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.

[infini3]

Tried to get this device when it was offered for free, subsequently received an offer to then purchase this from Spotify and it has been great and worth the money in my opinion.

Bricking the device for those actively using it (without a suitable alternative solution) from Spotify is quite inconsiderate, giving me a very strong bait-and-switch feeling to the devices short history.

If this was planned on being discontinued as an experiment, this should have been clearly stated in the offer-terms sent with the emails to those invited to participate. Those who have purchased this device were not made aware that the functionality itself would cease to exist alongside device support.: offer-terms (spotify.com).

For those who opted to serve as pseudo Beta users for this device (especially those who did pay for the opportunity), this is a very poor way to treat those individuals. It may not be a large user base of the Spotify community that ended up using it, however I could argue the more active and dedicated Spotify users are amongst that group.

I would like to echo the sentiment from OP. Ending support for a device is part of any products lifecycle, but disabling the device itself to be used again in the future is not the right way to handle it. Please reconsider this decision and work with us to support those who have supported Car Thing.

[HAW02]

Was just told the same thing. 

[JoshBothell]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

iPhone + Car Thing

My Question or Issue

This is ridiculous. We spend almost $100 on crappy Spotify hardware because we wanted to support a cool product and now they pull this on us???

I am a longtime Car Thing lover and supporter and I am disgusted by Spotify's decision to betray their biggest supporters to save a few pennies. My girlfriend works with students with Special Needs and they ADORE the car thing. Being able to see the song and control music volume themselves is a huge positive for these students and makes transportation much easier. It is ridiculous that Spotify's stinginess is going to make her explain to a van full of Special Needs kids that their favorite part of riding in a car (which they don't enjoy) is being discontinued. 

I am furious at this decision and will be demanding a refund for the both of us. I am sorry but you cannot sell a luxury music device that runs essentially offline and then decide to forcibly brick it 3 years later. This is ridiculous and has essentially instantly inverted my previously positive opinion of Spotify. If this is not resolved and support for this offline device is not extended, I will be seeing all of you back on the Pirate Bay. 

Spotify, screw you for this decision and your community will not forgive this lightly.

[chrismh1]

This is disgusting, what a waste.  Spotify is creating massive waste if they render these useless.  What a disgusting business practice. They need to open source the software on these devices and give us all refunds

[irisluna]

Im greatly dissapointed too!! I paid $80 for mine, I use it daily, and I love it. They're not offering any money back or "trade-ins" Why shut it off entirely??

[JoshBothell]

IKR! I am a skilled developer, please spotify make some change so that we can at least do something with our car thing. I am so disheartened that I company I thought I liked would makes such a foolish decision and create a massive amount of e-waste.

[Bradey]

Apple music looks better and better everyday! 🤷‍♂️

[jlutz111]

They are also deleting all the comments regarding this issue on their Instagram...disappointing

[PunishedSnake]

I love that you will brick the device in half a year to put even more salt in the wound of paying customers

[sclaire1878]

I agree. I am equally as upset. I’ve wasted money just so they can “streamline” their stupid product. 

[skylararose]

Agreed! I was incredibly disappointed reading the email that there is no plan to open-source the firmware and documentation for a gadget that could have many other uses. Like the Kinect, Car Thing could prove to be a very useful piece of cheaper-than-its-parts aftermarket hardware.

[infini3]

There is a thread that has also started on this topic, I am very disappointed with Spotify's approach to EOL of this product.

 Don't disable the Car Thing in December 2024! - The Spotify Community

[irisluna]

I agree 100%. I'm beyond furious about this. 

[sarsir]

I'm honestly so upset by this. Why is it necessary to disable the entire device? Spotify suggests resetting it and checking with local regulations to recycle it, but realistically, the majority of these are going to end up in the landfill. What a shameful waste of money and materials.

[eriktherod]

I am thinking of starting an open-source reverse engineering repo on the Car Thing for custom firmware. If anyone else is technical or can help with this, please direct message me. I will look into getting a spare Car Thing for development and start on trying to dump firmwares and sniff the bluetooth protocol.

I have little faith Spotify will do anything except tell us "sorry", so it's on us to do the dirty work. Any help would be appreciated and shared with the community.

[Sadpigeon]

Their email seemed very cold and insincere too. They knew they would get backlash and they don't want to deal with it. It's very frustrating. I was already annoyed when they stopped updating the device for Android, but at least I could still use Spotify while dedicating my phone to maps.

[CarThingFan]

Its really disappointing to have the device bricked. I've already got it, there's no big reason it has to stop working. are y'all like significantly changing the backend or something and it's not going to work with the current software on the Car Things? or is this just a case of turning it off to turn it off?

Either way: would appreciate if y'all released an update or info unlocking the car thing for us to tinker with. if you don't want to support it anymore, let the tech nerds in the community try something with them.

[chrismh1]

spotify needs to refund these items and open the software so we can use the product after December,  this will create immense electronic waste

[JoshBothell]

I refuse to allow them to get away with this. I have been in chat with support for hours talking their ear off about how absurd this is. I know for a fact that there is communication between support and higher ups about how decisions are received and the right amount of complaining can change this. Everybody needs to open tickets and complain to support about this until they extend support or make it possible to hack these things.

[child-of-chaos]

According to Spotify's statement on the discontinuation of Car thing:

"This decision wasn't made lightly, and we want to assure you that our commitment to providing a superior listening experience remains unchanged."

I'd like to know then, if this is true, if anyone from Spotify would like to offically comment on exactly what they will be doing to provide a 'superior listening experience' from December since on the surface this announcement makes the listening experience worse.