Interestingly enough I have the opposite problem & came here to figures out how to reverse fix it. Every. Single. Time. I start my car the last thing that was playing on Spotify begins to play. The REALLY f'd up thing is I overrides the settings I have in my car & just starts playing. We went on vacation for 2 weeks & that entire time I never once listened to Spotify. The very moment we get back & I start my car the podcast I was listening to over a month ago starts playing. I rarely use Spotify & was hoping being gone that long would reset it & stop the issue kinda like unplugging something & letting it sit for a few minutes works. No such luck.
Yeah. I discovered this fact yesterday. It just reminds me to pay attention to the road... I guess they are trying to get people to get their car thing.
Interestingly enough, "Hey, Spotify", as part of the basic Spotify app (whether with the FREE version that has commercials, or the premium version), has been disabled! Yup. Once adverts for 'Car Thing' began showing-up on my Spotify app (that I have had for years), "Hey, Spotify" ceased to work. I tried everything: clearing cache, force stopping the app, uninstalling the app, making sure my phone had the latest updates, rebooting the phone, and reinstalling Spotify, connecting to Blue Tooth, etc., but NOTHING worked. Reached out to Spotify support, only to have them tell me "Hey, Spotify" is being disabled / removed from the Spotify app, and to have such functionality, I needed to have 'Car Thing', or possibly use something like Android Auto to control Spotify (I'm trying Android Auto now... What fun... NOT! Oh, I can control Spotify, too bad no sound comes out of my car speakers!). I told Spotify support what a poor business decision they had made. Who wants yet another piece of hardware, at their now discounted price of $49.99, when it truly provides no real value? Spotify was perfect as was, for my needs. Removing "Hey, Spotify" was a douche move on Spotify's part. I'm going to get Android Auto working with Spotify, one way of another!