“Car thing” is an unimaginable bag fumble in terms of branding. “You know the uhhhhhh car thing” and I have Zero idea it has anything to do with Spotify

At first, I thought your dunkey style deadpan was finally perfected. Then I realized the Spotify Car Thing was its actual name.

Having beaten Apple at streaming, Spotify honestly thought they could beat them at portable tech. The fools...

Five months is pretty alright for the spotify car thing. I usually crash my car before I can reach that long and have to get a new one, along with a new car.

Thanks for validating my irrational obsession with owning music on physical format. Literally at the point where cassettes are more reliable.

The craziest part to me is how car thing used to be just a free feature in the app where you would just say “hey Spotify play _” and then they removed that feature, sold the formerly free feature as a paid a physical object that they are bricking shortly thereafter and now we won’t have anything even though they already have the app feature fully developed 🤯

I was not expecting a video on Car Thing! Here are my two cents: I bought two of them during their fire sale ($30/piece). I had given my dad one of them so he can use with his Spotify Premium and he liked it. People could knock on the device for being "useless" in our modern world, but none of my family's vehicles have a fancy infotainment system. This (Car) thing is perfect for people like me. When I found out that Spotify was shutting it down I was understandably pissed! Despite how unbelievably under-powered the device is, I am hoping for some tech-savvy people to find a way to make it work as a basic media controller. Hell, if I could have it control my Poweramp then that'd be even better! Living in a world where we don't own the things we buy is awful. I was worried with how niche the Car Thing was that this story wouldn't blow up, but thanks to you and other channels, this has become a bigger story about not just bricking a product two years after its release, but about ownership, e-waste, opportunities for modifications, and corporations not being your friend.

the thought of spotify getting away with bricking all the units is pretty scary, imagine if game consoles or phones started getting bricked by the developers once they stop getting official support just out of spite towards hackers or pirates. honestly doesn't seem too far fetched

I had bought the Car Thing an year ago. It was, very disappointing. I sent an email to the Spotify giving them my feedback. In my back and forth (I'm a game dev, so in the same "software landscape") and we basically ended up agreeing that it was not ... a great device, over the long term. I appreciate this video. It touches on a lot of the points that echo with a lot of people's experiences. Also, as usual - doing my regular request/insistance/demand/pleading - Deep Disgoc Dives on "Porcupine Tree". I feel like I'm a bit obligated to keep this as a comment signature on all your videos, although I will stop if its seen as pestering or rude, deffo don't mean it that way.

The cleaning cloth looks like a Cards Against Humanity expansion pack.

I thought the name "Car Thing" was just neat bit Mic was doing, but that being it's actual name instantly made it entirely unfunny. Don't try and have a soul Spotify those are for us.

This is the most useless device I’ve ever seen and the fact that Spotify is discontinuing it not even a year within its life and thought they didn’t need to give refunds sums up that company pretty well.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="306">5:06</a> Unexpected Librarian appearance. We love him, don't we folks?

Best use for the Car Thing is modding DOOM on it so you having something to do while driving. I dont drive but im sure playing video games at the same time is perfectly safe

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="367">6:07</a> The Mic the Snare / Scott the Woz singularity will happen any day now

My solution for this use case when I was using an old car was a Bluetooth-to-Radio-signal device at about the same price point. They’re a good call IF there’s vacant radio stations where you live

no cap this is literally the first time i've ever heard of this thing

Playing Cute Thing, Thin Thing, Kool Thing and All The Small Things in the Spotify Car Thing.

I think a big issue that probably contributed it to having low sales was that you still needed to have your phone connected to the car’s stereo system, which basically cut off the market for older cars that didn’t have something as basic as an aux jack and pretty much required those people to buy either a cassette adapter or an FM transmitter (if they didn’t already have one of those) in addition to the Car Thing.

“Life is a cruel mistress! A ceasing, unending plummet towards our inevitable demise…” What an entrance.😅👏

It's becoming uncomfortably prevalent now. Just look at The Crew by Ubisoft. Even if you have have the physical disk for that game (which came out only a decade ago) you can no longer play it. There's no offline mode. You can't even launch the game. It's absurd that I effectively no longer own this physical thing that I paid for. Worst part is, they've gotten away with it. The pushback they received has seemingly not phased them so we can expect this to happen more in the industry going forward.

The moment I realize just how bad our end of the stick is in a digital market was when I told myself I'd like to try out the newer wwe games and I realized that the owners of those games had removed all wwe games from all digital storefronts with the exception of the two most recent ones. Now the only way to play them is by getting a physical copy. Having your things be controlled by corporations who just want to abuse you is not something I want in my future. Piracy is completely justified.

Your comedic timing keeps getting better (which is insane since it was basically flawless) with each video and I love it

He’s not beating the Scott The Woz allegations with the Wii U tangent, is he

Did not even know this existed, seems like a really cool tech artifact from the Zune era

its so nice of spotify to immediately provide you with a reason for a companion piece video to the one where you stop using it

Strong opening sentence

This video is literally the first time I've EVER heard of this thing. And it was a video about it shutting down. That says all I need to know about it right there.

I bought mine when it came out and use it every day on work commutes and just my general driving. I have since upgraded cars and have a fancy Bluetooth screen built in but I kept the car thing because the saved playlist buttons and the voice search are just that handy. This decision is honestly what's helped me consider just dropping spotify and moving to another music listening service because removing a feature I payed a substantial amount for without recompensation is pretty horrific.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="306">5:06</a> OMG NORTHERNLION

spotify continuing to be the absolute worst, who woulda thought! good video btw the thumbnail especially is very eye catching well done

Are we really surprised they are bricking the car things? They have been making their free users version of spotify almost unusable, like, i can't listen to stuff without shuffle on, i get like 5 to 6 ads for every like 4 songs, and they play songs that you don't have in your playlists, unless you use your liked playlist

Imagine if Windows just decided to brick every computer that ever ran Windows ME

mic the snare/scott the woz singularity achieved with the Wii U mention

From this video I learned that Mic is a Northernlion fan.

This reminds me of the stop killing games campaign, surely this is illegal and we as consumers should fight this

The carthing should serve as an allegory for spotifys service as a whole. The day Spotify shuts down its servers your whole music catalog will disappear. Sure, this won’t happen anytime soon but if it happens you will have spend years and years of monthly fees and you can do nothing about it. Fun.

I still just use an mp3 player and micro SD cards. £100 would get me enough space to store about 200 thousand songs. Granted that's dwarfed by the 100 million on Spotify, but it is still over 400 solid days of music if I only play each song once. Practically, that is enough to play me new music every moment I'm in a car for the rest of my life. And it can't be 'bricked'.

I remember seeing it advertised on spotify previously - but as soon as I saw it needed an adapter, I clicked off in frustration. *Everything* for your car needs an adapter in the cigarette lighter, and mine has never worked. Otherwise, I probably would've been one of the apparently-very-small user base who bought one. I love listening to music in my car, and at this point all I've got is the radio or a travel Bluetooth speaker I can hook up to my phone. *For spotify*.

I've litterally never heard of this thing, no wonder they didn't sell many of them.

You know what this reminds me of? The Snapchat Spectacles. And at least they're still making them, in fact they're working on an AR version.

Waiting on mic’s mic thing

That is why i modded my iPod Classic from 2006, put a SSD (512GB), a new battery, and use it today.

The craziest thing about this thing is that people actually bought it instead of buying a similarly priced CarPlay device. Just goes to show how some people throw money at useless products because the brand name.

i like this channel. i will watch this video now

Wii-U was Nintendo's Chevy Nova moment. I thought it was an education tool for the longest time.

great start to the vid, mike

With vehicles going the subscription route, I would argue that we already live in the age of not owning what you own.

This reminds me of the time Spotify took their perfectly good music streaming service and bricked it by turning the whole thing into TikTok Jr.

When you started talking about the Wii U it felt like an alternate Scott the woz universe. I'd love to see a cross over

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="305">5:05</a> @TheLibraryofLetourneau spotted lmao

Reminds me of the time I cancelled Spotify but they kept charging me every month anyway until they overdrew my checking account. I never dealt with that company again after that. For months, they charged me and I went online and made sure it really was cancelled, and I sent strongly worded emails and whatnot. Then the next month n got charged again. I decided they were the worse after that. Never touched ‘em again.

Great content yet again.

wasn’t expecting mic the snare to turn into scott the “wii u” woz for a moment

I don’t need a car thing I already have a phone Aftermarket radio Gets me in the zone (autozone) Did you pay for car thing? Well I got mine for free I don’t fuck with Spotify ‘Cause I’m cassette to mp3

The fact is that if you want to jailbreak the car thing to use for another project, there are other options that are cheaper, more powerful, and better-supported. The hardware really is totally useless.

So brave for you to come out as an NL fan ❤❤❤

I bought my Spotify "car thing" a few years ago and it's been a great product. I was shocked when they emailed me saying it was being discontinued in December I didn't know they could just do that. update: I was able to get a refund even though they tried to just add free months to my subscription at first I was able to get a full refund.

crazy crossover with the librarian

this is so baffling 😂 why would anyone even need this when most new cars basically have this built-in

NorthernLion reference holy smokes <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="306">5:06</a>

The first song it showed on your thing was an LCD soundsystem song thats fye

Was just running up the fyre fest vid, then this dropped. 🙏

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="307">5:07</a> Librarian sighting lmao

*with fear in his voice* “that’s not Lana”

I think a really cool use for the Car Thing would be a visual display for a home hifi system - It could be mounted above an amplifier or DAC and used to select the song playing from a streaming service. If that's not already a thing then someone should definitely make it !

Will it play 'Doom'?

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="150">2:30</a> the japanese house!! i see you!!

I heard that it’ll be bricked on December 19th and decided I’ll buy one soon. It’ll be great decor for the living room. 🥰

I never thought physical things were going to last forever cos I lived through the switch from vinyl to cassette to CD to mp3, but it's bizarre that Spotify did this car thing when almost all cars that have Bluetooth capacity give you buttons that can move between tracks anyway. Isn't making personalised playlists for driving half the point of streaming?

if only something like that really existed - physical controls, working voice control and maybe it could have screen with antiglare so it can be used in car.

I think the reason why it's getting deliberately shut off instead of being effectively an interface for your own phone's Spotify app, is because they might just replace it with something else with maybe more function or better branding and promotion

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="220">3:40</a> It was so nice seeing that you listen to Sondre Lerche 🤩

I'm glad to see the voice commands suck regardless of platform. The number of covers and live versions of my favourite songs I've discovered though!

Alternative third act for you: Spotify pushes an update that unlocks the devices for all users, regardless of technical savvy, and allows them to easily use it in whatever way they want. I would love to use its scroll wheel for all kinds of things, so I may buy one just for modding, but it would probably be easier to just add a scroll wheel and touch screen to a Raspberry Pi and write some code for that. Of course, this is also why I hate streaming services because you keep paying and never own anything. DVD's and CD's are the best.

Hi Mic, hope you're alright - can you do a Deep Discog Dive (if you have any plans for any) on Rush?

excited for Spotify to go “huh, what car thing?” Come Christmas

Ngl I really wanted one when they dropped the price to like $40 or $50. But I never got it and forgot about it till all the news broke in the past few weeks. Glad I never pulled the trigger, but I still think it's really cool! More as a desk or room device not as much for the car

i have Amazon Music instead of Spotify, and I have a Car Thing for that - it's called my phone! the Amazon Music app has pretty much all the functionality of the desktop version, and with an unlimited data plan for my phone, yeah i'm kinda getting whatever music my little heart desires in my car. so unless Amazon decides to torpedo their music streaming service completely, i'm good.

“Hi there, Car Thingthony Cartano here

you look good today mic

I’ve had this since day 1. I got it for a discount so I didn’t need to buy a new console system and deal with changing it out which would’ve been a pain. Car thing has been such a good part of my daily drive but the fact that it’s being bricked in a few months is ridiculous. I’ll have to try the “hacking” before then, but even then who knows how that will go.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="135">2:15</a> was waiting for him to say "through the magic of buying two of them" 😔

I️ just want to say I️ think you make the best music KZfaq videos on the platform.

If Spotify were to make a good physical product, I think it should be a physical mp3 player--style device with all of the Premium features, except without a streaming account attached to it and having it be a (slightly-more-expensive-than-premium) one-time payment.

this is the best video i have seen on the car thing everything stated in the video is factual, distinguishing your from the rest

My worlds are colliding with these Nintendo Wii U talking points. Sheeeeesh

I actually really liked my car thing, I've been using just my phone with a magsafe charging mount, but the UI on the Car Thing has a actual landscape UI something the actual Spotify app is still missing....

With all of the talk of jailbreaking, it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable question is answered: Can it run Doom?

surely you can jailbreak it purely to avoid the bricking, and use it as normal... hmm...

Yo! A Librarian viewer! I knew I subbed for a good reason.

This was great for someone like me with an older car that only has bluetooth for calls and not media. I really hope there is a class action suit against them over this. I want my money back.

Car Thing was a stupid unusable product. I just wish for an iPod revival of a product with Local Music or Streaming support. Subscriptions can’t last forever.

I was more surprised that December is in 5 months

I did not know the Spotify Car Thing was officially being discontinued and thought the title was just an ominous sort of threat

I honestly had no idea this was even happening. Guess I'm glad I made the switch to Apple Music cause this just cements my distaste for Spotify as a company

finding out mr snare is a northernlion fan was the last thing i expected from this video

Apple Music with apple car, Spotify with Spotify car thing. Competition is on

LIBRARIAN SPOTTED

Yeah I was really interested in buying one of these until I realized how bad it was. I just wanted a separate layout for my phone to run maps and my thing to run music, with a real physical dial. But the product is just barely anything