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.
I don’t understand the point of this device. Why not buy a replacement radio for the car instead? I bought a Pioneer one and it was a nice upgrade to my 2012 Mazda3 since I can plug in my phone to use Android Auto and get the screen to show Google Maps + pretty much any music app on my phone.
There’s plenty of 2010-2015ish cars with dogshit radios that are hard to find, expensive to get or literally impossible to find good replacements for, thanks to vehicle manufacturers killing of the DIN system.
Because buying a double DIN or even a single DIN radio can require buying a replacement bezel, disassembling your dash and often your center console as well, wiring in a steering wheel media control adapter, correctly wiring in the stereo, and having the knowledge to make adjustments when things don’t quite fit or go right.
“[just] buy a replacement radio” is not how it works at all.
Best Buy does this all for you for $80, assuming the person is in the US. I expect this is available most places for similar prices though. You can get anything from a BT only unit for $20 online to a much nicer unit with Android Auto/iOS’s thing. While the initial cost might be higher the opportunity cost of your thing being disabled is almost certainly much higher, as this thread’s existence seems to support. $150-$200 well worth it in the long run to do a head unit upgrade.
And then after I spend over $100 on a decent stereo, $50 for an adapter for my car, and the $80 to have some kid install it for me I’ll be $250 in the hole and still paying for a Spotify subscription so I can listen to music that’s not shit. Or for $100 I could buy a cheap ass tablet and shove it into my air vent.
Oh yeah, you nailed it. Clearly worked for the OP… I also didn’t put a value on said opportunity cost. Perhaps it’s greater than $250 depending on the individual. Subjective as opportunity cost can sometimes be. Not trying to ascertain or consider it is at best just short sighted, or perhaps at worst ignorant. Cheap junk, effectively rented according to the EULA, subject to the whims of the rights holders, is never the way.
I did it all by myself with no experience - wired up the wiring harness properly, installed the bezel, connected some sort of adapter so the car alert tones and steering wheel controls still work, etc. I bought the radio from Crutchfield who have lifetime phone support to assist with any issues (I didn’t need it though). I just followed the instructions they provided.
Car radios have become much more entrenched. My 13 Fusion has an external amp. Shit, my 96 Taurus did too. Plus if you have any phone, steering wheel, or other peripheral integration, you often lose those features. OP probably has integrated hvac buttons. Sometimes you can get adapters, sometimes the signals are buried in canbus lines
My 2012 Mazda3 has an external amp under the front passenger seat. I bought my Pioneer radio from Crutchfield and they included an adapter to make everything work. The amp works fine (most radios have a preamp output for this purpose), and the steering wheel controls work fine too.
My car just had a basic radio though. I guess it might be harder in newer cars with fancier radios. People that mount their phone or use things like this Spotify… thing usually have older cars/radios though. The newer ones just have Android Auto and Apple Carplay built in.
Yeah, when they announced this thing I saw this coming a mile away. Sucks for all the people that they scammed with it though. Unless you’re somewhat paranoid like me you probably would’ve thought it was neat, especially if you had an older car without an infotainment system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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