If anybody at Spotify with the influence to make it happen is reading this: please publish an open source firmware loader (or specs to build one, or similar) to allow community driven projects to be developed on this hardware. You'd gain a lot of good will by doing this.
I bought one of these for $25 back then hoping someone would create something sweet with it. Well its still in the box, no cool hacks had been released last time I checked. I believe the thing barely has any ram.
If we could take this and rip out the existing frontend, I wonder if we could turn it into a Chumby-like device at the very least. Though I suppose the tricky bit is to enable the bluetooth connection for any kind of network data transfer...
If anyone at Spotify is reading this, I just cancelled my account. You guys deserve considerably less money than you have now, but this is the best I can do.
It's not a great move, but I don't think it calls for wishing harm on anyone, let alone a majority of people who at most had a hand in making something you did feel was useful enough to pay for.
It was possible to drive in silence before and it's possible now. Perhaps explore a radio station.
Don't denigrate him, he's done the one thing that is simultaneously most likely to affect change at a company, and also the hardest thing for an individual to do: vote with their wallet. He's right, Spotify does deserve less money for their godawful decent into the lower rungs of mediocrity.
Meh, when I boycott a place I just revoke my money and/or review the place accurately, but I don't posture about it. When I get bad food at a restaurant, I might mention it if it's really rough and ask for something different, but I'm not going to berate the server or kitchen staff; unimaginable. People have enough shit to deal with, like fearing impending layoffs and the likelihood that because the product didn't bring in enough money, they'll be out of a job for god knows how long if they don't turn things around.
I have personal grievances with my iPad, but I'm not about to say "If anyone at Apple is listening, I hope you do worse financially".
I presume they were a bit upset and chose overly broad language, it's not a big deal either way, I don't believe they truly wanted harm on anyone, it just seemed like a silly tone to choose.
> I'm not going to berate the server or kitchen staff; unimaginable.
Who is advocating berating staff? I don't see that in OPs post, nor my own. No one suggests being aggressive towards anyone. Saying the company deserves less money is a capitalistic statement aimed at the corporation, not its diligent employees. You're welcome to to silently withdraw your money from a place of business and leave them with no feedback as to why. But 'posturing' about the reasons of a boycott while also withdrawing money is a great way to attach feedback to an action the company might actually listen to.
There are engineers at Spotify who read Hacker News. They've noticed the threads. Maybe there's one reading at this very minute. Create a burner and speak your mind, comrade.
I think they probably fired anybody at Spotify with influence in the relevant teams in their Christmas cull. Which is probably why they are discontinuing it, because there is no one left who knows how it works.
I like how they don’t actually answer the “why” question, “streamlining” is not an answer. They basically said because we’re changing things and this is one of the things we’re changing. Not being snarky but imo it would have been better PR copy to just not have the question at all.
I've really enjoyed using the Car Thing in my 14 year old Mazda CX9. My car shows no signs of failing, so I don't anticipate replacing it anytime soon for one with Carplay.
The Car Thing is so much more convenient than unlocking iPhone with my face, opening spotify, futzing around on the phone to change songs or playlists or whatever. And its easily accessible to my passenger. Its a far better interface than phone for use in the car! Its one of the main reasons I haven't switched to Apple Music which is bundled with my cell phone plan. I guess Spotify just wants me to got to Apple Music.
You don't need to spend that much, especially if you DIY the install. I installed a cheap Linux based head unit (ATOTO F7 WE) in my wife's old commuter car last weekend. $180 Canadian for the head unit, $25 for an aftermarket wiring harness adapter. Took a few hours to splice the harness together and install the head unit in the dash.
The head unit's software is definitely a little janky, but it doesn't really matter as all she uses it for is CarPlay anyway. It even supports wireless CarPlay so she doesn't need to take her phone out of her work bag - our brand new Kia with an expensive infotainment system doesn't even support wireless.
The people who are unhappy about only getting 2 years of service out of an $80 investment are probably not the people who are giddy about only spending $2,000 on a new radio for their car which will be practically worthless once it is installed.
> We recommend resetting your Car Thing to factory settings and safely disposing of your device following local electronic waste guidelines.
It's not everyday that the manufacturer of a working product tells you "throw it in the trash". I wish someone would force them to make a recall instead.
Taking the piss, people paid $80 for these only 2 years ago. Make the waste of a PM that decided "it no longer aligned with the Spotify vision" tour the globe to personally pick up these things and hand people back their money.
I can't repeat this enough: there needs to be LEGISLATION against this.
If a product needs cloud functionality to operate, there needs to be a legal minimum number of years (5?), and the company should be required to prominently advertise the length of time (so they can compete to guarantee for longer periods of time, like 10 years).
Absolutely, just like I can live with minimum wage.
And companies can still stop selling the thing. They just need to keep the cloud servers running and maintaining their integrations with the rest of their code.
If maintaining servers for 5 years is the tipping point for them to judge that the product won't be profitable and therefore won't release it, then yeah it doesn't sound like it should be worth selling in the first place.
I think the courts are much better suited to resolving this kind of issue, because it's very product and advertising specific. Courts could easily rule that e.g. Spotify breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, or possibly civil fraud, or something else, by failing to prominently disclose the minimum number of years / bricking the devices too soon.
A judicial solution would be much more measured and flexible.
Unfortunately, lawyers and courts have a undeservedly bad reputation which is often created by poor legislation which is beset by political motives and disadvantaged by having to draft prospective rules that can apply to a broad set of differing circumstances.
There is legislation against this in many places. I don't know if this product was offered for sale in New Zealand but if it was Spotify is in violation of the Consumer Guarantees Act and must issue a refund to all customers who request one.
Car Thing is just a bluetooth remote control for Spotify or other audio applications. The music still comes from the phone - to the car's speaker system via whatever method your phone is connected (bluetooth, aux jack, etc..)
If that's really what it is then why does it matter if they won't be made anymore? There must be more to it such as always online DRM service also closing.
Nobody cares that it isn't being made anymore. People are upset that their already purchased devices are being turned into paperweights because they won't maintain the online infrastructure they required to use it. It's wasteful and unfair to the people who bought it and should not be allowed legally.
Yeah I understand that. That wasn't my point. If it was just a "bluetooth remote control" as the GP describes it why does it stop working when some remote service is turned off? It clearly isn't one.
This is infuriating. I bought the CarThing for a Christmas present for someone just six months ago.
I understand it was no longer supported at the time, but there is no reason why it couldn't still function as a controller, there solution is just to throw it away?
Hate the PR speak here "This decision wasn't made lightly, and we want to assure you that our commitment to providing a superior listening experience remains unchanged."
So what superior listening experience are they committed too exactly? When all they are doing is lowering the experience?
When their main competitors have been streaming high res, lossless and atmos content for a while now, it’s rough to see them claim they are committed to a superior listening experience with 320kbps ogg being the best they have in 2024.
Perhaps pruning projects like this helps them deliver on higher quality streams, which they have been alluding to for years now. Spotify Hifi was announced in 2021.
I'm not sure how it would. The Spotify Car thing is just a controller for your phone, it doesn't actually do the streaming of the music, that is still handled by the app on the phone. It's just a kick in the teeth for users that bought into it, I get it's a failed product but that should be the cost of business that they support it at least somewhat, it wouldn't take much, but they are killing it completely.
The biggest benefit of the Car Thing for me was flawless voice control that leagues ahead of Google Assistant, the Car Thing was much more than a screen that showed album art.
I have to second this, I've never had an issue with Car Thing's voice recognition. As you'd mentioned, even in a windy or loud car and with tough to pronounce names, it's always understood what I was asking - or opening the correct playlists from my library.
Yeah this is absolutely sh*t news to be getting in an email from Spotify...
I use my CarThing as dedicated Spotify controller for my desktop PC and they're just straight up making it a paperweight rather than leaving in the current level of support for it so it could still function in the future without the need for constant updates (not that there ever seemed to be any anyway).
I hope they think again and reconsider either making it open source as people have suggested or just leaving the current level of functionality.
They will loose a lot of followers if they go down this road and potentially also get quite a lot of bad press.
Really upset by this, I love my Car Thing and the voice control Spotify built into it is second to none - it's quick, always hears me perfectly even with noise in the car, and most importantly, it actually plays what I want it to play.
It seems like it's integrated with my music history, so if I ask it to play a song that I listen to a lot but it has a very common name, it'll still get it right - it's like magic.
Google Assistant is absolute trash in comparison, even on the (rare) occasion that it finds the right song, it's super slow and half the time it won't even start the music. And good luck asking it to play a song that shares a name with a movie, it'll think you're trying to play the movie.
Really disappointed that Spotify is going to stop me from using a piece of hardware that I paid for, and by making me switch to Google Assistant is going to make listening to music in the car hell.
The Spotify app used to have great speech recognition built in. I'm not sure but a furor over its privacy aspects might have played a part in its removal :(
What's most disgusting is the tone and wording of the e-mail linked in the Reddit post. It reads like they're outright delighted to be breaking your 90-dollar piece of hardware. Not even a fake apology. Tech bros are getting more and more brazen.
That email would be fine if they were just discontinuing a feature of their ongoing service - it's disappointing, but you got value out of it while you were paying for it and now we're stopping and won't charge you any further.
But this is a stand-alone piece of hardware that they sold without an explicit expiry date, in a product category (car audio) that generally lasts decades (as they are solid-state devices with no moving parts) and now they're outright making it useless 2 years later without any refunds.
I would love to have a "real language" version of these corporate press releases. They sold a product, got your money, and now aren't just stopping updates but are actively bricking the device in 6 months. And telling you to throw it out 'safely' too.
I wanna sell something that I can just disable a year or so after I've sold it.
How much work could it possibly be to simply deprecate the software, let alone open-source it? Flipping the switch to break every existing device is frankly malicious.
Some discussion I saw elsewhere speculated that it was to avoid liability since they won't update it anymore, although there's no reason they couldn't open source it as an at-your-own-risk way to keep using it (or at least provide some documentation to the people already jailbreaking them).
Yes. Absolutely. In many ways, I think Car Thing did the inverse of what I expected it to do. It was mounted on my dash for a total of about 5 minutes.
How old are we talking? I've never owned a car that had an aux input unless I replaced the head unit - and if I replaced the head unit, then I would have Bluetooth too.
Off topic, but I cannot resist to comment on that line under the headline:
> By Chris Welch, a reviewer specializing in personal audio and home theater. Since 2011, he has published nearly 6,000 articles, from breaking news and reviews to useful how-tos
So 13 years, that’s around 460 publications per year. That sounds pretty high, you would have to be writing non stop for more than a decade. I know nothing about the tech new industry but is that realistic or just a fantasy?
I dont know if i would call something like this[1] an article. Taking a bus ad and writing a few sentences about it. He seems great at copy pasting promotional emails he gets I guess
A lot of "tech news" journalism is just copy pasting a press release. They might also be counting every single article they were on the byline for, but they might not have actually substantially written that much. An example is some review of the "Best Headphones" where the article is huge, but he only wrote a paragraph.
I think you might also be underestimating how easy it becomes to just churn out article after article if that's your day-job. You're not writing literature or a longform article in the New Yorker; you're just bashing out 2-4 paragraphs, then rinse and repeat all day.
Former journalist here. I worked at a business dot-com where the writers were expected to churn out at least 5 market briefs a day, and the majority of them did more. I also worked at a daily newspaper where it wasn't uncommon for me to write 8-10 news briefs a day, but they were largely just rehashing police reports or otherwise summarizing content that was already in front of me (as opposed to doing boots-on-the-ground reporting).
I knew this would happen when they had a fire sale on these - but surprised that it won't work at all anymore. Hope they open source the firmware, unlock the boot loader so nerds like us can do something with it
How can such an expensive thing be deprecrated in two years? It seems malicious. IoT devices need to come with some sort of "works until" or something.
> Thank you for being on this journey with us, safe travels.
I miss the era when I was a customer paying for a product. Now I'm apparently some kind of traveller that's on a journey with dozens of companies as they try to find local maxima of profit.
I guess Spotify has made the strategic decision not to pursue the consumer car market and instead to cede that space to Sirius. Because this absolutely poisons the well against anyone buying hardware from Spotify again.
There are so many examples of this. It's been hard to express and advocate for my severe distrust of proprietary garbage (my choice of words isn't hyperbole in this case) to others around me. But with so much of this race to the bottom, I can't help but wonder: how much will consumers take?
I'll admit, my FOSS prefering, DIY leaning use of tech is tedious, but is it worse than dealing with the churn companies force you (and your wallet) to deal with?
239 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadsome subreddits to monitor:
https://www.reddit.com/r/carthinghax/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpotifyCarThingJBreak/
However, I am curious what could be done with the stock OS... This repo here seems to suggest that the UI on the CarThing is just a webapp: https://github.com/williamtcastro/carthing-non-premium-spoti...
If we could take this and rip out the existing frontend, I wonder if we could turn it into a Chumby-like device at the very least. Though I suppose the tricky bit is to enable the bluetooth connection for any kind of network data transfer...
It's not a great move, but I don't think it calls for wishing harm on anyone, let alone a majority of people who at most had a hand in making something you did feel was useful enough to pay for.
It was possible to drive in silence before and it's possible now. Perhaps explore a radio station.
I have personal grievances with my iPad, but I'm not about to say "If anyone at Apple is listening, I hope you do worse financially".
I presume they were a bit upset and chose overly broad language, it's not a big deal either way, I don't believe they truly wanted harm on anyone, it just seemed like a silly tone to choose.
Who is advocating berating staff? I don't see that in OPs post, nor my own. No one suggests being aggressive towards anyone. Saying the company deserves less money is a capitalistic statement aimed at the corporation, not its diligent employees. You're welcome to to silently withdraw your money from a place of business and leave them with no feedback as to why. But 'posturing' about the reasons of a boycott while also withdrawing money is a great way to attach feedback to an action the company might actually listen to.
They don't mind that their customers paid them for it.
It's a Web-App. So what's the effort to keep this thing running for a while longer?
My guess is that they reached a stage where they should touch the OS again, and there's no-one in the company who can do it...
The Car Thing is so much more convenient than unlocking iPhone with my face, opening spotify, futzing around on the phone to change songs or playlists or whatever. And its easily accessible to my passenger. Its a far better interface than phone for use in the car! Its one of the main reasons I haven't switched to Apple Music which is bundled with my cell phone plan. I guess Spotify just wants me to got to Apple Music.
https://www.crutchfield.com/g_300/All-Car-Stereos.html
A bargain compared to the Car Thing's ~$90 price tag.
The head unit's software is definitely a little janky, but it doesn't really matter as all she uses it for is CarPlay anyway. It even supports wireless CarPlay so she doesn't need to take her phone out of her work bag - our brand new Kia with an expensive infotainment system doesn't even support wireless.
It works extremely well.
> We recommend resetting your Car Thing to factory settings and safely disposing of your device following local electronic waste guidelines.
It's not everyday that the manufacturer of a working product tells you "throw it in the trash". I wish someone would force them to make a recall instead.
This is a decision by the person who hires the PM. This is a VP/director-level decision.
It seems that they are refunding anyone who asks.
https://old.reddit.com/r/carthinghax/comments/1d0ida1/just_g...
EDIT: don't waste your time, PayPal auto-denied it because it's been >180 days since the transaction ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's another to discontinue service (i.e. Music) to the product.
Did the hardware generate a lot of support requests?
Does it require too much engineering to keep secure with updates, etc.?
I can't repeat this enough: there needs to be LEGISLATION against this.
If a product needs cloud functionality to operate, there needs to be a legal minimum number of years (5?), and the company should be required to prominently advertise the length of time (so they can compete to guarantee for longer periods of time, like 10 years).
And companies can still stop selling the thing. They just need to keep the cloud servers running and maintaining their integrations with the rest of their code.
If maintaining servers for 5 years is the tipping point for them to judge that the product won't be profitable and therefore won't release it, then yeah it doesn't sound like it should be worth selling in the first place.
A judicial solution would be much more measured and flexible.
Unfortunately, lawyers and courts have a undeservedly bad reputation which is often created by poor legislation which is beset by political motives and disadvantaged by having to draft prospective rules that can apply to a broad set of differing circumstances.
Edit: Why don't court do this more? Often because of terrible, over-reaching legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act
I understand it was no longer supported at the time, but there is no reason why it couldn't still function as a controller, there solution is just to throw it away?
Hate the PR speak here "This decision wasn't made lightly, and we want to assure you that our commitment to providing a superior listening experience remains unchanged."
So what superior listening experience are they committed too exactly? When all they are doing is lowering the experience?
Perhaps pruning projects like this helps them deliver on higher quality streams, which they have been alluding to for years now. Spotify Hifi was announced in 2021.
Depending on your jurisdiction, this may be a short enough window to warrant a refund. Or at the very least a chargeback.
https://github.com/witnessmenow/Spotify-Diy-Thing
The biggest benefit of the Car Thing for me was flawless voice control that leagues ahead of Google Assistant, the Car Thing was much more than a screen that showed album art.
I haven't found a similar replacement for that.
I use my CarThing as dedicated Spotify controller for my desktop PC and they're just straight up making it a paperweight rather than leaving in the current level of support for it so it could still function in the future without the need for constant updates (not that there ever seemed to be any anyway).
I hope they think again and reconsider either making it open source as people have suggested or just leaving the current level of functionality.
They will loose a lot of followers if they go down this road and potentially also get quite a lot of bad press.
It seems like it's integrated with my music history, so if I ask it to play a song that I listen to a lot but it has a very common name, it'll still get it right - it's like magic.
Google Assistant is absolute trash in comparison, even on the (rare) occasion that it finds the right song, it's super slow and half the time it won't even start the music. And good luck asking it to play a song that shares a name with a movie, it'll think you're trying to play the movie.
Really disappointed that Spotify is going to stop me from using a piece of hardware that I paid for, and by making me switch to Google Assistant is going to make listening to music in the car hell.
Should force them to open source it.
So this time, the US needs to handle this on their own...
That email would be fine if they were just discontinuing a feature of their ongoing service - it's disappointing, but you got value out of it while you were paying for it and now we're stopping and won't charge you any further.
But this is a stand-alone piece of hardware that they sold without an explicit expiry date, in a product category (car audio) that generally lasts decades (as they are solid-state devices with no moving parts) and now they're outright making it useless 2 years later without any refunds.
Best of luck safe travels buh-bye!!
I wanna sell something that I can just disable a year or so after I've sold it.
> By Chris Welch, a reviewer specializing in personal audio and home theater. Since 2011, he has published nearly 6,000 articles, from breaking news and reviews to useful how-tos
So 13 years, that’s around 460 publications per year. That sounds pretty high, you would have to be writing non stop for more than a decade. I know nothing about the tech new industry but is that realistic or just a fantasy?
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/28/10674048/verizon-will-pa...
I think you might also be underestimating how easy it becomes to just churn out article after article if that's your day-job. You're not writing literature or a longform article in the New Yorker; you're just bashing out 2-4 paragraphs, then rinse and repeat all day.
In any case, the "website writer" jobs are known for overwork and low pay, so these numbers are par for the course.
I miss the era when I was a customer paying for a product. Now I'm apparently some kind of traveller that's on a journey with dozens of companies as they try to find local maxima of profit.
That was last month.
I'll admit, my FOSS prefering, DIY leaning use of tech is tedious, but is it worse than dealing with the churn companies force you (and your wallet) to deal with?
Today, most electronics manufacturers have sold off their operations, so we're left with proprietary pap like CarPlay and Android Auto.