Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#201

Post by vsnf » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:08 AM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #199

vsnf wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't denigrate him, he's done the one thing that is simultaneously most likely to affect change at a company, and also the hardest thing for an individual to do: vote with their wallet. He's right, Spotify does deserve less money for their godawful decent into the lower rungs of mediocrity.

Meh, when I boycott a place I just revoke my money and/or review the place accurately, but I don't posture about it. When I get bad food at a restaurant, I might mention it if it's really rough and ask for something different, but I'm not going to berate the server or kitchen staff; unimaginable. People have enough shit to deal with, like fearing impending layoffs and the likelihood that because the product didn't br…

> I'm not going to berate the server or kitchen staff; unimaginable.

Who is advocating berating staff? I don't see that in OPs post, nor my own. No one suggests being aggressive towards anyone. Saying the company deserves less money is a capitalistic statement aimed at the corporation, not its diligent employees. You're welcome to to silently withdraw your money from a place of business and leave them with no feedback as to why. But 'posturing' about the reasons of a boycott while also withdrawing money is a great way to attach feedback to an action the company might actually listen to.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#202

Post by malfist » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:33 AM UTC

collinmcnulty wrote: post #42

Don’t worry, by breaking your device, we’re allowing us to focus on what we want to do.

Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#203

Post by Always42 » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:59 AM UTC

Rant: I have all my shitify notifications turned off in the app. But, I still get those obnoxious "concert near you" banner that pushes the display down (changing all the button locations that I have memorized) and doesn't disapeered ubtil you click the tiny x.

It drives me bonkers.

I pay for family and am considering moving everyone to deezer out of spite

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#204

Post by ozozozd » Sat, May 25, 2024, 6:08 AM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #188

big_dinghy wrote: post #182

Spotify only offers chat support via its website. Attempts to receive a refund have been met with request for customer location and receipt. Support mentions the backend team will reach out by email, "after a few hours." No followup has been sent after 24 hours and requests for update. As a decade-long Spotify premium user, I am disappointed by this poor experience and wastefulness. Over the course of using their pro…

> Over the course of using their product, there have been few new, impactful features. What new features do you want for a music player? Better audio quality? More discovery features? Lower memory usage? More responsive UI?

- Reliability: Spotify’s IOS and Mac apps regularly refuse to play and require killing and restarting. If you’re in the car, several times. Similar issues with bluetooth speakers. When browser or Youtube app happily play, Spotify struggles.

- Improved UX: Still can’t filter for unheard episodes of a podcast. Not sure why the repeat button has no tooltip and has to be so cryptic. One tap repeats the (imaginary?) playlist and 2 taps repeats the song? Who knows? Why can’t I see a stream of the songs I played so I can easily find what I recently played and play it again? No, recently played albums/radios don’t help. How do I search for business podcasts that aren’t from my country? Why does the shuffle of an album start playing random other artists? Well, actually I know, those artists are cheaper to play.

- Proper Listings: Bo Burnham’s Make Happy isn’t a podcast and those are not 3 minute long podcast episodes. Hitting next must go to the next track and start from the beginning, NOT from minute 4.

It’s unbelievable that in the last 10 years the only positive change was the podcast UI and addition of podcasts with videos etc. At the expense of app reliability. And how hard is it to allow me to find business podcasts from US? (Yes, I am hung up on it after Google decided to kill the Podcasts app) Or at least sort by globally most listened?

Actually, happy with the car thing dying. Maybe they will pull the super obstructive car UI from the app. It comes back from time to time even though it’s turned off and it’s a major safety risk, despite trying the opposite.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#205

Post by ozozozd » Sat, May 25, 2024, 6:11 AM UTC

Always42 wrote: post #203

Rant: I have all my shitify notifications turned off in the app. But, I still get those obnoxious "concert near you" banner that pushes the display down (changing all the button locations that I have memorized) and doesn't disapeered ubtil you click the tiny x. It drives me bonkers. I pay for family and am considering moving everyone to deezer out of spite

Fair concern. You could be driving. And given the performance of their car UI and integration with car play, this banner could cause an accident.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#206

Post by pjerem » Sat, May 25, 2024, 6:26 AM UTC

skhameneh wrote: post #178

solarkraft wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tidal is alright. They're mostly fine with doing their job instead of bombarding you with new pointless crap all the time. They haven't made a car thing. They aren't doing podcasts. They aren't reshuffling their UI every week. Basically they're (mostly, could be even better) just shutting the fuck up and it's definitely nicer than using Spotify was.

I subscribed to Tidal relatively early and could tell the difference in audio quality with some songs. I stuck with Spotify because I couldn't justify paying more for a smaller catalog. I've been slowly frustrated with the changes Spotify keeps introducing... breaking my "Starred" songs by replacing it with "Liked" songs, tampering with song shuffle, and routinely switching me to "Autoplay". Some of the curated playl…

You should check back their pricing. What you said was true some years ago but now that Spotify increased their prices multiple times, the pricing is the same (in Europe, the family plan is even 1€ cheaper).

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#207

Post by Sakos » Sat, May 25, 2024, 7:22 AM UTC

Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #36

djc6 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car Thing is just a bluetooth remote control for Spotify or other audio applications. The music still comes from the phone - to the car's speaker system via whatever method your phone is connected (bluetooth, aux jack, etc..)

If that's really what it is then why does it matter if they won't be made anymore? There must be more to it such as always online DRM service also closing.

Nobody cares that it isn't being made anymore. People are upset that their already purchased devices are being turned into paperweights because they won't maintain the online infrastructure they required to use it. It's wasteful and unfair to the people who bought it and should not be allowed legally.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#208

Post by saaaaaam » Sat, May 25, 2024, 8:33 AM UTC

vsnf wrote: post #194

tmpz22 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the course of using their product, there have been few new, impactful features. What new features do you want for a music player? Better audio quality? More discovery features? Lower memory usage? More responsive UI?

I can think of ten thousand things I'd like the Spotify player to do. - First of all, stop changing the layout every goddamn day - Stop pushing podcasts - Better 'ignore' functionality so I can listen to something without it influencing my recommendations. I know Private Mode exists but it's clumsy and all-or-nothing. I want it to be more granular and available on an as-needed basis. - Support for player cursors, whi…

Apple Music does not require artists to upload lyrics, it’s optional. They just make it easier than Spotify where you need to submit through Musixmatch.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#209

Post by saaaaaam » Sat, May 25, 2024, 9:22 AM UTC

smallerfish wrote: post #2

If anybody at Spotify with the influence to make it happen is reading this: please publish an open source firmware loader (or specs to build one, or similar) to allow community driven projects to be developed on this hardware. You'd gain a lot of good will by doing this.

I think they probably fired anybody at Spotify with influence in the relevant teams in their Christmas cull. Which is probably why they are discontinuing it, because there is no one left who knows how it works.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#210

Post by jmholla » Sat, May 25, 2024, 9:39 AM UTC

ozozozd wrote: post #204

tmpz22 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the course of using their product, there have been few new, impactful features. What new features do you want for a music player? Better audio quality? More discovery features? Lower memory usage? More responsive UI?

- Reliability: Spotify’s IOS and Mac apps regularly refuse to play and require killing and restarting. If you’re in the car, several times. Similar issues with bluetooth speakers. When browser or Youtube app happily play, Spotify struggles. - Improved UX: Still can’t filter for unheard episodes of a podcast. Not sure why the repeat button has no tooltip and has to be so cryptic. One tap repeats the (imaginary?) playl…

I agree with basically everything you said. But funnily, this feature:

> Why can’t I see a stream of the songs I played so I can easily find what I recently played and play it again?

is available on their Linux client which isn't even officially supported. (It's in the play queue screen.)