Although the 'Car Thing' was Spotify's first attempt at hardware, the device was more of a mobile phone app for the streaming service than a stand-alone player. Still, the hardware was fairly nice. Despite this, the gadget managed to find a niche and an enthusiastic stream of followers.
Spotify's brief foray into the hardware market wasn't very successful; the company abandoned manufacturing the Car Thing dashboard accessory less than a year after it was made available to the general public. And now, after two years, the gadget is going to become totally unusable.
Emails are being sent out to 'Car Thing' buyers that it will stop functioning completely on December 9th.
Spotify has announced today that it will be bricking all Car Things that have been purchased as of December 9 and will not be accepting returns or trade-ins on a page dedicated to support.
Beyond advising users to 'safely' dispose of the bricked device by "following local electronic waste guidelines," Spotify offers no additional advice to owners of the device.
In April 2021, Car Thing was first made available by invitation only. Later that year, Spotify opened up a public waitlist for the accessory. In February 2022, at USD 90, the gadget was made available for purchase, and five months later, production was stopped.
Users pleading for Open-source
To reduce the number of gadgets that end up in landfills, the owners of Spotify's soon-to-be-broken Car Thing device are pleading with the company to make the devices open-source.
Requests to salvage the hardware, which was meant to connect to auxiliary outlets and dashboards in cars so that drivers could listen to and use Spotify, have gone unanswered by Spotify.
In a website FAQ, Spotify stated, "We're discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings." "We acknowledge that this decision may be upsetting, but it frees us up to concentrate on creating new features and improvements that will ultimately give all Spotify users a better experience."
