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.

[markpro]

This thing plays music as soon as I start the car, I'm sure your listening will drop for all users of it.

[boxirl]

I am interested!

[Manmeyco]

I liked that it worked.

[cupcakesandfun]

big-time agree. super disappointing, and super misleading to use the word "discontinued." there's no reason it shouldn't be able to work for as long as the internal parts will let it. old phones that can't get new software updates still serve their initial function. i can't understand why this can't be the same, except for corporate greed. absolutely disgusted.

[JoshBothell]

They tried to end our chat a number of times and each time I said something to the effect of "No, I have worked in customer support and I now work as a developer who regularly interacts with the support team. I know how this works and you are going to escalate my issue until I am speaking to somebody from the technical team about this decision"
I have been at it all day, but I am currently on my 4th escalation and am now communicating via email rather than the garbage chat app. There is hope here if you have the patience (or work from home and are petty like me).

[MrUnicorn]

Seriously I can't understand why they're being so close minded with it, lots of people use it for even outside the car. It's a fantastic little device to act as a music controller and is a travesty to see it go to waste like this.

[MrUnicorn]

Seriously spotify please just open source the thing and leave it to the community

[elibishop]

They couldn't have at the VERY LEAST offered a few months of premium for free to loyal customers who purchased this? This company is terrible at customer service and PR. 

[MrUnicorn]

Even if they just allowed you to connect it straight to the computer it would be a major W

[Jaaaaaaaaaake]

This is completely unfair I’ve been trying to talk with a rep to be refunded or made whole somehow. How is it okay for them to take out money and completely shut down something I use every single day. I don’t understand why they have to brick it why can’t it continue to operate without support for them?? SO LAME!

[mrbobdobolina]

This is a fun little device I have on my desk. I can think of so many uses for it besides Spotify.

[MrUnicorn]

There is honestly no reason to discontinue support for the device other than disdain for the paying customers that continue to support spotify every month. They really need to just give the device back to the community and open source it so we are free to enjoy it as we have been since we bought it.

[elibishop]

Didn't forget that everyone should be contacting places like Gizmodo to report on this. I'm sure there are people there affected by this as a tech blog.

[7jr-_qmr2hnr4]

I will be cancelling as well

[n80sire]

Completely agreed, it wasn't exactly a cheap item either, and now it's just e-waste. At the very least, release some info or a firmware update that let's us jailbreak the thing and use it for other projects, or maintain it ourselves in the OSS community.

Shameful, Spotify.

[elibishop]

In corporate speak, that means they are moving (or firing) the team to work on AI features and are just dumping the units. They probably don't care about losing several thousand customers in the bigger picture.

[MrUnicorn]

Look I understand the product probably didn't go as planned for you guys, but this device was always way more than what you marketed it as. And now  when you notify you're gonna disable it, you see people love this device! Lots of people were excited to buy it even after you offered it for free. Now that people have it, you want to brick everyone's device? Are you guys doing that bad financially that you need to save the server costs of a few hundred devices and invalidate all of your paying customers that bought the device and continue to use it daily? Just open source the thing and leave it in the hands of the community, who knows they'll probably make a better version that you can just repackage and sell again for a higher mark up.

I'm sorry to come off this way but I feel like it's a major waste and disrespect to the community to just disable these devices when it could easily be a win for all of us if you just open sourced it.

[aerity123]

I'm very confused why they HAVE to brick the devices. I'm a professional software developer and I can understand and appreciate the challenges they went to creating the Car Thing. Why can't Car Thing at least stay working on its last firmware version with bluetooth the latest Spotify version? The hardware is still pretty cool although I wish the processor was stronger - I'm sure some open source engineers will figure out a way to backwards engineer the device and make some use of re-purposing it.

[child-of-chaos]

I'm not sure there is a team working on it anymore, they discontinued the product awhile ago. It's the fact they are bricking the device that is what is upsetting. There is no reason why it cannot still be a controller via Spotify Connect. 

But apparently it's because they are committed to a superior listening experience, so come on Spotify, let's hear what that is. 

[snl07]

Yeah this is absolute**bleep**