I bought a Spotify Car Thing. It dies in five months.

“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.

Oh by the way, the Wii U was supported for TWELVE YEARS despite being a failure AND despite the Switch launching only five years later. From 2012 to 2024 the eshop was open, and the Switch launched in 2017! Meanwhile the Car Thing is barely TWO years old

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 🤯

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.

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

My mom literally can't watch certain streaming services because "her smart tv is too old" and the streaming apps no longer support those models. I was in awe when I went over to "fix it" and that was what the problem was. Can't have shit in 2024

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 totally agree that it's fucked up that companies are beginning to just straight up deactivate their devices, even when you've bought it, but this isn't the first example of 'not owning the things you own': I'd point to John Deere here, which straight up just doesn't allow farmers to repair their products. They bought these crazy expensive things essential to their work, and are actively barred from the right to repair them. It's messed up that the Car thing is being bricked for no real reason, but I think we need to be on the lookout for all the examples of this happening. Great video :)

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.

6:07 The Mic the Snare / Scott the Woz singularity will happen any day now

Europe just introduced a new law last 2 years ago about contracs regarding digital content. This included that when you buy something phyiscal that is dependend on a digital sofware that the seller is contractually obligated to keep it running for the amount of time a "consumer can expect". now it's up to the courts how long that typically is and it will depend on the item bought, but it's pretty much consens so far that its at least 2 years. so yeah, it's important to get with the times and actually introduce legislation for those things, or the big companys think they can do what they want.