Less than three years after it rolled out in the US market, Spotify’s Car Thing is no more.
The Car Thing – Spotify’s short-lived expansion into in-car audio hardware – officially went non-operational on Tuesday (December 9), leaving its (admittedly small) user base with what is essentially garbage.
Spotify advises that Car Thing users dispose of the device “following local electronic waste guidelines” – little consolation for those who had shelled out USD $89.99 for the Car Thing, designed to make Spotify playable in cars that don’t have other means of connecting Spotify to the speakers, such as CarPlay or Android Auto.
However, it turned out the market for the Car Thing was not what Spotify had been hoping for, and just half a year after the device was rolled out in the US, Spotify announced it would be discontinuing sales. A few months later, Spotify announced that the Car Thing would soon cease functioning.
That upset many users who had shelled out for the device, some of whom joined a class action lawsuit launched this past spring seeking compensation.
The backlash prompted Spotify to announce it would offer refunds to customers who contact customer support with proof of purchase. Spotify is telling Car Thing owners to contact customer support before January 14, 2025, to “discuss your refund options.”
Some Car Thing users have tried to keep the device alive, developing their own firmware to operate on the Car Thing. However, those efforts were recently made harder when Spotify changed the functionality of its API, reducing the access that third-party developers have to Spotify data.
The Car Thing went on sale in February 2022, a physical music player to be fitted on the dashboard and connected to the Spotify app on the user’s smartphone, featuring a four-inch screen, voice commands, and preset buttons for shortcuts, giving Premium subscribers access to Spotify music and podcasts. The streaming platform described it as a “more seamless” and “personalized” in-car listening experience.
But it struggled to compete with established technologies that can be used to stream Spotify in-car. After slashing the device’s price by nearly half, Spotify quietly discontinued it in August 2022.
Spotify’s then-Chief Financial Officer Paul Vogel said the company’s decision to discontinue Car Thing was due to a few factors including pricing, inflationary pressures and supply chain difficulties.
Spotify’s Q2 2022 earnings report showed the company took a one-time charge of $31 million on the device.
The Car Thing’s shutdown comes amid a strengthened focus on efficiencies at Spotify in recent years.
In an effort to bring Spotify permanently into the black, CEO Daniel Ek is pursuing a strategy that balances user base growth with cost savings. This strategy has included successive waves of layoffs and the shutting down or scaling back of some of Spotify’s more speculative products, such as live radio.
The efforts appear to have paid off, with Spotify on track to record its first full year of profitability in 2024.Music Business Worldwide