I Know Why Spotify Killed The Car Thing (And Why Spotify Sucks In General)

On the dangers of the Big Tech business model.

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While we’re all obsessing over our Spotify Wrapped (here are my top songs, by the way), a few hardcore fans of the service have one question on their minds: why would Spotify brick the Car Thing?

If you weren’t aware, in April 2021 the company with the largest market share in the music streaming business tried their hand at a new venture: a physical device called the “Car Thing” that could play your Spotify music while driving. It’s no secret as to why it flopped, being discontinued just a year later in June 2022: you needed to have a Spotify Premium subscription, the Thing needed to be connected to your smartphone at all times, it only worked with Spotify (you couldn’t play any audio from your phone), its interface was awkward, and it cost a whopping $89.99. If you still needed your smartphone to use it, you may as well buy an FM transmitter or cassette deck adapter, right? The global supply chain issues that were still going on in 2021 certainly didn’t help either.

The Car Thing, which will die tomorrow. (Spotify)

Here’s what has the Internet truly vexed: in May of this year, Spotify announced that it would be disabling every Car Thing device that it ever sold on December 9th, 2024. This means that the day after this essay goes live, the hardware that some people bought for 90 American dollars will simply not work anymore; no more playing music, just more e-waste for the planet to deal with (unless, of course, you’re into modding).

Evidence of the Internet’s confusion. A Reddit post asking “WHY IS THE CAR THING GOING TO STOP WORKING???? this is extremely annoying, I use it on my desk just to view songs. But, I cannot believe that Spotify is just going to disable a piece of hardware that I paid for.” (Reddit)

“How could Spotify do this??” people are asking, confused as to how what is essentially a Bluetooth controller can’t be maintained indefinitely by the company. The answer actually comes down to two simple facts: 1) Spotify doesn’t actually make money and 2) manufacturing is just really hard…