EDIT: The only reason why I still had it at this point was because I could use it with other apps. However, now that my Spotify Subscription is cancelled, it doesn’t work with anything. It’s mildly infuriating because today, I can’t still use it with other apps like I was able to yesterday.
Please don’t make the same mistake I made. No one should buy this.
Are you kidding me? It’s been par for the course as far as car assessors go. Sirus radio was like 100 and still required a subscription. A lot of GPS were that price and most had subscriptions.
Just like they want to charge you to use the heated seats you’re paying the gas to lug around anyway
That’s not the same thing at all. As bad as e.g. Sirius or GPS subscription might be, at least with those the subscription is for ongoing access to new data being transmitted to you. In contrast, a subscription purely for the use of hardware already included in the car is literally theft.
Just because it’s percieved as normal doesn’t mean it’s something we should put up with though.
With GPS subscriptions (the ones I’m aware of anyway) they will still navigate you from A to B when you stop paying the subscription, you usually just miss out on traffic updates, map updates and other localized enhancements. If there are any that deny you navigation outside the subscription that’s plain scummy IMO.
I’m not familiar with Sirius Radio but from what I can see online, it’s a satellite radio subscription service that seems to bring new things to the table (like starting a radio station at the beginning of a last song etc). The hardware appears to actually serve a purpose, i.e. it’s the satellite receiver for the radio service subscription. I believe we could compare this to buying a Starlink dish for internet access, and paying the monthly subscription. The spotify device shown here is not a standalone device and is only fitted with bluetooth IIRC, requiring a phone for operation.
In comparison to Spotify, Sirius does not appear to have ever had a free plan - whereas Spotify does… I see is no reason why Spotify could not make their free plan usable on this device.
You can root it. Didn’t look too much into it but you might be able to do something with that.
Also failing that, get a short range radio transmitter. They’re cheap and the audio ain’t great but you can plug your phone in and get audio on your car.
Yeah it’s a dumb gadget even at the $45 they eventually cut the price down to. It’s basically got an always shrinking market of people who don’t have CarPlay or Android Auto, and the niche who don’t want to use a phone holder, Siri/Google, and car mode in the app.
I think I got an Echo Auto for $25 (during the public tests). It doesn't need any kind of a subscription to use as far as I'm aware. It only does streaming still, but there are Alexa skills that let you stream from your Plex or Jellyfin server.
Those I don’t fault. Sirius has satellites to maintain and they don’t get ad revenue.
GPS makers, well making maps on that scale is very expensive. Not everyone can be google and give it away to end consumers by harvesting user data and selling ads to businessplaces.
Spotify though, fair enough to charge for the hardware but once bought should work with the ad-supported version of their product…
I mean, it’s basically a cheap smartphone or computer tablet, with a lower resolution, but nice quality screen, and a giant volume spinner. $100 does not get you much at all in the phone and tablet space. I don’t think there’s much of any profit margin, if at all for it.
I considered getting one of these a couple years ago and saw Spotify was discounting them heavily and even giving them away for free in some cases. I didn’t wind up getting one but do wish they would release a simple player + speaker like this for home use.
I wouldn’t have expected them to do it any other way. The only reason why Spotify is still around is because every bit of competition is even more incompetent and greedy than they are
I tried Tidal back when “Amazon Music HD” launched and I was on a hunt for the best lossless streaming. My only issue with tidal is their catalogue. It is laughably deficient. In the end I found zero good lossless streaming options and went back to ripping my own CDs.
Spotify is the only subscription service in my life where I’d happily pay twice of what I am paying currently. I can miss all the other nonsense but not Spotify. It’s probably my most used piece of software. Just to throw another opinion in the mix here.
People suggest downloading and maintaining an MP3 library as an alternative, but my god, no thank you. I remember those days, it was awful. On average I’m adding like 10 new songs to my library per week, I’d dread having to scour piracy sites for those. Then you have to keep it all synchronized between your phone, laptop and pc. Some obscure stuff will inevitably be unfindable, which means you have to resort to youtube mp3 downloading. Half the time you’ll be forced to manually add tags and album art to your files.
Alternatively you could pay for each album individually. I’d estimate my entire library would set me back €2000 at least. And then you’re still missing out on the social features, music discovery and cross-device functionality, all of which I use frequently.
For me Spotify is an incredible product that is well worth the money it costs. I am a very happy customer.
I have hundreds upon hundreds of songs in my Spotify music collection. The people telling me to just pirate my library are absolutely wild. I can’t even imagine how long it would take me to find and download every single song. And then I wouldn’t have a simple way to discover new music. Spotify is the one and only subscription service I find to be useful.
Its crazy seeing people go apeshit just because spotify costs money. One of the least fucked up subscription services and yet they are mad because it isnt free. Come on guys :(
Under a rock question here, but do you know of any sites that map out radio stations so you can preview them or note them to check out when traveling about?
I mostly listen to my own music when traveling because I don’t know any radio stations that might click with me, and don’t really feel like or sometimes have the time to scan for them.
Oh, to clarify, when I said my own music, I meant my local files. I’m a weirdo that buys music & syncs it across devices.
That said, I did a little searching after asking this and found a cool little site called Radio.garden that helps find some radio stations around you, and found some cool stations I might give more of a listen to.
This is my point. The person I replied to said OP shouldn’t expect more than what they got. I pointed out this same business model has worked for decades so OP shouldn’t have expected the outcome of a bricked device.
Deception and coercion are by definition not part of capitalism. If those things are happening, capitalism has broken down.
Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.
— Wikipedia
I’ve highlighted the parts the conflict with deception and coercion.
You’re quoting capitalism’s sales pitch of capitalism.
Go to your local tent city in every city if you want to see what “voluntary” looks like, dying of exposure and police capital defense force harassment while serving as capitalism scarecrows to keep the working poor scared shitless into “voluntarily” showing up to be exploited for already wealthy people’s further profit for their unquenchable greed.
Capitalists aren’t even willing to admit being greedy, only acting on “rational self-interest.” If you want to believe what capitalism claims to be, you do you. If you want to see what capitalism is, use your senses and your critical thinking skills.
It’s a definition. When something doesn’t match the definition, it doesn’t meant the definition is wrong it means it’s wrong to call that thing that term.
Greed is, by definition, irrational. But greed vs generosity is independent of capitalism.
If you want to see what “capitalism” is, learn what a definition is and how that relates to reality.
If there are people who truly have no choice, then you don’t have a free market and you don’t have capitalism. However, I will say that I was homeless and during that time my choices were constrained but didn’t disappear. I stopped being homeless because I made the right choices while homeless. This “having no choice” thing is simply not true.
Yes he does. I got in an argument with him the other day and he called me the thought police for saying that people who get off to kids are mentally unwell lol
9.99/m is 119.88/y and it doesn’t stop. Maybe OP thought that the purchase was a one time purchase, and I don’t really blame him, since why would the thing exist if phones with a subscription can already do that it does?
He bought a piece of convenience tech designed for a specific piece of software, when said convenience tech is totally unnecessary to the function of that software, then got mad that he needed the software
I am shocked that everyone in this thread isn’t roasting this dude nonstop. He’s an idiot.
They just don’t consider personal responsibility to even exist. It’s the corporation’s fault they spent a hundred bucks on a thing your old phone and a 15 dollar magnetic mount could have done for you, because said device needs a subscription service.
I had a guy tell me in this thread that I had “privilege” for saying Spotify didnt expect people without a paid subscription to be spending money on such an overpriced device. OP is throwing hundo’s away on stupid shit but it HAS to be the corpos fault somehow, people will toss logic right out the window to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay.
Doesn’t stop? You sign on the dotted line for a lifetime of payments? You can’t cancel your subscription?
since why would the thing exist if phones with a subscription can already do that it does?
That’s the exact logic that would lead someone with an ounce of intelligence to go “oh yeah, this product is a completely stupid piece of shit that’s marketed toward people with more money than brain cells.”
Did it say anywhere on the package that it gets you a lifetime subscription to Spotify? No. Does OP understand that Spotify works on a subscription model? Probably, Saas isnt fucking new.
This is the kind of boy-who-cried-wolf bullshit that keeps corporations from actually being held accountable, because people who want better worker’s rights and taxes on corporations look like idiots when lumped in with children like you who consider personal responsibility and thinking for yourself to be too scawy.
They say never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect, ignorance or incompetence. But with a corporations I’m pretty sure its the other way around.
I’d usually agree but this product seems exclusively intended for someone who’s heavily into Spotify, and the marketing clearly states you need a subscription.
Knew what? That people buying the device already have one?
You still have it backwards. They didn’t sell you the device to get you on the subscription, they assumed only people with money to spend on a subscription would WASTE A HUNDRED BUCKS ON SOME DUMB SHIT LIKE THIS.
Am I missing something, or would basically any old smartphone work in place of this? I have a Pixel which sits in a cradle and takes care of anything I’d use this for. I guess a physical button or dial might be nice, but I have a volume dial on the car dash.
Seems plainly obvious that it’ll require a sub. It’s a Spotify box.
You’re correct, I have a five or six year old kindle fire i got for like 60 bucks that I rooted and installed stock android on, it’s just a really cheap tablet now. Works perfectly for stuff like this.
My last smartphone would also have worked.
This whole thread is just a bunch of moron-consumer apologists. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate corporations and their practices, but this is just a bad purchase and buyers remorse packaged as big corpos fault.
I mean, on all the purchase advertisements they said you must have Spotify premium to use this.
They subsidized the price the device based on the expected return from convincing people to keep their subscriptions. Since it supports other clients they probably also have to manage software updates.
Spotify is a bag of dicks for a lot of other reasons but this really doesn’t seem to be one of them.
I’ve never heard of it before, it looks like a smartphone that doesn’t do anything other than have the spotify app? Like is there any mapping or calling built in? And to lock hardware like this behind their premium subscription is wildly, not mildly infuriating.
All it provides is a simplified ui and voice control, the same voice control as the Spotify app. It doesn’t even play the audio, it is a remote for the app on your phone which is doing the real work.
Man we’ve hit the point where people don’t even know about Sirius or XM radio do they? You paid to listen and you had to pay for the receiver, oh and likely an adapter to get it to work on the vehicle too.
I got a SiriusXM antenna thing and they paid me for it lol
My car radio (a Pioneer one I installed many years ago) supports SiriusXM; I just had to get the right receiver for it. SiriusXM were having a sale where you’d pay $70 for the receiver but they’d give you a $70 rebate, making it free. During the rebate period, Crutchfield had a sale where they reduced the price of the receiver to $30. I bought it for $30, filled in the $70 rebate form, and they gave me the whole $70 rebate.
I’ve been on a $5/month promotional plan for a few years. Whenever the price goes up, I complain to them and they reduce it back down. It’s a pretty good service for $5/month, since you get both satellite and streaming included. Satellite is good since it works all over the USA - good for road trips.
Oh jeez that’s not a bad deal at all, and that’s almost what I was doing. I would just let the subscription/deal lapse and they would call and ask why I didn’t renew. Told them I’m not paying $15 a month and than they offer the $60 for a year or 2 years.
At the time they didn’t even have dedicated car units, you had to have one of their portable units, and an am/fm adapter or tape adapter.
Spotify is fine. Apple Music is just the same but with worse music recommendations.
Looking into Tidal and it seems like a huge problem, who the fuck wants content exclusivity of songs? Its bad on consoles and it’s a fucking terrible idea with audio too. Can’t recommend anyone goes with them for such anti-consumer practices.
Just tried switching to apple music for the 10th time. Spotify is just so much better for recommendations and while spatial audio is neat the only way to find out if something is available in it is through the promoted playlists or playing the song and seeing if it says Dolby.
I have car thing and while it’s better than pulling out your phone I still wish I had carplay. Have you tried “hey Spotify” on car thing? It hasn’t heard me correctly a single time even parked with the AC off.
The audible difference between Tidal and Spotify is way overblown even with audiophile quality gear.
Apple Music does sometimes sound better by comparison, but that’s more to do with the fact that they tend to curate their music library with better sounding master recordings than it does with what codec/bitrate they use.
The downsides of AM is that it can be a pain if you aren’t already in Apple ecosystem, and its suggestion algorithm often isn’t as good.
Yep I’ve tried them both and can pick between Tidal and Spotify when flicking between the same song but if played a random song on 1 service and not the other I can’t pick it, Spotify is definitely good enough for me.
Genuinely curious why you think Apple Music is better. When I got my first iPad in years last year, I decided to try to go “all-in” on Apple services partly to consolidate and partly to save some money. After about 14-21 days, the only service left standing was Apple News+ (and only because the only other option was NewsReader which is 3x the price and I just generally didn’t love the UI and the way it worked overall).
Apple Music seemed to have slightly less of the music I searched for (I don’t have specifics, it was a year ago) and also seemed to be slower/shittier overall than Spotify. It was just generally unpleasant to use - this, coming from a guy who has plenty of gripes with Spotify’s user experience.
I’m all for ditching Spotify (I have all kinds of issues with their general business practices and how they stiff artists, among other things), but like @dinckelman mentioned elsewhere in these comments: “every bit of competition is even more incompetent and greedy than they are.” I’m not going to say Apple is more greedy in this case, but they felt less competent.
Much like movies and tv shows, I’ve just started downloading my music again and putting it in Plex. I stream it to any device that I can put Plex/Plexamp on (or connect my phone to). Not great for music discovery, of course, since it’s only playing music you’ve added to your library.
Seconding Tidal even without hi-fi because they pay artists significantly better than most services but honestly I just buy my music individually like a caveman and self-host it.
Even if I wasn’t perfectly satisfied with Spotifys offering, I simply couldn’t switch to an alternative for the simple fact that every single person I know is on Spotify.
Nah. Tidal’s collection is nothing compared to Spotify’s and I, like most people, don’t have the equipment to actually benefit Tidal’s higher bitrate. I don’t even have any wish to upgrade, I’m happy with Spotify’s quality. I listen to mostly non-English songs and let me tell you, Spotify is miles ahead of Apple Music there. For English music, I find them mostly comparable. But Spotify has a nice Linux app, so they get my money.
FYI, those are known to be full of malware if you buy the random branded ones off Amazon. It’s Highly recommend that people go with known reputable brands.
They heavily discounted them and then stopped selling them altogether. Spotify has a huge track record of doing that kind of thing with features, much like Google. I’m surprised they still work at all.
Weird. Last I looked into an Android Auto update or something like this for my car, it was like $2000-3000. These cheapo units don’t seem to replace the functions my current dash screen properly.
I wonder if it’s because my dashboard already has a screen so it’s more difficult to upgrade. It would need to integrate with the features that already involve the screen like the back up camera, climate controls, Bluetooth controls, etc.
But I mean I just put my phone in a $15 phone mount instead.
I am sitting here, remembering buying a deck for satellite radio which also required a subscription to use. Definitely not new but definitely stupid in this day and age.
About a year ago, maybe two years ago? Spotify started sending me feedback requests about the “Car Thing.” I was super confused about why anyone would buy something they could just use their phone for, and I finally caved and sent some feedback saying “I already have my phone, I don’t want more devices in my car. This is a bad idea.” And the requests stopped.
Guess they went through with it. Makes no sense to me. I use Spotify everyday, often for most of the day, I really have no issue with what I’m paying for, but that “Car Thing” just seemed like the most braindread venture.
I think it's selling point is supposed to be voice commands and haptic controls (actual knob and what not). The interface does look like it'd be superior to the phone (at least a non-android auto or whatever Apple's is called) though I dunno if it's $100 superior.
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