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Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

arstechnica.com

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Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#91

Post by complaintdept »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #82
complaintdept wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write your elected representatives, preferably by snail mail (they take it more seriously that way). With Right to Repair being talked about so much right now, the time could be right to get this into the public mind. Car Thing could be what nucleates anti bricking legislation.

Just a note, from having worked in a Congressional office that phones are usually answered by interns and a staff assistant, mail is opened almost exclusively by the staff assistant, but this is still the lowest level position in an office so the marginal difference is pretty minimal. And for any issue that's time sensitive, don't bother physically mailing because it has to go through extensive security checks before…

Yeah I heard that about letters like 20 years ago from a staffer so maybe I'm a bit out of touch, lol.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#92

Post by JumpCrisscross »

complaintdept wrote: post #91
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note, from having worked in a Congressional office that phones are usually answered by interns and a staff assistant, mail is opened almost exclusively by the staff assistant, but this is still the lowest level position in an office so the marginal difference is pretty minimal. And for any issue that's time sensitive, don't bother physically mailing because it has to go through extensive security checks before…

Yeah I heard that about letters like 20 years ago from a staffer so maybe I'm a bit out of touch, lol.

You're correct in phone calls and letters counting way more than e-mails or online comments. Especially if the comment is thoughtful. If the issue is hot button, it won't do anything. But for marginal issues like these, a couple calls can easily swing votes.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#93

Post by kube-system »

hoherd wrote: post #30
giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

I wonder if there's licensing issues with them doing so? Like I assume they didn't make all the hardware and firmware involved. Kind of a shame when companies do this. I also wonder how long till the hacker community starts hacking these things any way? Seems like a worthy device to hack, though I can't imagine there's millions of these out there. I'd love to buy a 2nd hand one and install custom software on it if so…

Spotify almost certainly developed Car Thing using license encumbered software, and this illustrates how encumbered licenses are anti-freedom and are causes of unnecessary e-waste. Thankfully folks have started organizing to reverse engineer the device: - https://github.com/err4o4/spotify-car-thing-reverse-engineer... - https://hackaday.com/2024/05/30/old-spotify-car-thing-hacks-...

Even if there isn’t third party licensed software in this Thing, it still can take significant work to open-source an internal project that wasn’t intended to be public from the start.

And given the price of tech labor, most businesses are going to want to put their engineers on active projects.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#94

Post by zackmorris »

A slightly different take:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/30/spotify-begins-offering-ca...

Context:

https://fortune.com/europe/2023/12/04/daniel-ek-to-slash-blo...

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4444678-joe-rogan-deal-sp...

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/29/daniel-ek-salary-spoti...

https://musictech.com/news/industry/spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-co...

Spotify is under constant fire due to its low royalty payout rates. Ditto reports that an artist receives $0.003 – $0.005 per stream on average, with 30 per cent of those royalties going to Spotify.

Spotify paid out $48 billion to the music industry, paid out $250 million to Joe Rogan and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek cashed out $118.9 million in shares - which combined with the rest of the Spotify executives totaled $250 million in stock sales.

Whereas:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-soundcloud-created-can-neve...

If Spotify is happy to brick hardware that customers paid good money for, then is it valid to ask if Spotify should be bricked?

Is Spotify doing good by its streamers?

Is Spotify a positive force for new music discovery and promoting promising talent, or is it embracing long tail effects to maximize its own profits and those of its cronies in the music industry?

How does the situation change if everyone cancels their Spotify membership in protest, or sells short the SPOT stock?

How does the situation change if the majority of shareholders and paying customers demand that the entire Spotify board is thrown out so that Spotify can be restructured in favor of streamers, employees and listeners?

Could a few hackers and makers, perhaps with the help of some benefactors who won the internet lottery, throw together a p2p app that negates the need for Spotify's existence?

Are any of these questions unreasonable, given the recent behavior of Spotify?

The predictable nature of all of this makes me wonder why the disruption model stops at a handful of people getting morbidly rich at everyone else's expense.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#95

Post by nkozyra »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

I wonder if there's licensing issues with them doing so? Like I assume they didn't make all the hardware and firmware involved. Kind of a shame when companies do this. I also wonder how long till the hacker community starts hacking these things any way? Seems like a worthy device to hack, though I can't imagine there's millions of these out there. I'd love to buy a 2nd hand one and install custom software on it if so…

> Seems like a worthy device to hack

I haven't opened mine up yet but there's not a lot there that an ESP32, a screen, and an encoder couldn't replace. I'll probably disassemble mine for the encoder knob and see if I can't repurpose the screen. The actual hardware isn't particularly compelling otherwise.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#96

Post by keraf »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #9

Are they just banking on people not caring enough or knowing about the refund process? Clearly it can't be better off for them to refund hundreds of thousands maybe even 1m+ people. We need laws that step in to make this impossible. Hardware should be designed so that it can be reused. Make it so that people can just reflash the memory at a minimum. There's no reason for something like this to become e-waste. And the…

The lack of care for e-waste produced makes me sick. Spotify should at least open the hardware or sponsor a contest for a smart re-use / open source firmware for the device, would probably cost them less at the end and make them look better.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#97

Post by solardev »

jsheard wrote: post #49
eurleif wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadia controllers got to be reflashed as standard Bluetooth controllers. I still use mine.

It's worth noting that for some reason there's a deadline for flashing the generic Bluetooth firmware onto a Stadia controller though, you have to get it done before the end of this year if you have one gathering dust. https://stadia.google.com/controller/index_en_GB.html

To be fair, they've extended that deadline a few times already (and it's mirrored elsewhere, as another pointed out).

I know Google graveyards a lot of things, but in the Stadia case, they truly went above and beyond to make customers whole again. They refunded every software & hardware purchase automatically, in full, no matter when you bought it, and also provided save game exports. That means people got to play those games on Stadia for those few years, then got all their money back AND some free hardware (Bluetooth controllers). It was a failed Google experiment, but all us guinea pigs got some free entertainment and swag out of it. Kudos.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#98

Post by delfinom »

jsheard wrote: post #49
eurleif wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadia controllers got to be reflashed as standard Bluetooth controllers. I still use mine.

It's worth noting that for some reason there's a deadline for flashing the generic Bluetooth firmware onto a Stadia controller though, you have to get it done before the end of this year if you have one gathering dust. https://stadia.google.com/controller/index_en_GB.html

Probably just a deadline to kill the subdomain and resources.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#99

Post by lupire »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #28
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #9

Are they just banking on people not caring enough or knowing about the refund process? Clearly it can't be better off for them to refund hundreds of thousands maybe even 1m+ people. We need laws that step in to make this impossible. Hardware should be designed so that it can be reused. Make it so that people can just reflash the memory at a minimum. There's no reason for something like this to become e-waste. And the…

We don’t need more laws. We need to repeal the arbitration act, and let things like this get resolved in court, where we can establish a precedent against this kind of stuff.

Arbitration costs Spotify more than the refund. What's wrong with mass arbitration?

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#100

Post by lupire »

nickthegreek wrote: post #4

I used the support link provided. They tried to give me 3 months of premium instead of a refund. I declined. They replied: >Thank you for waiting! As I can only suggest you for free Premium in your account. The actual Car Thing refund is done by the specialty advisors, so I'll create a case related to your issue and transfer it and the right team will get back to you through email. Sounds good? So I am now waiting fo…

Wow, they end the chat by insulting you.
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