Spotify will destroy every “car thing” it has ever sold

Owners of Spotifys The soon-to-be-built Car Thing device begs the company to open source the gadgets save some from the landfill. Spotify has not responded to requests to save the hardware, which was originally intended to connect to car dashboards and electrical outlets so drivers could listen to and navigate Spotify.

Spotify announced this week that it will be banning all Car Things purchased on December 9 and not offering refunds or trade-ins. On a support pageSpotify says:

We are discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offering. We understand it 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 other than asking them to factory reset the device and “safely” dispose of the bricked gadget by “following local electronic waste guidelines.”

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

Early demise

Car Thing was previously released in October 2021 for a limited number of subscribers release to the general public in February 2022.

Spotify announced this in its earnings report for the second quarter of 2022, published in July stopped making car things. In a conversation with TechCrunch, citing “several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues.” A Spotify representative also told the publication that the devices would continue to “perform as intended,” but that was apparently a temporary situation.

The halted production was a warning sign that Car Thing was in danger. However, at the time, Spotify also dropped the price of the device from $90 to $50, which could have encouraged people to buy a device that would be useless a few years later.

However, the usefulness of Car Thing was always questionable. The device has a 4-inch touchscreen and rotary dial for easy navigation, as well as support for Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and voice control. But users also had to subscribe to Spotify Premium, which starts at $11 per month. Worse still, Car Thing requires a phone that uses data or Wi-Fi connected via Bluetooth in order to work, making the Thing seem redundant.

In its first-quarter 2022 report, Spotify said the shutdown of Car Thing hurt gross margins and cost the business a hit of 31 million euros (about $31.4 million at the time).

Open Source Plea

Spotify's announcement sent a number of Car Thing owners to online forums to share their disappointment with Spotify and beg the company to make the device open source rather than condemning it to recycling centers at best. At the time of writing, there are over 50 posts on the website Spotify community forums are expressing concern over the shutdown, with many demanding a refund and/or calling for open sourcing. There are similar discussions taking place elsewhere online, like on Redditwhere users have used phrases like “completely unacceptable' to describe the news.

A Spotify Community member named AaronMickDee, for example, said:

I'd rather not just throw the device away. I think there is a community that would love to have a device that we can customize and use for purposes other than a song playing device.

Would Spotify be willing to unlock the system and allow users to write/flash third party firmware to the device?