Not every slick new piece of technology is a success. It’s common to see companies move on from a failed product, leaving users languishing without support. Spotify is being even more abrupt in its desire to leave Car Thing in the rearview mirror. The music streaming heavyweight has announced it is “discontinuing” the Car Thing, which means it’s going to turn the $90 gadget into a brick later this year. Owners are understandably steamed.
Spotify made the announcement this week, saying Car Thing will be discontinued on Dec. 9, 2024. The verbiage is a bit misleading, though. It would be more appropriate to say that Car Thing was discontinued in summer 2022 when Spotify stopped making and selling it. What’s happening now is more like a forced shutdown. Spotify isn’t offering any option to return the device or receive compensation after turning Car Thing into a paperweight. The company says owners should just recycle it.
Car Thing was released in April 2021 in limited quantities, and it expanded to general availability in Feb 2022. However, Spotify announced it was ending sales of its first hardware product just a few months later in July 2022. We can gather from that rapid evolution that not many people bought the device, but those who did are big fans.
Car Thing was an odd product, aimed mainly at people who use Spotify in their cars but don’t have a built-in touch screen. Car Thing offered a small display with both manual and voice controls for Spotify (and only Spotify). It clipped on a vent, providing easy access to music controls while your phone remained tucked safely away someplace. The device paired with phones over Bluetooth, acting like a fancy remote control while the phone handled streaming music via Bluetooth or an aux cable.
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We can understand why Spotify would decide to stop selling Car Thing, given the narrow appeal—our friends at PCMag thought it was mediocre. But bricking the hardware less than three years after release seems unnecessarily hostile to its customers. There’s no new version, so current owners can’t even upgrade to keep this functionality. Car Thing is also locked down to only work with the Spotify mobile app. Once the company updates the app to disconnect from Car Thing in December, it will become e-waste.
Car Thing owners are complaining about the shutdown on the company’s support forums and elsewhere, asking for a reprieve or an option to unlock the device for third-party development. There are some methods to jailbreak Car Thing, but it’s a complex process that’s just as likely to break something. Still, more Car Thing owners might go that route. With only a few months of functionality left, they don’t have much to lose.