Surprise!
Whoo boy! You got me. I probably went 5ft straight up in the air after reading your comment.
It was indeed a surprise. This was the first I heard of this thing existing at all.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Customers who bought the Car Thing are receiving emails warning that it will stop working altogether as of December 9th.
Unfortunately for those owners, Spotify isn’t offering any kind of subscription credit or automatic refund for the device — nor is the company open-sourcing it.
“We’re discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings,” Spotify wrote in an FAQ on its website.
“We understand it may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users.”
The company is recommending that customers do a factory reset on the product and find some way of responsibly recycling the hardware.
Car Thing was initially made available on an invite-only basis in April 2021, with Spotify later opening a public waitlist to buy the accessory later that year.
The original article contains 306 words, the summary contains 145 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
