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Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

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Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#101

Post by sbarre »

What I always find so disappointing in these scenarios is when companies are too chicken-shit to just give a reasonable honest explanation to requests like open sourcing this to avoid them all turning into e-waste.

It feels like adding insult to injury for everyone who put faith in the product/company.

I've been a long-time premium subscriber of Spotify, but I've already decided I will never buy a hardware device from them (even before Car Thing came out) or do something like pay annually for their services, because I don't trust their commitment to anything for more than 30 days at a time at this point.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#103

Post by jasonjayr »

raverbashing wrote: post #97
infecto wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its less about high-end/low-end, after all carplay did not hit Toyota until around 2018. Its simply that you still need a phone to use the device, might as well connect your phone to your cars audio and use your phones screen.

But the real question is why brick it? What requires so much maintenance?

A wild guess? Maybe enhanced DRM so the audio path can't be MITM'd, and the digital audio data captured?

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#106

Post by sbarre »

raverbashing wrote: post #97
infecto wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its less about high-end/low-end, after all carplay did not hit Toyota until around 2018. Its simply that you still need a phone to use the device, might as well connect your phone to your cars audio and use your phones screen.

But the real question is why brick it? What requires so much maintenance?

Not that it's an acceptable reason, but could they be paying some kind of ongoing license for a codec or some other licensed software on the thing?

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#108

Post by Aaargh20318 »

rhplus wrote: post #93

Not surprising, given the awkward position the product was in, targeting customers who don’t already have CarPlay or Android Auto (lower end of the market), but are also willing to pay for Spotify Premium and a good smartphone data plan (higher end of the market).

This seems like a very US-centric view or the world. If you make a decent amount of money you have to spend it on a car? Lots of people don’t care about cars and/or don’t spend a enough time in them to justify spending a lot on it.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#110

Post by SkyPuncher »

sbarre wrote: post #101

What I always find so disappointing in these scenarios is when companies are too chicken-shit to just give a reasonable honest explanation to requests like open sourcing this to avoid them all turning into e-waste. It feels like adding insult to injury for everyone who put faith in the product/company. I've been a long-time premium subscriber of Spotify, but I've already decided I will never buy a hardware device fro…

I agree. It’s so obvious that they’re trying way too hard to _not_ be the thing that I’m paying them for (music streaming).
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