Spotify car thing discontinued

[Bradey]

Plan

Premium family 

Country

US

Device

(iPhone xs

Operating System

Idk whatever iOS they on now

My Question or Issue

I have had Spotify since it came out; I upgraded to a premium plan with my family in 2018. The decision to stop supporting Car Thing breaks my heart. My truck doesn't have bluetooth or a display so when Spotify Car Thing came out I was ecstatic. I love Spotify I have always thought it was way better than apple music because they would try to make**bleep** like the car thing and they weren't some huge heartless corporation like apple. But this and the fact that our premium plan gets raised a dollar all the time has made me rethink my position. 

My whole family uses I phones and have been discussing switching to apple music for YEARS. I WAS ALWAYS THE ONE TO KEEP THEM WITH SPOTIFY. Now I am over it if you don't make this right and my car thing stops working in December we will be switching to apple music.

[Bradey]

Hi everyone,

Spotify made the difficult decision to discontinue Car Thing. We wanted to share this news months in advance to ensure that our users had plenty of time to prepare for this change, which is effective December 9. This was not a step we have taken lightly, but we want to ensure that any users who have purchased Car Thing have the opportunity to be refunded for the amount they paid for the device. Users are able to contact our Customer Support teams in this link .

In an effort to streamline the discussion and ensure all relevant feedback is centralized, we have merged all threads related to this topic into this one comprehensive discussion. Any new threads created on this topic in the future will also be merged into this thread. 

• FAQs on the Discontinuation of Car Thing

We encourage you to continue to share your thoughts and participate in the conversation below.

[irisluna]

Discontinue Car Thing and we'll discontinue out Premium subscriptions. Dumbest decision Spotify will ever make just to "streamline" their products. 

There's no way they actually thought this would be a good idea. 

[Psycho72]

Agreed! Bricking our devices is complete bs

[Diesal]

Plan

/Premium

Country

Usa

Device

(iPhone 13

Operating System

Ios

I understand discontinuing a product but why will it no longer be functional. I think it’s ridiculous and a slap in the face to the consumers who support your business to leave people high and dry.  No refund? No bill credit? Nothing? Just a “thanks for supporting us and buying our product, too bad for you as a consumer, we don’t feel like supporting the product we sold you anymore.”  I think this is complete bs and will definitely make me think twice  about continuing my service with your company.
Sent from my iPhone

My Question or Issue

[Mitch_Drz]

Completely agree with the original post. Absolutely disgusting business practice, highly unethical, and a horrendous creation of unnecessary e-waste. I’ve been feeling that spotify overall has been severely lacking in innovations lately. DJ is STILL in beta after more than a year, and if you listen to him with any regularity he just recycles the same old music and it is frustrating. Beyond this, now they are intentionally telling us to factory reset and dispose of a perfectly usable device? Tell those shareholders to relax, I’m sure they’re making quite enough money already. I will most certainly be canceling my subscription and switching to any other music provider that does not consistently disappoint their consumers. I hope that this decision is revised or reversed. Has nobody at Spotify heard of CSR? I am egregiously disappointed and enraged that they thought this was the right decision. Stopping updates/support is one thing. Completely bricking the device, offering no returns, and not even offering a convenient way to properly recycle it is disgraceful. At the very least they should be paying for them all to be recycled l. There was nothing in the original contract of the CarThing that functionality could be fully revoked. I hope that Spotify is slapped with a major class-action if something does not change. Despicable. 

[BrysonMenashe]

As things heat up, please let me know what avenue(s) you’ve taken to express your disappointment thus far!! I’d love to be among the ones who push back against stuff like this!!

[derrappelkopp]

I hope the Swedish government or the EU fines them for this **bleep** for intentionally creating significant amount of e-waste to safe a few bucks. 
Spotify, shame on you. 

[Shannonmcauliff]

My Question or Issue

I’ve been a customer for years. Spotify canceling the car thing will effect my daily life. I use it everyday, and now it will just be trash. I need Spotify to own up to them making a decision that puts the consumers in a tough spot. I think we deserve compensation in the form of subscription credit. And I believe Spotify should release a jailbreak so that the devices can live on and not become landfill waste. 

[era0]

Agreed. This is outrageous. Spotify is stealing thousands upon thousands from their customers for not fairly compensating them for this decision. A company cannot sell a product then deem it unusable without compensation.

[Brad110]

I was told they could offer ZERO concession for this. Truly a terrible customer experience and complete product misstep, it would have been easy to offer subscription concession equal to the cost of the unit and build customer loyalty. Instead they contributed to the enshittification of the internet.

[JoshBothell]

I want to urge everyone to send at least one email to a tech youtuber or journalist. If this decision to create a massive amount of ewaste for no reason were to blow up on the nice Swedish company they might see a reason to open-source or extend support for the hardware. They have already backtracked their refund policy in some cases so we ought to push for more changes to this decision. We must strike while the iron is hot rather than wait until December.

PLEASE! Spend 15 minutes of your day making some noise about this terrible decision and we may be able to prevent a massive amount of ewaste from hitting landfills.

Long term support for Car Thing or open-sourcing is relatively cheap for Spotify, but just telling us to **bleep** off is free. If we make this decision cost them something, then they WILL change course. We just have to force their hand. Make lots of noise, light them up on Twitter, email a YTer, Journalist, or even the FTC. Make Spotify change their mind, they will only listen to money.

END MANIFESTO

[BrysonMenashe]

In regard to the discontinuation of the Spotify Car Thing: This is ridiculous! There’s no reason for it to be unusable even if it’s not updated or supported. As a loyal customer to Spotify, I believe this is not an acceptable business practice. I paid for a product with the understanding that it would work as intended in perpetuity. It’s frankly messed up that they’re doing this without any input from the community!

[sclaire1878]

They’re deleting comments in socials 🫣

[era0]

Thanks for posting this. I just followed your advice and contacted some journalists. More needs to be done about this. 

[Spopovich98]

Wow. Despicable

[Mitch_Drz]

Completely agree. Despicable shareholder greed. The spotify experience is terrible now anyways, nothing like what they used to be. All giants fall eventually.

[manda5000]

Spotify should be ashamed for cancelling car thing with no compensation at all for those who purchased it and supported them. 

Everyone who bought the car thing, which is now garbage, should get a refund or at the very least account credits. To be offered nothing feels like spotify purposefully took our money for a worthless product and scammed us. I think there's laws against that. 

This is turning their backs on the very customers who supported them.

Do the right thing, Spotify, compensate those of us who purchased car thing.

[daddychan]

I agree that using the word "discontinued" is quite misleading. While I understand that there can be serious resources that go into maintaining a product, I think that the customers who paid for the hardware at least deserve a more detailed explanation as to why the device is being discontinued. Cancelling a service that must be constantly maintained is understandable, but a piece of hardware that connects via Bluetooth seems like it wouldn't require a team to continue developing it. Please provide some semblance of a real explanation to your customers, not just throwing out vague business words like "streamlining product offerings."

[Mitch_Drz]

Spotify's recent decision to make the CarThing device unusable by December is both highly unethical and environmentally irresponsible. This move results in a significant increase in e-waste, as perfectly functional devices are rendered obsolete and unusable.

Moreover, Spotify's overall innovation has been disappointing. The DJ feature, still in beta after more than a year, lacks freshness and variety, recycling the same old tracks repeatedly. Instead of enhancing user experience, Spotify is now telling users to factory reset and dispose of a functional device. This decision seems driven by shareholder interests rather than consumer satisfaction, despite Spotify’s already substantial revenue.

As a result, I will be canceling my Spotify subscription and switching to a music provider that respects its consumers and the environment. This decision by Spotify is a clear disregard for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) principles. It is infuriating to see a company take such a stance without offering returns or a proper recycling method. At the very least, Spotify should bear the cost of recycling these devices.

There was no indication in the original CarThing contract that functionality could be fully revoked. If Spotify does not reconsider this decision, I hope to see a major class-action lawsuit addressing this issue. This approach to handling product discontinuation is despicable and deserves widespread criticism and action.

[boxirl]

This is unbelievable, Spotify is essentially stealing our money and providing NOTHING in return. At the very least, they could offer is complimentary premium for the time that would be equal to how much we paid. I am seriously reconsidering my subscription if this is how they treat loyal customers. There has to be some sort of legal recourse, right? Not to mention, their original solution was "you can share your thoughts in the community forum!" what a joke...

[sadAboutCarThing]

Literally linked this and they said no still.