They should at least release data sheets and any bootloader signing keys, allowing people to reuse the devices for other purposes. If you could replace the firmware, I’m sure you could use it for controlling your home automation setup or displaying the weather/news/train times/other info (or possibly other tasks depending on what’s in the SoC). Now, alas, it’s just e-waste.
That doesn’t help make money. The engineers are needed elsewhere.
Since that was their first attempt at hardware, I bet they don’t have access and/or rights to share shit, as everything is owned by OEM.
Datasheets are copyrighted by the silicon manufacturer, not the product manufacturer, and usually covered by an NDA. Spotify probably couldn’t release them even if they wanted to.
imo they should refund everyone who bought one and collect all the devices to recycle.
We need new laws y’all. All these companies should be forced to collect all their e-waste as part of their products lifecycle.
If a company produces any product and the company has a market cap over $1billion, then they should be responsible for collecting and recycling all their trash.
I don’t know how accurate this is or if it’s still true but I remember hearing like twenty years ago that Germany has laws like that, including dealing with waste packaging, with the result that companies suddenly found ways to use more sustainable packaging
It’s a little annoying how the article only gives much of a hint as to what exactly a Car Thing is, beyond a “dashboard accessory”, in the last paragraph of the article:
the product was more of a remote control for Spotify on your mobile phone than any kind of standalone player
Car Thing is basically the Rabbit R1, but for music. In other words, a cheap Android device, with one app (a car dashboard variation of Spotify), a scroll wheel, and a some shortcut buttons.
It works by connecting to your phone via Bluetooth. So, yeah, instead of using the phone for the auto friendly UI, it pipes that UI to a second cheaper mobile device.
It’s truly stupid, and it cost about the same as an external CarPlay / Android Auto screen… which could display an auto friendly Spotify UI, and much much more.
It’s worth noting that it was quite cheap and therefore a very good budget option to MacGyver music streaming into older cars.
Everybody buy your music. These streaming platforms are trash.
I just realised iTunes (store) is no longer a thing. Everything’s just streaming now.
Time to bust out the walkman
iTunes was an unhappy medium. I liked how you can actually buy albums, but they gave the MP3s weird filenames to make it more difficult to move to another device. I did it anyway, but I had to find the right folder, figure out what track it was, and rename the track. I’m against it but it’s still better than streaming.
You can still buy songs on iTunes and load them to an iPod, MP3 player, or in my case to my Navidrome instance for my own personal self-hosted streaming.
There are three morbillion songs and I have no idea which ones I like. Streaming platforms became popular for a reason
Yeah this is fucking peak internet snobbery. “Just spend thousands dollars on music” ok.
Yeah most people don’t care to maintain a local music library. It’s a lot of work and compared to streaming services that do it for you this offers no real benefit. If you listen to lots of new/different music all the time, streaming is actually far cheaper.
It’s cheaper because the band doesn’t get paid as much. The streaming service keeps most of the meager pay.
In every service I know of, the platform takes a minority of revenue
People make up for it by buying merch or going to shows. Margins on those things are much better for the artists.
“It is a lot of work”? I don’t know, for me it always seemed far more convenient than being locked to a single service, single player app and following restrictions.
For me, discovery is the entire reason to use streaming services. I have a ton of hard drive space, and know how to find anything I want to download. I have a fairly large music collection from before the days of streaming. But streaming services help me discover all kinds of things I’d likely never hear otherwise. They still suck, as in they’re greedy as hell and the quality is mid, but I don’t know what I’d do if I had to listen to the same stuff all the time.
Everybody
buypirate your music. These streaming platforms are trash.Also this. But I want the bands to get paid.
I recently encountered a song I could only stream but not buy anywhere without DRM. Kinda wild because it has over 5 million YouTube views.
If anyone knows how the buy Slow Song by The Knocks, lmk.
YT + Music is worth its weight in gold.
Yes, yes buy. Do not sail the high seas.
I want the bands to get some money. I buy from bandcamp when musicians are sensible enough to sell on there, or on their sites.
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Or pirate the music, then send some money in an envelope to the artists themselves.
Absolutely. Even if you pirate from some, and buy whole albums from a few when you can afford it, you’re supporting artists instead of the shareholders of tech goon overlords.
Or pirate the music, then go to a concert or buy some merch.
I wish list stuff until a Bandcamp Friday comes around where artists get all the money. I’ve stopped buying physical media, so waiting on a digital purchase isn’t an issue for me.
Bandcamp was sold off, no point using them going forward.
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The site is still the same, you still get your music to download, the band still gets most of the money. 100% still a point in using them.
For now, they still provide DRM free downloads in FLAC. And they still pay the artists on the Fridays. I’ll continue using it till they inevitably fuck it up.
I’ve almost never paid a cent for music.
My concert ticket stack is thicc though, and I have SOOOOO MANY hoodies, t-shirts, cups, and random bullshit. I’m not paying for DRM, but you can’t DRM a comfy zip-up!
Don’t give them any ideas
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RIP what… was there for a decade. It was godly. Your other reply knows what’s up. So does the god Orpheus, he knows some heady chunes
I’m afraid that that information has had to be [redacted]. Choose another path.
Why use a private tracker when soulseek allegedly exists? There are also Telegram bots that can allegedly download FLACs from Deezer
Private trackers are dope for very fast flac album downloads.
SLSK is godly for rare stuff.
Oink. Waffles.
Wait……
Lidarr is pretty keen if you already have sonarr and radar running.
Am I the only one who finds it super annoying, that “detection through sound waves” (Sonar) does video things while “detection through light” (lidar) does the sound things?
WHY?! Swap names already! It’s driving me nuts!
I find the choice of name for Readarr more annoying, since we already had Radarr
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Idk who needs to hear it, but stop buying this shit. If it has a computer inside, but you can’t flash your own software onto it, just pass. If you’re unsure, look around, find the nearest Linux user and ask for help.
A few months ago my wife wanted to buy an electronic picture frame and I had a hard time explaining this to her.
Well ok, an electronic picture frame is not much of an investition and works without internet. Well, most of them. Ok, you have to research it before buying.
You won’t even have to ask if they use Linux, they’ll tell you.
Nobara btw.
Got any tips or tidbits for Nobara? I’m heavily considering installing it onto my new PC when I build it in a week. I’m a noob at Linux but it seemed perfect for everything I’m looking to do on my PC.
I recommend Bazzite instead. It’s based on Universal Blue (which is actually based on Fedora Atomic) and gives you a super easy and stable experience.
Arch users, assemble!
And my Arch!
And my… hang on, I just need to apply this tweak from the wiki…
And my axe!
I am ashamed to say I’m an ex-Arch user. I really liked Arch, but if you go long periods without updating it it becomes really painful when you do eventually apply updates. I got tired of finally booting some system I hadn’t touched in a year to work on something or other attempting to apply updates to it, and then spending the next 6 hours fixing everything that broke because one of the updates from last week applied before one from 10 months ago that it depended on, or some config file I touched once 3 years ago changed and needs manual fixing now.
Yeah I was a Gentoo user a long time ago so when I finally installed Arch I had a little mental note in the back of my head to update every week unless I wanted to sort out things I shouldn’t have to sort out.
It’s been months since I’ve updated my system, I’ma be in for a ride
So, is that a right away thing, or does that mean 2 or 3 weeks from now?
j/k
Have my babies, EndeavourOS!
Gentoo users, start compiling for the assembly next month!
(I don’t use gentoo btw)
Hey, not all of us Debian users are lesbians.
It would be more accurate to call us lovers of lesbians.
…yet.
Oh yea. There’s definitely still time.
Shouldn’t it be Desbian?
To be fair, next to no one bought this. And the people that payed $90 for this are probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
This is basically a dumb android device with one app - an auto friendly version of Spotify. To use it, you need to pair it to your phone via Bluetooth. So, yeah, it assumes you have a phone in your car with Spotify on it.
Also it costs about as much as a cheap externally mounted CarPlay or Android auto screen. So, yeah. Not a great.
If you want to put auto friendly app UIs in an older car, go get a cheap CarPlay or AA display. Those are platforms that have been around for a decade, and Apple & Google have long partnership agreements with automakers that are likely to ensure those platforms will be supported for years to come. Hell, Apple is still supporting ancient iPod connection protocols 20+ years later.
This thing was the Rabbit R1, but for a music streaming app.
Honestly this thing solved a very specific problem for me: My car has no good way to mount a phone for car usage so I’ve always kept it in the center console. Car Thing just put a remote on my dash for that with buttons for presets and easy song skipping.
I only got it for $10 though, and that was two years ago. It has convinced me to get a new head unit with Android Auto support on it for sure
the people that payed $90 for this are probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer
maybe, but even stupid people should be protected from being taken advantage of.
They should at least get a refund of 50% of the purchase price.Nope, I’m fed up with stupid people getting rewarded for their stupidity. I knew that PPI was a scam years ago and I payed higher interest rates because of refusing to sign up to it. Years later all the stupids got their money back. So fuck 'em, fuck them all. Also the stupids keep voting for Nazis Yes I’m pissed.
Proton Pump Inhibitors?
Producer Price Index?
Plastic Pipe Institute?
Sorry payment protection insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_protection_insurance
Holy shit: “The company is recommending that customers do a factory reset on the product and find some way of responsibly recycling the hardware.”
So they’re not offering to dispose of it, or even giving any advice on how to dispose of it responsibly. Just suggesting people should probably do that.
If companies are allowed to behave this way we’re all screwed. Any efforts by the average person to avert the environmental damage caused by the waste they produce is completely futile and any politician who claims that they’re doing their best to try to hold companies accountable is a liar.
I hate to break it to you but we’re way past screwed already.
We passed screwed like 25 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Customers who bought the Car Thing are receiving emails warning that it will stop working altogether as of December 9th.
Unfortunately for those owners, Spotify isn’t offering any kind of subscription credit or automatic refund for the device — nor is the company open-sourcing it.
“We’re discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings,” Spotify wrote in an FAQ on its website.
“We understand it may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users.”
The company is recommending that customers do a factory reset on the product and find some way of responsibly recycling the hardware.
Car Thing was initially made available on an invite-only basis in April 2021, with Spotify later opening a public waitlist to buy the accessory later that year.
The original article contains 306 words, the summary contains 145 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This was predictable. Everyone has a phone. Phones have CarPlay and Android Auto.
The fact that they named it “Car Thing” made it clear that it didn’t have much of a valid use and that they didn’t really have a lot of confidence in it.
It’s annoying that they even created it in the first place. It’s more annoying that they now predictably are not supporting it anymore. It should be illegal.
I’m waiting for some FOSS developers to hack this thing and run custom firmware on it. Or someone who creates their own “Car Thing” using an Arduino or Raspberry Pi.
Remember kids, never place buttons for a service on a remote if you don’t know if the remote will last longer than said service :)
Even Google products have a longer lifespan 😖
I’ve since moved on to Tidal. Bought it at $30 when root mods started to be developed, but never really went anywhere.
Image alt:
- 2021-04-13: Interested in car thing
- 2022-10-18: order placed after discounted to $30
- 2022-10-21: shipped
- 2024-05-23: Discontinue notice
- 2024-12-09: Service discontinued
Stop feeding these parasites.
Either buy physical or self host!
Both. Buy physical media, rip the audio files and put them on your selfhosted music server (e.g. Navidrome). Or pirate the music and buy some merch to compensate the artists.
Spotify is an evil company. Bad for artists, bad for consumers. I’m glad to have quit using their service.
What do you use instead?
Local SSD
I use a combo of streaming stuff I bought on Bandcamp with their app and playing local files. In addition to albums and EPs, I have bought a lot of singles on Bandcamp. I put all the singles in a giant constantly growing playlist on the Bandcamp app and then set it to random shuffle. It takes more effort than using something like Spotify, but I personally like it a lot more because it’s only full of music I know I like and I feel satisfied because I supported the artists I like.
Currently using a combination of Plexamp, WinAmp, Bandcamp and Apple Music.
Plex/Plexamp/synfonium + Tidal + QoBuz + Bandcamp
If you care about artists not being screwed over, Tidal is usually the first recommendation.
The bastards barely started selling it a few years ago. I feel like some responsibility should exist. It isn’t a company that is going under, so it shouldn’t be able to just casually kill the devices tied-service it only recently sold.
Agreed. Anything sold with the intention of being used with a subscription service should have 10 years of support.
Anything discontinued should stop being protected by copyright law, and the manufacturer should be forced to give every piece of information they have on that product.
