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.

[StellarJay]

Loyal Spotify premium family subscriber here for 10+ years. I've been having nothing but issues with every aspect of Spotify within the the last 6 months with only "we apologize for the inconvenience" type responses and no fixes. I learned of this decision by Spotify because I keep track of everything tech news related and this has got to be the most tone deaf self-serving slap to the face of your loyal customers and complete disregard for North American ideals I have ever seen from a company.

For discontinued and unsupported products there is a long history of best practices already in place and to try to hop on the "you don't own anything anymore" corporate greed train at this juncture has got to be one of the stupidest moves I've ever seen a company do. I know some low paid support employee is going to read this and I'm sorry that your company doesn't seem to give two $#!*$ about you or their customers because this will mean a mass exodus from Spotify to other music platforms who Spotify has fallen woefully behind of and likely a loss of at least a few jobs and typically support jobs are the first to go. Companies still haven't learned the lesson that by the time that last straw causes customers to finally leave, the loyalty of that customer is already way past gone and you won't be getting it back even if you back peddle and take back the last straw, they will be gone.

So sure, don't make the hardware anymore and don't support it, but to intentionally make it stop working altogether not only creates unnecessary e-waste, it just proves that your customers are nothing more than walking wallets to you and you don't care about providing a beneficial service at all by at least making minimal efforts to allow your customers to try to perpetually use the hardware they bought on their own.

I have to think there has to be another shoe to drop with this to intentionally break a piece of working hardware. I'll be cancelling my subscription and telling all my other friends and family to do the same. You don't deserve our loyalty because you're not showing any in return. I hope you get legally raked over the coals on this and slammed in the court of public opinion for being yet another greedy corporation kowtowing to your morally bankrupt investors. I predict that if this doesn't sink your company that you will be announcing some new hardware partnership in 2025 that you're clearing the way for and part of that deal was that manufacture making you sunset and disable the Car Thing so there's no chance of having to offer discounts or deals for the new hardware, probably has some sort of stupid "AI" integration too.

Again, I am sorry to the poor employee that has to read this rant but I hope your company decides to right the ship now because staying this course is going to lead to its slow and painful demise, mark my words.

[316j7o3auucu7oqrshr7]

I hope Spotify feel good about stealing people's money. I have better moral standereds than those whoever run the company. I don't steal people's stuff. Thats a basic moral pricinple. 

Here is a good video made by Louis Rossmann : https://youtu.be/ONxtLqGG32Q?si=3h4jR2fFuz3T3XvA

[child-of-chaos]

I hate the big middle finger from Spotify over all of this.

The PR speak of the original announcement pretending 'that they are committed to a superior listening experience', when they are actively making the service worse for Car Thing users.

The follow up email where the only update is to email customer support who cannot help or do anything. Completely just trying to make yourselves look good. 

and the 'We encourage you to continue to share your thoughts' post here... for what purpose? Nobody is listening, nothing has changed, nothing will change, you are just trying to pretend to care and hope users vent here rather than elsewhere online / social media etc and then get bored. 

Car thing was a failed product in the marketplace, but Spotifys customers should not be the one that have to pay the price for the failure, that is on you. Do the right thing and support your customers who supported your service and failed product that is the cost of doing business. It's not right just to screw up and then make those that supported you be the ones to pay the price. 

[jacy11x3]

please do not make my car thing stop operating. it is fully functional and has had no issues in the 2 years since i bought it. i use it daily and i have been using it daily for 2 years. i want to continue using it after december. 

if it really has to stop operating, make it easier for me to get a refund!!! i should not have to jump through hoops contacting my bank or recovering a deleted email from 2 years ago to get a refund on a (full functional) device that’s being shut down on YOUR end 

[izzydavis]

Why is Spotify Car Thing being discontinued? Just saying that it didn't perform well is such a cop-out answer. I've used mine religiously since I managed to snag one when it came out to a select few before being open for everyone. The only time I stopped using it was when I stopped driving everywhere because I lost my job. Now that I'm running around as a delivery person, I was so excited to be able to use it again, just to find out that I only get to use it until December? At least make it so it continues working, even if it never gets updated.

Main reason it's so frustrating is because "Car Mode" through the Spotify app doesn't work either, and the "Car Thing" was a perfect replacement for it. I think I get the app to go into "Car Mode" like, 10% of the time I'm in the car. And it's been MONTHS since it went into "Car Mode". 

Please rethink this decision, Spotify. Or make it open source. Making it so it's an electronic to be scrapped is terrible for everyone. I'd almost be willing to bet that there will be people out there trying to "jail break" it as soon as it's scrapped, if they aren't already trying.

[darxstarr]

Don't brick the car thing!!! Stand by your customers and make things right!!!

[lee_oades]

Just to clarify, I'm not remotely interested in a refund. Giving me back my money will not keep these devices out of landfills.

It is a lovely device that we all want to keep on using. Release the code to let the community support it.

I would suspect those that purchased a Car Thing are amongst your most loyal and supportive customers.

I have a Pebble watch and they released everything to allow the device to continue. And they were going out of business.

[bennett1jb]

I think this is related to the massive layoffs at Spotify. Now they don't
have the personnel to keep things going.

[zequfy]

“At Spotify, we’re always working to deliver new features and enhancements that our users love.”

… and then kill them and stomp on their hearts.

[kcjab]

$85 and no offer of a refund bc I can't produce the original receipt. Yet Spotify as a company only preserves the last two years of transactions. Yet I am supposed to come up with the information despite the fact that Spotify are the ones bricking a device that I have paid for

[Mwheeler2014]

I had that same frustration. If you can find the transaction in your bank
statement, they might take that. They did for me at least. Really annoying
but I got a refund.

[RS420]

as an early adopter of car thing, i am very happy with it.  i drive a 1991 truck with a cassette deck, so the car thing along with my fm transmitter make it very easy for me to listen to spotify every time im in the truck.  i dont need to pull out my phone, plug it in, set it up find a play list, etc.  i just say "hey spotify, play This Is Black Sabbath" and off i go.  

for safety purposes, its even better.  i have a much larger focused screen to see what i need to see, and can use the quick select buttons on top, or my voice to chance what i am listening too.  i dont need to fumble about in the app to change what i am listening to, therefore keeping more attention to driving.

there is absolutely no reason to completely disable this device, this increasing the amount of e-waste generated.  its a perfectly good device that works well for its purpose.   please leave it enabled and release the code so we can have 3rd party developers continue its life.

If not, i'll be forced to go back to using my Microsoft Zune, at least that still works and its from 2008

[mattisvensson]

Please let us all, if we want to, use it after that. To avoid even more waste. To take action of our responsibility for sustainability and allow us to use the API interface, the sourcecode or to modify the firmware to make it use as remote bluetooth media controller for our smartphones to stay safe on the road. Putting our smartphone on a holder to navigate between songs while driving is not the best way, because many of us get easily distracted by the phone itself.

Give that idea a chance, and use the opportunity to create something unique with this great community!

[Jy17]

I am done with Spotify if they do this. I hear Apple Music is doing better.

[markspl_]

Yout FAQ link does not work anymore. Thanks!

FAQs on the Discontinuation of Car Thing: https://support.spotify.com/article/car-thing-discontinued/

[zequfy]

After you receive your refund (which I have… gotta get SOMETHING out of this!) take the survey Spotify sends. Fill out the comment section and make sure they know this does NOT solve the issue. If they continue with the plan to brick Car Thing in December, the refunds won’t matter when our anger & disappointment resurfaces, and we remember why they lost our trust as users. Tell them you may still leave the service. This isn’t over. 

(btw… after you click send on the survey, they say “here’s some tunes to thank you” but there’s just a broken 404 page. Nice job Spotify!) 

[bennett1jb]

I bought my car thing directly from Spotify. So far no offer of a refund.
Everything I can find about it says there will be no refunds.

So they're only offering the refund to people that bug them enough?

[child-of-chaos]

I see some people here saying they have a refund/credit, how did they get this and did anyone get it without proof of purchase? I don't have it on this Spotify account or access to the receipt. 

[zequfy]

**bleep** took A LOT of back & forth (they couldn’t figure out how they wanted to do it for some reason) I DID have to produce my receipt (it should be in your email, no?) I clearly told them after I got it that it does NOT regain our trust nor does it solve the issue. Good luck! Hope you get your refund! 

[zequfy]

They censored me telling you to email support at Spotify dot com. Good grief!