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Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

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Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#41

Post by shmatt »

dgellow wrote: post #37

Off topic, but I cannot resist to comment on that line under the headline: > By Chris Welch, a reviewer specializing in personal audio and home theater. Since 2011, he has published nearly 6,000 articles, from breaking news and reviews to useful how-tos So 13 years, that’s around 460 publications per year. That sounds pretty high, you would have to be writing non stop for more than a decade. I know nothing about the…

I dont know if i would call something like this[1] an article. Taking a bus ad and writing a few sentences about it. He seems great at copy pasting promotional emails he gets I guess

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/28/10674048/verizon-will-pa...

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#43

Post by AlexandrB »

> Thank you for being on this journey with us, safe travels.

I miss the era when I was a customer paying for a product. Now I'm apparently some kind of traveller that's on a journey with dozens of companies as they try to find local maxima of profit.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#45

Post by foundart »

JoshGG wrote: post #35
Nextgrid wrote: post #31

What's most disgusting is the tone and wording of the e-mail linked in the Reddit post. It reads like they're outright delighted to be breaking your 90-dollar piece of hardware. Not even a fake apology. Tech bros are getting more and more brazen. That email would be fine if they were just discontinuing a feature of their ongoing service - it's disappointing, but you got value out of it while you were paying for it an…

Agreed it’s obnoxious. It also shows the balance of power between consumers and large businesses internet companies. Best of luck safe travels buh-bye!!

See also the recent Sonos app situation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40397777

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#47

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

dgellow wrote: post #37

Off topic, but I cannot resist to comment on that line under the headline: > By Chris Welch, a reviewer specializing in personal audio and home theater. Since 2011, he has published nearly 6,000 articles, from breaking news and reviews to useful how-tos So 13 years, that’s around 460 publications per year. That sounds pretty high, you would have to be writing non stop for more than a decade. I know nothing about the…

A lot of "tech news" journalism is just copy pasting a press release. They might also be counting every single article they were on the byline for, but they might not have actually substantially written that much. An example is some review of the "Best Headphones" where the article is huge, but he only wrote a paragraph.

I think you might also be underestimating how easy it becomes to just churn out article after article if that's your day-job. You're not writing literature or a longform article in the New Yorker; you're just bashing out 2-4 paragraphs, then rinse and repeat all day.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#48

Post by mkeedlinger »

There are so many examples of this. It's been hard to express and advocate for my severe distrust of proprietary garbage (my choice of words isn't hyperbole in this case) to others around me. But with so much of this race to the bottom, I can't help but wonder: how much will consumers take?

I'll admit, my FOSS prefering, DIY leaning use of tech is tedious, but is it worse than dealing with the churn companies force you (and your wallet) to deal with?

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#49

Post by MisterTea »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #28
djc6 wrote: post #8

I've really enjoyed using the Car Thing in my 14 year old Mazda CX9. My car shows no signs of failing, so I don't anticipate replacing it anytime soon for one with Carplay. The Car Thing is so much more convenient than unlocking iPhone with my face, opening spotify, futzing around on the phone to change songs or playlists or whatever. And its easily accessible to my passenger. Its a far better interface than phone fo…

You can probably get a really nice wireless CarPlay compatible head unit installed by a local shop for less than $1.5k to $2k. https://www.crutchfield.com/g_300/All-Car-Stereos.html

> for less than $1.5k to $2k.

A bargain compared to the Car Thing's ~$90 price tag.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#50

Post by jawns »

dgellow wrote: post #37

Off topic, but I cannot resist to comment on that line under the headline: > By Chris Welch, a reviewer specializing in personal audio and home theater. Since 2011, he has published nearly 6,000 articles, from breaking news and reviews to useful how-tos So 13 years, that’s around 460 publications per year. That sounds pretty high, you would have to be writing non stop for more than a decade. I know nothing about the…

Former journalist here. I worked at a business dot-com where the writers were expected to churn out at least 5 market briefs a day, and the majority of them did more. I also worked at a daily newspaper where it wasn't uncommon for me to write 8-10 news briefs a day, but they were largely just rehashing police reports or otherwise summarizing content that was already in front of me (as opposed to doing boots-on-the-ground reporting).
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