Spotify Bricking the Car Thing

[Talon Hackbarth]

Summary

 Spotify is discontinuing the car thing, however, rather than just ending support, they will be actively Bricking the device! In there words "As of December 9th, 2024, Car Thing will be discontinued, and will stop operating. "

The car thing connects to your phone via bluetooth, and requires no active support on the part of spotify.

 

https://support.spotify.com/us/article/car-thing-discontinued/

 

Quotes

Quote

 " We have made the decision to discontinue Car Thing. This means that Car Thing will no longer be operational. This decision wasn't made lightly, and we want to assure you that our commitment to providing a superior listening experience remains unchanged. "

 

My thoughts

My car is too old to have a screen in it, so I use the car thing every day as a way to drive safely and play music. I cannot fathom why they are bricking the device and not just leaving it as is. I purchased mine less than a year ago, and am outraged that it will stop functioning for no reason. Screw you Spotify.

More Outraged People on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/1cywq4g/why_is_the_car_thing_going_to_stop_working/

 

[Mungaru]

"let's discontinue a product and then no longer allow the consumer to use hardware they PAID for because we don't want to support it anymore"

 

[Hellowpplz]

20 minutes ago, Talon Hackbarth said:

Summary

 Spotify is discontinuing the car thing, however, rather than just ending support, they will be actively Bricking the device! In there words "As of December 9th, 2024, Car Thing will be discontinued, and will stop operating. "

The car thing connects to your phone via bluetooth, and requires no active support on the part of spotify.

 

https://support.spotify.com/us/article/car-thing-discontinued/

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

My car is too old to have a screen in it, so I use the car thing every day as a way to drive safely and play music. I cannot fathom why they are bricking the device and not just leaving it as is. I purchased mine less than a year ago, and am outraged that it will stop functioning for no reason. Screw you Spotify.

More Outraged People on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/1cywq4g/why_is_the_car_thing_going_to_stop_working/

 

this is the equivalent of someone buying your phone from you (friend, family, etc), and after a few months you just take it and destroy it

[Nat4Sail]

I just read this email & made account to post about this. I am so frustrated by this!! Not only is it a poor decision in an environmental way, but their support page for listening to music in the car does NOT address a lot of scenarios. 
 

I purchased my Car Thing so I had a way to control music without touching my phone while driving. I have an older car with no fancy way of connecting, I can use an aux cable only. I use it daily for my commuting, I can easily add songs to my liked songs by clicking the heart. Now if I want to do this after 12/09/2024, I would have to pick my phone up, unlock, navigate to spotify, then click. 
 

I hope this gets enough media attention that they continue software support. I find it really hard to belive that they can't continue support for the product & just stop selling it

[BoomerDutch]

You do realise, most phones have widget/notification and spotify displays current playing. (it stays up until you dismiss or killed Spotify app.)

 

There's even heart next to it.

Without needing to unlock phone.

 

And set your phone volume on max and control just your radio volume.

 

[Nat4Sail]

1 minute ago, BoomerDutch said:

You do realise, most phones have widget/notification and spotify displays current playing. (it stays up until you dismiss or killed Spotify app.)

 

There's even heart next to it.

Without needing unlock phone.

I can use spotify & maps on my phone at same time on road trips with Car Thing

[BoomerDutch]

3 minutes ago, Nat4Sail said:

I can use spotify & maps on my phone at same time on road trips with Car Thing

My car has no screen just Bluetooth however it does recognise volume controls just like any Bluetooth devices and it can skip next song etc.

 

Bluetooth won't go away anyways.

[BoomerDutch]

Although i should've mentioned I don't agree with bricking the device that's just malicious and hardware damage.

If this is true at all.

[Nat4Sail]

5 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

Although i should've mentioned I don't agree with bricking the device that's just malicious and hardware damage.

If this is true at all.

Here's screenshot. I reached out to support & they basically said tough luck. Sent article request email to Verge to try to gain traction

[lanickel]

I'd be surprised if a Class Action doesn't get filed for this. Spotify had taken a lot of people's money for a product that they said will remain supported; then to just suddenly shut it down. I understand shutting down cloud-dependent features like voice control, but local remote control should remain functional. There is no reason the device can't continue to pair to my phone via Bluetooth and continue to act as a remote media control.

 

Spotify knows there are no good alternatives that are as support for as little effort, so they feel they can get away with things like this.

[Skipple]

Until now, the Car Thing went for around ~$100 for new in-box on eBay. I knew this because I wanted one for a while. Around two week ago, someone posted a TON of them, new, for $40/ea. I didn't have the extra spending cash and decided to pass. I think someone got advanced notice and dumped their stock.

 

[Skipple]

34 minutes ago, lanickel said:

I'd be surprised if a Class Action doesn't get filed for this.

"Oh gee-whiz Mr. Customer, our End User Licence Agreement that you signed says that you can eat shit and die. Sorry about that."

[Brando212]

1 hour ago, BoomerDutch said:

Although i should've mentioned I don't agree with bricking the device that's just malicious and hardware damage.

If this is true at all.

I don't even own a device and the decision to make it eWaste still infuriates me. We have too much eWaste with legacy tech as it is; a modern device like this they could easily open source the hardware spec so enthusiast people can repurpose it for other things like a Stream Deck or something.

[BoomerDutch]

11 minutes ago, Brando212 said:

I don't even own a device and the decision to make it eWaste still infuriates me. We have too much eWaste with legacy tech as it is; a modern device like this they could easily open source the hardware spec so enthusiast people can repurpose it for other things like a Stream Deck or something.

Like mirror screen or something.

Would be neat but probably not allowed because of car laws.

[Brando212]

3 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

Like mirror screen or something.

Would be neat but probably not allowed because of car laws.

just because it was originally intended for cars doesn't mean it needs to remain that way. it's perfect for a Stream Deck or Echo Show type device.

 

anything is better than just throwing them all in landfills. (because we all know most tech recycle programs are a sham)

[BoomerDutch]

1 minute ago, Brando212 said:

just because it was originally intended for cars doesn't mean it needs to remain that way. it's perfect for a Stream Deck or Echo Show type device.

 

anything is better than just throwing them all in landfills. (because we all know most tech recycle programs are a sham)

Yes but there's plenty safety reasons why those devices that was made for cars because people will abuse it and get distracted too much from watching the road. 

 

Well we can claim we aren't using it for cars but people will do it anyway.

 

It's actually logical really.

[JTuyen]

Literally just finished a head unit replacement for Carplay support yesterday because I wanted a Car Thing but with more. Sorry for manifesting this for you guys. But seriously, actively bricking a product even if it was unsuccessful? What a terrible decision. I've it get jailbroken to allow non premium users to use it, I wonder if there will be a bigger jailbreak for root access or something so it doesn't go to a recycling center in working condition.

[Brando212]

3 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

Yes but there's plenty safety reasons why those devices that was made for cars because people will abuse it and get distracted too much from watching the road. 

 

Well we can claim we aren't using it for cars but people will do it anyway.

 

It's actually logical really.

considering there are tablet docks for cars; people already abuse things plenty.

 

Either way, there are plenty of things they could have done besides telling everyone to just throw them away. Even if nothing official comes about, I wouldn't be surprised if XDA or similar group finds a way to jailbreak it.

[BoomerDutch]

1 minute ago, Brando212 said:

considering there are tablet docks for cars; people already abuse things plenty.

 

Either way, there are plenty of things they could have done besides telling everyone to just throw them away. Even if nothing official comes about, I wouldn't be surprised if XDA or similar group finds a way to jailbreak it.

Fair enough, xda is crazy enough to modify difficult devices so, surely they'll jailbreak it.

 

I'm happy that they exist.

[TetraSky]

Well, that's a class action lawsuit waiting to happen...

Just because they are dropping support for it, makes no sense to outright brick it. This planned obsolescence BS for hardware needs to stop.

[zikzak]

1 hour ago, Brando212 said:

considering there are tablet docks for cars; people already abuse things plenty.

 

Either way, there are plenty of things they could have done besides telling everyone to just throw them away. Even if nothing official comes about, I wouldn't be surprised if XDA or similar group finds a way to jailbreak it.

 

https://www.xda-developers.com/spotify-car-thing-root/

 

Hopefully the car thing can live on. It's great in my 2012 Infiniti coupe, really sad to see this decision from Spotify. Prob a result of the recent rounds of layoffs. 

[ARandomPerson]

I'm sorry, but I've never used Spotify. What the heck is the Car Thing? It sounds like they are in a room with a bomb and saying Android Auto or Apple Carplay will detonate it.

[Nat4Sail]

31 minutes ago, ARandomPerson said:

I'm sorry, but I've never used Spotify. What the heck is the Car Thing? It sounds like they are in a room with a bomb and saying Android Auto or Apple Carplay will detonate it.

It's a small display with a volume knob, touch screen, & some voice functions. It let's you nagivate spotify & your phone connects automatically to it with bluetooth. 

 

It's really useful if you drive an older vehicle that doesn't have android auto or apple carplay 

 

I've seen people with single monitor set ups use it with their PC too. Then they have an easy way to control audio while in games

[Faer-Anne]

10 hours ago, zikzak said:

 

https://www.xda-developers.com/spotify-car-thing-root/

 

Hopefully the car thing can live on. It's great in my 2012 Infiniti coupe, really sad to see this decision from Spotify. Prob a result of the recent rounds of layoffs. 

If anyone is following this, the link to the actual project changed not too long ago.  it's https://github.com/oddsolutions/superbird-bulkcmd and the blog post is https://oddsolutions.github.io/Spotify-Car-Thing-Root/   

Surprisingly, it's not android, but a weird linux derivation running an electron app.  Only 500Mb of memory, so not much can be done with it, but it could def see new uses.

Main thing is that if the wording of "will stop operating" means a proper brick of the os, then disconnecting them before then will be important.  It's possible they will decide to smash it as they leave, but what seems more likely is that the spotify app will have the code to communicate with it removed at that time, since they mention "factory reset then recycle".  Wouldn't need a factory reset if it was bricked.

[Nat4Sail]

You can now recieve a credit on your spotify account by reaching out to support. Must supply proof of purchase & purchase price screenshot. 

 

Still very upset, will cancel after December 9th of decision is not reversed