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Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

support.spotify.com

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Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#121

Post by candiddevmike »

squarefoot wrote: post #115

Incidentally, I just installed Navidrome on my Alpine Linux server for test, and it's currently scanning all my local music library. The heck if I'm going to depend to any proprietary device/format that is going to become a brick, then e-waste, as soon as the company behind it makes it obsolete. Happened a million times and will happen again. https://www.navidrome.org/ Yes, I would totally push for legislation forcin…

Are you going to hook speakers up to your server? I'm planning my Google Home replacement strategy for if/when they add a subscription like Alexa. I want an offline whole home sound system with independent room controls, seems like Navidrome might work...

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#122

Post by rkangel »

This largely feels like a failure of consumer protection. Perhaps my understanding of the legal situation is wrong but as a UK resident - regardless of additional warranties provided or not provided by the vendor - products should work for a "reasonable" length of time and you are entitled to replacement or refund if they fail.

Obviously I would expect an electronic device like this to last more than 2 years, so if Spotify is going to cause it to stop working then they'd have to refund me. Having to do that for their entire customer base would probably result in some different decision making!

Obviously this product was only sold in the US (AFAIK), which has much less in the way of consumer protection, which allows for this crappy treatment of consumers.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#123

Post by Raed667 »

Spotify stopped making Car Thing around July 2022 [0] But the device has also been jailbroken for a couple of years now [1] It even runs Debian [2]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/27/23280357/spotify-stops-ma...

[1] https://github.com/err4o4/spotify-car-thing-reverse-engineer...

[2] https://github.com/bishopdynamics/superbird-debian-kiosk

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#125

Post by gruez »

mkopec wrote: post #94

I firmly believe that permanent key fusing to lock bootloaders should be outlawed. At the very least the keys (and schematics) should be released once the device reaches EOL. Otherwise we're just manufacturing e-waste.

Realistically how many people are going to bother reflashing their devices? This case is exceptional because it was EOLed so early, but for the typical phone that reaches EOL in 2 years I doubt more than 1% of people are going to make use of this ability.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#127

Post by rkangel »

Aardwolf wrote: post #112
mkopec wrote: post #94

I firmly believe that permanent key fusing to lock bootloaders should be outlawed. At the very least the keys (and schematics) should be released once the device reaches EOL. Otherwise we're just manufacturing e-waste.

Or just stop this nonsense of needing updates to keep things working, which then allows updates that break things. Have proper standards how music is transmitted. Have devices support those standards. Have those standards be long-running.

Any connected device NEEDS continual updates in order to continue to be secure.

This is particularly true of internet connected devices, but is also true for IOT devices that only connect to the internet indirectly. Security holes get found, if you can't patch and update devices in the field then you are leaving your customers unprotected.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#128

Post by dsego »

Galatians4_16 wrote: post #118
talldayo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Situation: there are now 15 competing music streaming standards.

EU legislation on power chords gave us micro-USB phones, when USB-C could have been a better option, but a real solution would be let consumers decide inputs/outputs.

Micro-USB was legislated years ago when each phone had a different charger plug. Currently the standard is USB-C. I also suspect that the EU only mandates a charging & plug standard but it's up to the industry to choose one.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#129

Post by contravariant »

Aardwolf wrote: post #112
mkopec wrote: post #94

I firmly believe that permanent key fusing to lock bootloaders should be outlawed. At the very least the keys (and schematics) should be released once the device reaches EOL. Otherwise we're just manufacturing e-waste.

Or just stop this nonsense of needing updates to keep things working, which then allows updates that break things. Have proper standards how music is transmitted. Have devices support those standards. Have those standards be long-running.

Doesn't sound like its an update that bricks them, thought the article is a bit confusing on that point. Sounds to me like they broke the API (or just blocked this particular User-Agent)

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#130

Post by talldayo »

Galatians4_16 wrote: post #118
talldayo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Situation: there are now 15 competing music streaming standards.

EU legislation on power chords gave us micro-USB phones, when USB-C could have been a better option, but a real solution would be let consumers decide inputs/outputs.

> but a real solution would be let consumers decide inputs/outputs.

When trillion-dollar companies consider a serial connector to be a proprietary and DRM-enabled apparatus I think the "real solution" is precluded by entirely unnecessary corporate greed.

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