“Car thing” is an unimaginable bag fumble in terms of branding. “You know the uhhhhhh car thing” and I have Zero idea it has anything to do with Spotify
It's not even that you don't know it has anything to do with spotify, it's that you don't know what it is to begin with. Calling it the "car thing" is one step away from calling it a doohickey. Genuinely astonishing how that name got approved.
As a guy with a dead AM radio in his car, one of these would be sick and might actually get me to buy a spotify subscription. But to hell with obsolute self destructing tech waste crap. I'd rather just cut a hole in my exhaust and listen to open headers all day
Music ownership is in a particularly precarious place as of our current moment. It's why I still use an MP3 player (in tandem with RU-vid-to-MP3 converters) to this day. I've got a 2TB hard drive for storing all my files, and while I still use Spotify to listen to new releases, it unnerves me to no end how at any moment, should their servers go down, I wouldn't actually own any of the music I listen to there, nor even have access to it. The Car Thing takes it a step further, possibly preempting the future norm of even preventing physical objects from performing their base functions.
Oh by the way, the Wii U was supported for TWELVE YEARS despite being a failure AND despite the Switch launching only five years later. From 2012 to 2024 the eshop was open, and the Switch launched in 2017! Meanwhile the Car Thing is barely TWO years old
my unpopular opinion: nintendo can afford to downgrade their servers for their older titles, they should not have discontinued services because they sold games with plenty of wifi exclusive content.
Five months is pretty alright for the spotify car thing. I usually crash my car before I can reach that long and have to get a new one, along with a new car.
@@johnnykeys1978is it bad that I basically only use Spotify for its algorithm? I don't even use the algorithm anymore I'm just too lazy to go and download my songs
My mom literally can't watch certain streaming services because "her smart tv is too old" and the streaming apps no longer support those models. I was in awe when I went over to "fix it" and *that* was what the problem was. Can't have shit in 2024
Smart TVs are incredibly dumb. I was asked to help an older lady watch a stream that was only on Facebook Live. There was no Facebook Live application, and the lack of an app store made it impossible to get it. You're usually stuck with the apps they give you, and none of them are worth toying with. I can't say that Facebook Live is any better, and I'm trying to work with her church to get streaming to RU-vid going as well, just for the sake of accessibility, but until then, we're out of luck.
@@MadisonEdits943that's the thing with Smart TVs because you'll never know if one day they'll ever stop supporting your app. A smart TV from 2009 won't support 2024 apps.
Well the rebel in me says there HAS to be a way to jailbreak the sucker, even if you have to go to the hardware level. Once done just install an open-source smart tv OS(cant think of any examples but there HAS to be one right?) and just make sure it supports android apps and you are gold.
@@Spaghetti742 My suggestion is to bypass the computer and completely remove it. I don't want a giant screen in my car, and I couldn't care less for a computer besides for diagnostics.
the thought of spotify getting away with bricking all the units is pretty scary, imagine if game consoles or phones started getting bricked by the developers once they stop getting official support just out of spite towards hackers or pirates. honestly doesn't seem too far fetched
Plenty of games themselves get bricked throughout the mobile gaming market, and by shutting down servers entire games and functionality of systems go away. So it's only a matter of time
The moment I realize just how bad our end of the stick is in a digital market was when I told myself I'd like to try out the newer wwe games and I realized that the owners of those games had removed all wwe games from all digital storefronts with the exception of the two most recent ones. Now the only way to play them is by getting a physical copy. Having your things be controlled by corporations who just want to abuse you is not something I want in my future. Piracy is completely justified.
If there's no way to buy something legally, what choice do you have but to pirate it? A lot of companies aren't even okay with second-hand sales of old stuff they don't sell anymore.
don’t trust cassettes, they eventually die. the tape on then will wear out over time as they have a limited amount of plays, not to mention time. cds are forever as long as you take care of them
@@chaosflash7 true, but I have a collection in my car that still work fine from the 80's so it kinda depends on the quality of the tape and how they're stored
not hating or anythin but cassettes are pretty low quality, they wear out way faster than CD or vinyl, which would be fine if the price of them were still 7-8 bucks, but ive seen some being 30 bucks and at that point just buy a CD copy, they're a little bigger but the audio quality is on par with digital and it wont wear down as quickly!
I was not expecting a video on Car Thing! Here are my two cents: I bought two of them during their fire sale ($30/piece). I had given my dad one of them so he can use with his Spotify Premium and he liked it. People could knock on the device for being "useless" in our modern world, but none of my family's vehicles have a fancy infotainment system. This (Car) thing is perfect for people like me. When I found out that Spotify was shutting it down I was understandably pissed! Despite how unbelievably under-powered the device is, I am hoping for some tech-savvy people to find a way to make it work as a basic media controller. Hell, if I could have it control my Poweramp then that'd be even better! Living in a world where we don't own the things we buy is awful. I was worried with how niche the Car Thing was that this story wouldn't blow up, but thanks to you and other channels, this has become a bigger story about not just bricking a product two years after its release, but about ownership, e-waste, opportunities for modifications, and corporations not being your friend.
I've wanted a Car Thing ever since I saw it, and hearing that they're being bricked and ditched by Spotify makes me mad. I'm so sick of products being sold as subscriptions.
Hopefully you’re able to find a way to make it usable as a media controller! I know it’s not ideal, but if the Car Thing doesn’t end up working out for you, a phone holder/bluetooth aux adapter combo has worked really well for me! Obviously you shouldn’t really fiddle with it while you’re driving, but just picking the playlist I want beforehand and letting it run has been good enough for my needs :)
"People could knock on the device for being "useless" in our modern world, but none of my family's vehicles have a fancy infotainment system." I also dont have a infotainment system but a phone connected with a jack to jack cable to the entire thing is working well. While Spotify might be the least usable music playing app ever, Poweramp is doing wonders to the quality of my car music experience (especially when i apply the eq that i set up for this car in specific). The only upgrade i could think of would be an shitty android tablet mounted on the center console, the bigger screen will make picking albums a bit less of a hustle and will allow me to split the navigation app and the music app to two diffrent devices (no need to switch apps on a small screen while doing 60mph).
My entire media collection is simply MP3s and MP4s I made from CDs and DVDs. These can be played back in any basic media player like VLC. If I remember correctly, I've got about 730 CDs that add up to around 50 gigabytes of storage, and 60 DVDs that are around 90 GB. TV shows are very much a work in progress right now, but the point is this - I refuse to keep my media behind DRM-protected paywalls like Spotify! Even if the selection might not be as good, and it takes a lot of work to build up that library, it's more than worth it, it runs offline, runs on anything, and I own it. (Well, maybe not in a legal sense, but Spotify can't remotely brick my MP3s, so there!) My car doesn't have an aux or bluetooth, it's definitely a car that's aged like wine, but it has a CD player and a tape player. I bought a tape-to-aux adapter, and use my phone's headphone jack to hook it up to the car's stereo over tape. Homemade CD library. VLC. Auxillary. That's how I do things.
I thought the name "Car Thing" was just neat bit Mic was doing, but that being it's actual name instantly made it entirely unfunny. Don't try and have a soul Spotify those are for us.
I’m literally about to look for reference to it in their corporate docs and SEC filings because I read them for a fun time and I’ve never seen any fucking mention of this lol
I refuse to believe that it's called Car Thing. Even though I googled it, I saw the name of the box and I saw the articles, I refuse to believe Spotify would come up with something so bland...though it IS Spotify...
Nah, it's like... an external screen for your phone? That is made to only work with a single app? That's like an e-waste joke that I wouldn't believe was real
Europe just introduced a new law last 2 years ago about contracs regarding digital content. This included that when you buy something phyiscal that is dependend on a digital sofware that the seller is contractually obligated to keep it running for the amount of time a "consumer can expect". now it's up to the courts how long that typically is and it will depend on the item bought, but it's pretty much consens so far that its at least 2 years. so yeah, it's important to get with the times and actually introduce legislation for those things, or the big companys think they can do what they want.
Another useless EU law. You can't fix the problem of planned obsolescence. The genie is already out of the bottle and CEOs know that their customers will swallow anything they're given, and ask for more. I have devices that I've been using for 10+ years and they still work fine, but nothing new will come close to that lifespan anymore. 2 years is pathetic.
Yay, I love more regulations! Big daddy government is the best for strangling the free market. Small buisnesses are impossible to start now because of all the resiculous requirements.
@technoman9000 2 years at least, it will probably be more. I partly agree with you, the current way of selling products sucks. No matter if you buy digital or anything else. Things are not built to last anymore. There is no law in the world that might fix this. However, I do think doing something, even if it's not the best solution its still better than doing nothing.
@@firstNamelastName-ho6lvI will deactivate your heart transplant in 5 months, you gotta buy the new model. Thank god we got rid of the government and the council of corporations controls everything now hey?
@@technoman9000"... EU law that requires many appliances and electronics to be repairable for a period of 5 to 10 years after purchase, including washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, fridges, TVs, e-bikes, scooters, welders, vacuum cleaners, phones, tablets and more"
It's becoming uncomfortably prevalent now. Just look at The Crew by Ubisoft. Even if you have have the physical disk for that game (which came out only a decade ago) you can no longer play it. There's no offline mode. You can't even launch the game. It's absurd that I effectively no longer own this physical thing that I paid for. Worst part is, they've gotten away with it. The pushback they received has seemingly not phased them so we can expect this to happen more in the industry going forward.
dude you know whats INSANE? you know the MOST POPULAR cracked yes CRACKED minecraft launcher REQUIRES INTERNET? and FAILED ME when net was down? like WTF !??!?!??!
This video is literally the first time I've EVER heard of this thing. And it was a video about it shutting down. That says all I need to know about it right there.
Hopefully! I’ve always felt the two have very similar senses of humor and video formats, so hopefully a collaboration will happen eventually even if their content overlap is probably minimal.
I totally agree that it's fucked up that companies are beginning to just straight up deactivate their devices, even when you've bought it, but this isn't the first example of 'not owning the things you own': I'd point to John Deere here, which straight up just *doesn't allow farmers to repair their products.* They bought these crazy expensive things essential to their work, and are actively barred from the right to repair them. It's messed up that the Car thing is being bricked for no real reason, but I think we need to be on the lookout for all the examples of this happening. Great video :)
I had bought the Car Thing an year ago. It was, very disappointing. I sent an email to the Spotify giving them my feedback. In my back and forth (I'm a game dev, so in the same "software landscape") and we basically ended up agreeing that it was not ... a great device, over the long term. I appreciate this video. It touches on a lot of the points that echo with a lot of people's experiences. Also, as usual - doing my regular request/insistance/demand/pleading - Deep Disgoc Dives on "Porcupine Tree". I feel like I'm a bit obligated to keep this as a comment signature on all your videos, although I will stop if its seen as pestering or rude, deffo don't mean it that way.
@@MthaMenMon close to, but not correct. All updates and OTA can be disabled on 10 and 11. 99.999% of installations won’t disable them, but some will be left.
This is the most useless device I’ve ever seen and the fact that Spotify is discontinuing it not even a year within its life and thought they didn’t need to give refunds sums up that company pretty well.
A little birdie told me to call Spotify to request a refund, and if they didn't take your warning, file a chargeback on the last six months of your Spotify Premium payments to make up for the cost.
It would’ve been good if it came with Spotify premium perks, not a permanent subscription, that’d be too generous, but maybe 1 or 2 years, because if you spend 60$, why should you be locked behind another monthly paywall to use the very thing you bought… I think that was the fundamental issue of this car thing , alongside its horrid marketing and underpoweredness.
Are we really surprised they are bricking the car things? They have been making their free users version of spotify almost unusable, like, i can't listen to stuff without shuffle on, i get like 5 to 6 ads for every like 4 songs, and they play songs that you don't have in your playlists, unless you use your liked playlist
Best use for the Car Thing is modding DOOM on it so you having something to do while driving. I dont drive but im sure playing video games at the same time is perfectly safe
You own whatever you buy and can hold in your hand. Dvds, blu ray, cds, vinyl, books, even cassettes. Nothing that is streamed is yours. I see the term "preserve physical media" circling around these days and i think its very true. Its why I started collecting movies. Shame this car thing was so short lived after people spent good money on it.
Reminds me of the time I cancelled Spotify but they kept charging me every month anyway until they overdrew my checking account. I never dealt with that company again after that. For months, they charged me and I went online and made sure it really was cancelled, and I sent strongly worded emails and whatnot. Then the next month n got charged again. I decided they were the worse after that. Never touched ‘em again.
@@mistyisacat8012 I honestly don’t remember what finally worked. I think I wound up telling the company to block payments to Spotify. I remember going on and on with Spotify over the phone about it, and they kept telling me everything was good to go, and then the charge would go through again. It was wild.
The carthing should serve as an allegory for spotifys service as a whole. The day Spotify shuts down its servers your whole music catalog will disappear. Sure, this won’t happen anytime soon but if it happens you will have spend years and years of monthly fees and you can do nothing about it. Fun.
It's trivial to download music from RU-vid, use a video editor to extract the audio, and store that in your phone/iPod/music-playing device. Almost all the music on Spotify is also released on YT in some form, and anything that isn't can simply be screen-recorded and saved the same way. This might seem like more effort than it's worth, but you'll never have to worry about your favorite songs disappearing from the internet anymore!
@@InventorZahran I'd highly recommend getting a program that can just download youtube stuff into different formats. I use JDownloader sometimes and you can put in entire playlists and select a file format and just click go. Really useful. Although RU-vid's audio resolution kinda sucks.
@@InventorZahran You may not even have to extract the audio. Any good downloader will let you download the audio by itself right out of the gate. This is how I get the music and sound effects for all of my videos. Aren't iPods DRM-protected, too? Like, does an iPod's content have to go through iTunes?
I think a big issue that probably contributed it to having low sales was that you still needed to have your phone connected to the car’s stereo system, which basically cut off the market for older cars that didn’t have something as basic as an aux jack and pretty much required those people to buy either a cassette adapter or an FM transmitter (if they didn’t already have one of those) in addition to the Car Thing.
Bruh that’s gotta be like .1% audience with an old car and no aux. The big issue was that they made people think they was gonna get it for free and then just randomly put it on sale for $90. Like who’s gonna pay near 100 if they were told they were gonna get it for free (and still don’t really know if they are still getting it for free)
@@Champiness Is it really that narrow? Many cars from like 2000 onward had atleast an aux jack. Unless you Carplay/Android auto, which wasn't mainstream until recently, most cars infotainment screens were terrible for controlling spotify. This was a great option for those cars.
@@MysteryMii My 2007 Mazda6 technically has one, but you need to hook up an aftermarket cable to the back of the head unit and run that into the cabin to actually expose a 3.5mm jack, just as a data point here. I think it's technically just hijacking the satellite radio hookup for people who didn't spring for that basically worthless unit.
My solution for this use case when I was using an old car was a Bluetooth-to-Radio-signal device at about the same price point. They’re a good call IF there’s vacant radio stations where you live
I still just use an mp3 player and micro SD cards. £100 would get me enough space to store about 200 thousand songs. Granted that's dwarfed by the 100 million on Spotify, but it is still over 400 solid days of music if I only play each song once. Practically, that is enough to play me new music every moment I'm in a car for the rest of my life. And it can't be 'bricked'.
I went to sell some old tablets I'd discovered in a big house clean to a local secondhand tech place, only to discover ALL THREE of them were no longer supported and nothing could be done with them. When I complained about my old Nook specifically, I got Barnes and Noble customer service offering me a coupon to buy a new one. Completely missing the point that I don't want a new one, I want tech to not turn into useless bricks at the whims of a corporation.
And exactly like the Wii U this device was SAVED by the hacking community using Custom Firmware (CFW). Fight for your right to repair and improve the products you purchased!
@@andy2641 if you like using their platform that's all good, just spotify themselves are like absolute worst and shady business, and all streamimg platforms are pretty much its about the money and not the music, or music *for* the artists. spotify is just the worst offenders by far, so not surprising they'd charge a bunch of money for this, discontinue it and shut down functionality altogether within months and not offer refunds until THREATENED to.. This is a crazy long rant in response to just "I like spotify" i know but yeah..any opportunity to talk about how shitty they are outside of how good their service is, I will take it because they suck hard
I don’t need a car thing I already have a phone Aftermarket radio Gets me in the zone (autozone) Did you pay for car thing? Well I got mine for free I don’t fuck with Spotify ‘Cause I’m cassette to mp3
My fiancé bought me one when it very first came out. It’s the only reason I have Spotify. I just used RU-vid before. I’m very upset it’s discontinuing; I use it daily. I’m definitely canceling my premium since they took away something that actually benefited a premium member. You needed premium to use the car thing, so why not keep it for those who pay the extra already ??
I bought mine when it came out and use it every day on work commutes and just my general driving. I have since upgraded cars and have a fancy Bluetooth screen built in but I kept the car thing because the saved playlist buttons and the voice search are just that handy. This decision is honestly what's helped me consider just dropping spotify and moving to another music listening service because removing a feature I payed a substantial amount for without recompensation is pretty horrific.
Most cars come with such a function, and even if they don't, just put your phone on a holder and attach the aux to your console. The dumbest thing is that this still needs to be paired with your phone. The Spotify Premium is just insult to injury.
As someone who bought one it definitely pisses me off. I just liked having a dedicated screen for my music and the voice control features. Luckily, I didn't pay full price at least. The bizzare thing is it still works with your phone in airplane mode, so its not like they even need servers or whatever from my understanding. They could just let them keep working and not really have to do anything to support them, but theyre choosing to brick them for no reason.
I remember seeing it advertised on spotify previously - but as soon as I saw it needed an adapter, I clicked off in frustration. *Everything* for your car needs an adapter in the cigarette lighter, and mine has never worked. Otherwise, I probably would've been one of the apparently-very-small user base who bought one. I love listening to music in my car, and at this point all I've got is the radio or a travel Bluetooth speaker I can hook up to my phone. *For spotify*.
If you are talking about the cigarette lighter never having worked, the fuse for it is probably blown, which can be easily replaced. Cars will typically have 2 (sometimes more) fuse boxes, but the one you want to look for is likely by your left foot when in the driver seat. They are usually covered by a little sliding panel, which will have the a diagram of which fuses power which circuit. The cigarette lighter might be called something like "accessory socket" and should be a 10 ish amp fuse. Once you find the fuse for that circuit, you'll need to pull it out and check it. In my experience, the interior fuse box usually doesn't have a fuse puller, but the one under the hood usually does. It will be a little plastic grabber thing that will let you pull the fuse out easily. If the fuse is blown, you should see a split in the wire right in the middle. As for replacing it, I would strongly recommend visiting an actual in person store, and not using Amazon fuses as they are suspect. Hope this helps.
Companies just turning off your stuff isn't a new thing. I remember over 10 years ago when I was a kid, I used a RCA media box thingy (think roku but old tech and only 3 apps - no store or anything else). I remember using this thing to binge popularmmo minecraft mod reviews when I was sick and staying home from school one day. About a month after this sick incident, I tried to boot it up again and use the only app out of the 3 that I used - RU-vid, and was greeted by a "RU-vid does not support this product any more". I was kinda bummed that I coulden't watch youtube on my tv anymore. Its literally the same thing as the spotify car thing here. This stuff has been happening for a long time, the only new thing is that you have to pay to keep using it (as in premium to use the car thing). The rca thing I used didn't require a subscription or anything, you could just use it...
I'm not one to judge people for how they spend their money, but I'm very concerned about how you paid for _TWO_ Spotify Car Things, *AND* Kanye West's Stem Player with your hard earned money. Again, not judging, but extremely concerned.
For a minute I thought you calling it the "Car Thing" was a bit you were doing but as you kept calling it Car Thing I got more and more confused. Now im seeing that YES its called THE CAR THING! WHY?
I've actually considered building something like this myself lol! imo it would have been perfect 10 years earlier, when cars didn't yet come with Carplay/Android Auto, and probably could have sold decently well
Ok so let me get this straight. This Car Thing doesn't connect to the car. It offers no added functionality. It requires you to use an expensive subscription on top. It is, essentially, an external screen for your phone, dedicated to a single app. Right? This sounds like an e-waste joke seriously. I wouldn't believe it existed if I heard about it elsewhere.
Spotify has the audacity to develop and update an entire effing *Roblox* game called "Spotify Island" and yet they can't maintain a low end phone with an innocuously large volume knob. Test edit.
