Appeal for open source and refunds as Spotify plans to ban Car Thing devices

Owners of Spotify’s soon-to-be-equipped Car Thing device are begging the company to open-source the gadgets to save some garbage. Spotify has not responded to requests to save the equipment, which was originally intended to connect to car dashboards and auxiliary sockets to allow drivers to listen to and navigate Spotify.

Spotify announced today that it is discontinuing all Car Things purchases on December 9 and is not offering refunds or exchange options. Spotify’s support page says:

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our product offering, we are discontinuing Car Thing. We understand this may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and improvements that will ultimately provide a better experience for all Spotify users.

Spotify has no further guidance for device owners beyond asking them to factory reset their device and “safely” dispose of their broken gadget by “following local e-waste guidelines.”

The company also stated that it has no plans to release a sequel to Car Thing.

Early death

Car Thing launched to a limited number of subscribers in October 2021 before being made available to the general public in February 2022.

In its Q2 2022 earnings report released in July, Spotify revealed that it had discontinued Car Things. He cited “several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues,” in an interview with TechCrunch. A Spotify representative also told the publication that the devices would still “function as intended,” but that this was apparently a temporary situation.

The production halt was a warning sign that Car Thing was in danger. However, during this time, Spotify also reduced the price of the device from $90 to $50, which may have encouraged people to buy a device that would prove useless a few years later.

Car Thing’s usefulness, however, was always questionable. The device has a 4-inch touchscreen and a knob for easy navigation, as well as support for Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and voice control. However, it also required users to subscribe to Spotify Premium (currently starting at $11 per month). Worse still, Car Thing requires a phone using data or Wi-Fi connected via Bluetooth to work, making the Thing seem redundant.

In its first-quarter 2022 report, Spotify said that abandoning Car Thing would hurt gross margins and that the venture cost €31 million (about $31.4 million at the time).

Calls for open source

Spotify’s announcement sent some Car Thing owners to online forums to share their disappointment with Spotify and implore the company to open-source the device rather than condemn it to recycling centers at best. As of this writing, there have been over 50 posts on Spotify’s community forums expressing concerns about the service being discontinued, many of them demanding refunds and/or calling for the use of open source software. Similar discussions are taking place elsewhere on the internet, such as on Reddit.

For example, a Spotify community member going by the name AaronMickDee said:

I’d rather not throw away the device. I think there is a community out there that would love the idea of ​​having a device that can be customized and used for other purposes than just a song playback device.

Would Spotify be willing to unlock the system and allow users to save/flash third party software on the device?

A Spotify spokesperson declined to answer questions from Ars Technica about why Car Thing isn’t open-sourced and concerns about electronic waste and wasting money.

Instead, a company representative told me in part: “The goal of our exploration of Car Thing in the U.S. was to learn more about how people listen in the car. In July 2022, we announced that we would cease further production and now it is time to say goodbye to the devices completely.” I contacted a Spotify representative to ask again about open-sourcing the device, but received no response.

At this point, encouraging customers to waste nearly $100 on a soon-to-be obsolete device hasn’t produced any groundbreaking innovations or lessons about “how people listen in the car.” In his initial response, the Spotify representative pointed me to a Spotify website that searches the Spotify newsroom for “how to listen to Spotify in your car.” One of the most important posts is from 2019 and states that “if your car has an AUX or USB port, using a cable is probably one of the fastest ways to connect using your phone.”

When it comes to Spotify, using customer dollars for educational purposes to benefit the company is not the best business plan. For regular users, it is best to avoid investing in an unproven hardware venture offered by a software manufacturer.

As Redditor Wemie1420 put it:

It doesn’t feel great that there is literally no other alternative than tossing it in the trash. I feel like we are being punished for supporting them. This discourages me from buying anything Spotify releases in the future. I think there’s a way to approach this and not say, “Yeah, we’re done.” Just throw it away. It’s a waste of money.