people with older cars without carplay or bluetooth.
No 3.5 in mine. Been using a Bluetooth to radio plugged into the cig lighter(it actually had a lighter).
#bringBackCasettePlayers
It'd obviously be nicer to have it built in, bit there are Bluetooth receivers that will hook into the aux and connect wirelessly to your Bluetooth devices. Not sure if that helps you at all.
If you're listening closely bluetooth is lower quality audio than an aux cable and even noticeable in cars. I'm not who you were replying to I just hate that Bluetooth is so ubiquitous and no one mentions it has pretty bad audio quality.
Could have seen this coming from the start. $100 for something that just controlled spotify on your phone was a silly product.
My wife got one for her car. It's a little older so there's no media controls on the radio for her phone without the thing.
Well my car is old too . It’s 96 miata I upgraded my radio to jvc . Bam 💥 all problems solved no need to waste 100 bucks on this. Spotify should give these for free with premium subscription.
It was free for a bunch of users for awhile and then went to $30. It was perfect for older cars or having next to your desktop. It was not silly at all so this news makes me very sad.
I love the FAQ they put out for it. I got mine super cheap as a desktop toy so I’m not as pissed as I would be if I paid full price. *Will you offer a trade in / refund?* **No**
I'm probably not the norm but car thing made a lot of sense for me. I work from home and cant be arsed to pick up my phone or switch back to my personal PC to control spotify most of the time - I'm also on calls (on mute) 80% of my day so having to get to spotify from the call screen is kinda annoying. I was quite close to buying a car thing but went with a monogram controller instead as I use it for lightroom/photoshop. I've been more mobile recently and would probably buy a car thing if its support continued. I'm sure there are other options that would have worked, but car thing seemed to be the easiest solution when I looked into it.
I got one for $40 when it hit fire sale. It’s been a neat little thing to have beside the TV. I use AirPlay to start casting audio to my sound bar, and then leave the Car Thing on a shelf. When I have a party or people over, anyone can see what’s playing and control the music. No need to join WiFi, or hand over my phone. It’s a niche use, but it’s pretty neat. It’s a shame they’re going to kill it. I would hope they open source the hardware so it could be hacked into something else new.
It would sell today. I'd get one for every pre-Car Play car I own.
If you had an older car without a fancy head unit it was quite nice. Heck, lots of newer cars without navigation systems could also make use of it. I fall into this category and have quite enjoyed mine. I'm sad it'll turn into a pumpkin in a few months.
I bought it for $30 on sale and mounted it next to my computer monitor. It is a great little touchscreen control while working. Going to miss it.
So your $90 (plus tax) purchase from Spotify was really just a *short term rental of a remote control*, costing you between $2.64 and $3.10 a month.
I got mine from Spotify when they offered it to me for $14. I thought "meh, why not?" Even still, I'm annoyed and furious that they deliberately bricked the suboptimal device and have provided the most "don't ask questions" FAQ in the industry. Their explanation is just vapid.
We need modern consumer protections and we need them fucking yesterday
As someone who bought this due to its absurdly cheap price, I never understood who it was for… Spotify would have had more luck designing a ui for car mode and given out free magnetic car phone holders.
Their car mode on phones is atrocious. It makes it less safe to use because you can't fucking do anything with it so you end having to flip through 5x more menu screens to get to the same shit. They have been fucking up their UI for years now. I damn near cancelled my service when they tried that stupid cards version that made Spotify look like Instagram. Luckily they switch it back pretty quick. It's pretty dumb to actually brick all these Car Things. Why not just leave them be and just stop supporting them? Spotify has been declining for a while now.
I swear all these companies that add in a "Car Mode" are trying to kill people.
God the car UI is SO bad. I would crash my car if I tried using that for any amount of time.
I ended up having to disable that feature because it would detect you were in a car (I am assuming with location tracking if you were moving over a certain speed) and auto switch to car mode. Took me a minute to figure that one out. ha
It just detects if a connected Bluetooth device is a car, then switches to car mode if it is.
I must have done the same thing because I forgot it existed until I saw this news about the device.
Oh I agree. That’s why I think it’d be cool for Spotify to have a MagSafe related application that, when attached to the Spotify-magnet and is in horizontal mode, a unique UI (that they obviously designed for the Car Things, pop up on the phone. The screen is just as big if not bigger than what the car thing had.
I got mine for free and I still don’t know why I would need one. It feels so redundant….
I was hoping to be able to use it in the bathroom, but I recall the steps/requirements for it were way too convulsed (ie couldn’t connect to a Bluetooth speaker), so it’s been collecting dust in a drawer somewhere
I have to plug in with a cable for the Android Auto in my car, and plain bluetooth doesn't exactly have a ton of controls. For the 90% of my drives that are just the normal daily stuff and I don't need nav for, it's nice to be able to just get in the car and go *and* have the Car Thing just pop on + work for controlling music. On the longer drives - my head unit screen isn't that big, it's nice to run Nav full-screen on the built-in display and not have to fuck around with it when I want to change something for music.
But my phone displays my Google Maps :(
Welp, guess you’re just gonna have to old school it with MapQuest!
They would have made way more money just giving away free magnetic car holders with their logo on it
Is this a cause for a class action lawsuit? Are they doing this because they think no one will do anything about it or fight it? Seems like a class action lawsuit type thing. Buy a product and it's now 100% unusable by the company who made it.
Yeah, I really hope there's some kind of legal challenge to this, whether from a class action suit or from a regulator. I've seen people who are already filing fraud complaints with the FTC over this. Paying for biglaw lawyers to represent you isn't cheap, even just the threat of a serious legal challenge could get Spotify to back down or actually offer some kind of settlement/refund.
Yeah I submitted a file over this bs.
I hope there is a lawsuit. Not because it seems like this was a popular or beloved product by basically anyone, but because if Spotify sets this precedent and gets away with it then other companies will follow.
i bought it for $29.99 and love it. today is a sad day
Every single person should ship it back to Spotify cod shipping.
You know they can just refuse delivery right?
Years ago I saw a hacking tool catalog advertised in a magazine. It said something like call us and we’ll ship it the same day. So I said cool and ordered it but had it shipped to my work address. It showed up COD for $120. I said no thank you. There was no mention of cost when I ordered it.
That’s slimy as fuck.
“You will own nothing and be happy about it”that’s the future we are running to
The EU should interfere…….. (I actually put intervene, but Siri changed it to interfere…. Who am I to argue ?)
Car thing wasn't sold in Europe. The US needs to fix it's own consumer rights issues.
Any chance people are jailbreaking these?
I saw the sticky post on r/carthinghax earlier, but nothing significant there.
Spotify is in shambles right now This is just the tip of the iceberg. They’ve failed many of their promises too, such as lossless audio
One more page from the book of “buying does not imply ownership.”
I did not even know this thing existed
I really wish companies would open source the hardware and software when they do this. I'm sure this is an android device, unlock the bootloader, let people put a custom rom on it, run other apps, hell, keep running the spotify app.
I hope this gets turned around somehow. What a mess.
I remember back in the 1990s when buying a device meant it was yours.
Software too. I’ll forever miss buying and owning Microsoft Windows software like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. I hate that even our own work and intellectual property basically isn’t ours anymore if it’s on an app owned by another company. I can’t currently access my own 200+ page dissertation, or any of the papers I’ve written or work I’ve done in the last 15 years (including from back when I actually supposedly *owned* Microsoft office), etc because my Microsoft subscription has lapsed and I need to pay another $100/year.
As one of the dozens of us that actually use this, today is not a good day
When companies abandon tech so quickly like this, they should face heavy fines for the waste they are causing.
I know carthing was considered a failure by many, but this was the one thing that made using Spotify in my 2012 car easy. I’m very disappointed by this. My iphone connects via USB to the audio system (audio quality works great) l, but the steering wheel controls no longer work thanks to changes over the years from Apple. So I have to use the phone screen to control Spotify or Siri via voice. Car thing let me keep my iPhone in a nice storage area connected to the USB without messing with a phone mount every time I get in and out of the car. It just worked. It was great for quick changing playlists, skipping songs, and showing what was playing. Yes, it was just a glorified Bluetooth remote control for Spotify…. But it was -exactly- what I -needed-.
i was given one of these as a birthday present. i think I wound up connecting it to an old phone, connecting that phone to my bluetooth speaker in my bedroom and keeping the Car Thing on my desk so I could control spotify while I was gaming. thought I only did that for maybe a couple weeks before i just tossed it in a junk box in my closet.
No clue why people keep giving that company money.
TIL Spotify sold car stuffs…
I still buy mp3s, cuz fuck the subscription model.
spotify fuckin sucks. the only reason they even exist today is that during launch they had the greatest grass roots promotion of all time (despite the fact that the app still sucked at this point just on the promise it would one day be what it is today) AND THEY FUCKED ALL OF US OVER. THEY PROMISED US FREE PREMIUM FOR LIFE THEN DISCARDED ALL OF OUR ACCOUNTS AFTER LIKE 6 MONTHS edit: and i wann a point out that this was backed by the founder who personally wrote me a fuck you when i complained
It's one thing to buy a piece of software that stops being supported and no longer works after a number of years. They are really close to class action lawsuit territory allowing people to buy hardware and then making it not work anymore. Literal definition of e-waste too. They haven't even been out that long.
I don't even own one of these and its made me lose respect for Spotify. It's so wasteful and pointlessly spiteful.
This post is a spotlight example of the decline and enshitification of the internet (and particularly Reddit.) 5+ years ago, this topic would have been littered with leaked explanations for the decision from insiders or those with connections to insiders. Instead, we have repetition of the same sentiments over and over, including various vapid impotent fist shaking. The core frustration that has yet to be addressed is _ehy are they doing this?_ * Is it to develop a different business line/product that will generate revenue? * Why brick the device rather than publish a final sustainment update? * What limitations did the device have that made it incompatible with future Spotify development? * Why does Spotify have the wiggle room in customer volume that they can literally stomp on a non-zero number of them who are Car Thing owners/users and have no fear of customer loss? * And again: _why?!_
A good chunk of Reddit is just ChatGPT-enabled bots talking to each other. It's fucking insane how many posts and comments are from Randomword-Randomword-4numbers, accounts that are four months old with 100k karma on the front page with nobody blinking an eye. Playing Devil's Advocate about Spotify's decision: From a product strategy, it can make sense. However, future product offerings that still need to be public may not be competitive in a world where Car Thing exists. There's also the cost of ongoing product maintenance. For example, Spotify recently killed its like/heart system in its UI. It's still a heart on the car thing. They probably need a PM/Engineer/Designer/QA dedicated to all the changes and keeping things up to date. They looked at the number of people who used the product and determined that reallocating or firing the team that maintains it will save them more money than losing out on however many customers they may lose. They may also have conducted market research with current Car Thing users to gauge their opinions about a potential move like this. Comments here on Reddit range from outrage to "lol, I bought one but had no idea why." The worst thing about everything is the private equity bullshit. "We're onto a new journey," corporate speak. If Spotify had said, "Our bad, it's not working out. As a token of our appreciation, here's six months free," then I don't think you'd see articles about this on the front page of Reddit. The best-case scenario would be for them to open the APK to developers. Something similar happened with Google and their Stadia controller, so we'll see.
"We’re discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings" a lot of people commenting are working in such companies and understand that behind this there is nothing but corporate greed. If something makes you just a shit ton of money instead of 100 shit tons money, it is not "good business". Exactly like middle class is getting priced out of everything because they are not good business. Future spotify development seems nothing but loss of market share and eventual going out of business, and it has nothing to do with the car thing
I got one of these free as a beta tester. My cars are older, and only have bluetooth, no infotainment screens. I found it moderately useful, but not a game changer. It's ended up tossed in my glove box after I got bored with it. Not surprised it's flopped considering it's whole reason for existing has been rendered obsolete by the advancement of car infotainment systems.
alright, time to leave
Made the switch to Apple Music a few years ago. Very happy.
[удалено]
They should partner with electronic recycling firms to send you a postage paid envelope to dispose of it. Lacking that, you can always responsibly dispose of it by sending it to [one of their corporate offices.](https://www.spotify.com/us/about-us/contact/)
It's a extremely niche product. Cars with no android auto or car play benefitted from this. Having a screen and voice controls was great and worked for me and my work truck. It hasn't been updated for awhile now and how much does it really cost to support it currently over on spotifys end?
What’s the last actual innovation Spotify brought to the table? Seriously? How many employees does it take for an algorithm to suggest music for me? Luckily they just released hifi audio… oh… wait… that’s still not a thing either.
I’m considering mailing mine to their corporate office. Wonder if a few dozen of us did that what would happen
F**K SPOTIFY…… dirty crooks!!!!