I liked using mine at my desk at work. Phone in pocket, connected to headphones. Car thing on desk, controlling music
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?
Plex/Plexamp/synfonium + Tidal + QoBuz + Bandcamp
If you care about artists not being screwed over, Tidal is usually the first recommendation.
Currently using a combination of Plexamp, WinAmp, Bandcamp and Apple Music.
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.
Local SSD
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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
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
You won’t even have to ask if they use Linux, they’ll tell you.
Nobara btw.
Shouldn’t it be Desbian?
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.
Arch users, assemble!
Have my babies, EndeavourOS!
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.
It’s been months since I’ve updated my system, I’ma be in for a ride
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.
Gentoo users, start compiling for the assembly next month!
(I don’t use gentoo btw)
So, is that a right away thing, or does that mean 2 or 3 weeks from now?
j/k
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.
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.
Everybody buy your music. These streaming platforms are trash.
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.
I just realised iTunes (store) is no longer a thing. Everything’s just streaming now.
Time to bust out the walkman
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.
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.
Everybody
buypirate your music. These streaming platforms are trash.Also this. But I want the bands to get paid.
There are three morbillion songs and I have no idea which ones I like. Streaming platforms became popular for a reason
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 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.
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.
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.
Yeah this is fucking peak internet snobbery. “Just spend thousands dollars on music” ok.
Yes, yes buy. Do not sail the high seas.
Or both Bandcamp for the win
piracy is not stealing if buying isn’t owning
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.
I’m afraid that that information has had to be [redacted]. Choose another path.
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
Oink. Waffles.
Wait……
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 want the bands to get some money. I buy from bandcamp when musicians are sensible enough to sell on there, or on their sites.
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’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
Me too…I’m at 1500+ albums. But I do download them too for when the sad times to come…
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.
Dude Bandcamp had been sold twice and the product has not changed from a user experience and I only use Bandcamp at this point…I will say you NEED to download anything you buy to archive your collection but at the moment Bandcamp still pays bands, still allows unlimited streaming and still amazing.
Do I expect it to remain amazing…nope, but for now it’s still amazing.
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.
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.
I love buying CDs on eBay.
I also love buying direct downloads from artists.
Plex[Amp] makes this work in my pocket
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
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 :)
Xmanager is calling everyone’s name. Thank me later 😁
What it do
Spotify premium for free. No ads, you can skip as many times as you want, you can pick songs and it works with Android Auto.
What does Xmanager do? I read the site, but nowhere does it seem to describe the product
If it is what I think it is then they are intentionally being vague about what the app does so they don’t draw attention from the service that it works with. If you put that in context with the article then the answer to your question is clear.
No ads Spotify.
imo they should refund everyone who bought one and collect all the devices to recycle.
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.
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.
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.
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
