The Spotify Car Thing cost $100, but I can't use it anymore.
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.
The system working as intended. Now you're "locked in".
!stallmanwasright@lemmy.ml
Sadly he is always right. I wish he was wrong all the time.
I'd check his wikipedia page before throwing around "always" like that.
Thank Faust there are times he is wrong! At least I know we live in not the worst world imaginable.
The Controversies section of his Wikipedia page is euh interesting to say the least. He said some things that are not remotely acceptable
"Just find another
jobplace to livehead unit"-deliberately obtuse bootlickers
I cancelled my paid Spotify account because I can't get them to stop fucking recommending Joe Rogan to me.
I'm moments away from canceling. Splash screens of some bullshit podcast or something I don't want to see. Getting fed up.
Get on board, sail the seas
Search for Github SpotDL And Navidrome
No need to sail them seas, but maybe still use a vpn, just on case. Fun fact i heard from a friend of a friend: Youtube starts rate limiting after 50,000 audio-only video downloads, until you have a new IP.
I am skeptical of the quality of audio on YouTube. And of full album tracks running together properly.
Am I wrong?
Im not audiophile so I scrape audio with newpipe. Downloaded and stream quality are indistinguishably satisfactory.
I've also noticed that sometimes it downloads the wrong versions of songs. While my Spotify playlist has the album version of a song, it might sometimes download a live performance audio or a reprise version.
I have hundreds upon hundreds of songs in my Spotify music library. Downloading them one by one sounds like hell. And then I wouldn't be discovering new music either.
If you want to move them elsewhere(or even just get a csv export of them) there are apps for that.
https://freeyourmusic.com will let you pay a one time fee to do it to as many services as you want, it’s a bit slow but it’ll get there eventually.
leave em sail the seas or tidal for the same price you get better audio so win win in my book either way
plus you're supporting jigga
Allegedly, YouTube Music is about to shove podcasts in our faces with a soon to come update.
I'm leaving YTM if they do that. I'll go back to ☠️⚓⛵ and using locally available music.
If you have an android, just download blackplayer and use a YT link to mp3 site to get whatever music you want.
I've been pretty happy with YouTube music. I got legacied in due to Google Music shutting down and thought I would hate it, but I've had zero complaints. Plus, it comes with free YouTube Premium, so I haven't seen an ad in years.
I have so many complaints, Google Play music was fine. It did exactly what I wanted it to.
YouTube music is like an alien looked at that app, and tried to recreate it exclusively by smashing it's forehead against a keyboard until an app that started most of the time came out.
I would actually argue that Google Play Music was the best music streaming app that I've used. It was great being able to upload music from CDs of small local bands and have it right in there with the other streaming music.
Just today I had a hankering to listen to a specific song through my android auto, and instead of just being able to verbally ask the unit for that song, or even being able to search through the atrocity that is the YouTube Music interface on my head unit, I had to pull over, pull out my phone, search for the band, then click the uploads tab (because uploaded music does not show with the regular search results) and then click the song to get it to play.
Yes and the glorious "playing near you" feature of Play Music. That made the best recommendations for local shows, and I mean local, within a few miles, not just bands I'd listened to but always relevant and often small shows! That feature, I found several new bands I liked that way and good live music. YouTube has nothing like that. Also interface not as intuitive, more cluttered. My kids like it better because they do like having the videos available, but as I do not give a fuck about that but do like live music this is still not as good as the Play Music.
I would say the same myself. They don't do the worst job for music discovery either which is important to me. Amazon Music drove me nuts constantly recommending Cage the Elephant and other well-known (profitable) artists instead of obscure music similar to my tastes.
The algorithm on YT music is vastly superior to Spotify for new discoveries
Oh, you used to listen to Metallica back in the day?
YT music - Here, you'd probably like Shaka Ponk, Gin Wigmore and Royal Blood
Spotify - hAvE YoU hEarD of A bANd cAllEd KiSs?
Same. Honestly, I expected YTM to make things worse. That's usually how those kinda things go. But it actually did get better for me. I jumped to Google Play Music because it had better selection than Spotify (at least back then). YTM kept that, but fixed the issues I was having with the desktop browser player sometimes getting stuck. And the more recent support for lyrics that are synced to the music is great.
Time to give Napster a shot!
Is Limewire still a thing?
No but direct downloads are all the rage. Here are my two favorite sites for free music. Every track is available in either 320k MP3, or FLAC lossless. So they're even better than Limewire ever was:
https://slavart.gamesdrive.net/tracks
https://free-mp3-download.net/ (FYI don't use punctuation in your queries or it breaks the search on this one)
I'm gonna go pull my fucking LPs out of the attic.
You want SoulSeek. I swear it's not a dating app
Don't think so. Soulseek on the other hand...
There's literally a feature on Spotify where you can hide an artist and never see it, fyi
Really? Where out of curiosity? I've never experienced that.
On PC. Keep (kept) it in a separate window while working.
Never had issues with that either tbh. I guess the algo just picked up on something for you. That's annoying.
White guy late 50's? What algo would ever target me?
That's really dissapointing, did Spotify seriously release a hardware device that expensive, and mandates a subscription to operate?
It's a shame because it looks quite nice too, and is sadly guaranteed to be e-waste at some point
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.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted - enshittification as a viable consumer business model was pretty much proven in the auto space.
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.
Edit: fix typo
The device is free to premium users. It's a marketing device for the premium subscription.
The box clearly states that a premium subscription is required.
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 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.
I could still use it for playing music in other apps. Now I can't.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2022/11/01/spotify-car-thing-root-achieved/
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.
Car thing doesn’t handle the audio, they have to pair their phone to their stereo with Bluetooth or an aux cable anyway.
So people are paying 100 bucks for an interface? Neat.
How is that any different than just using the app on a phone in a mount then?
It adds a tactile scroll wheel.
Is that it? I'm sure you can find a replacement that doesn't require a subscription if that's all you cared about.
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 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.
No way to hack the hardware and allow it to be used for something else?
I just saw another comment mentioning it can be rooted: https://lemmy.world/comment/2904183
you can try this
https://github.com/williamtcastro/carthing-non-premium-spotify
the whole ui/dashboard is just a web app, so it's pretty easy to "jailbreak" or modify
I also may or may not use a 'freemium' spotify apk. Its been about 3yrs and not issues, so far...
Why would you even buy this? Literally just buy a phone mount and use your phone. This thing was a textbook example of a useless product.
Seriously, what does this do that a phone doesn't? Am I missing something? Even early Android/iOS devices could run Spotify in their time (although not always anymore). What does this do?
Whenever I'm driving, my phone is almost permanently mounted as a GPS. I also own the car thingy, it has very intuitive hardware buttons and a dial on top of being touch screen. This way I can leave my phone on the GPS screen and adjust Spotify controls on the car thingy without taking attention of the road.
The only real shitty thing I would argue is that you NEED Spotify premium not just to control your Spotify, but also to control youtube/mp3 player/ any other media that you would want to play through your phone.
Now there is an actually sensible product: A phone holder with nice hardware buttons, exposed to the phone as a USB keyboard.
I've got a bluetooth steering wheel control (add on for ~$15) that adds play, pause, volume control, and next/previous track.
They named their device “Car Thing?” Just looked it up. Why not just buy a phone mount and play through your phone?
You can get a magnetic phone mount for like $10-15 that fits in the CD slot like in the picture. Not sure why this is a thing.
I have one on my seat bolt that is strong enough to hold a tablet for like $20.
i’m also strong enough to hold a tablet for $20
Yeah but can you hold my seat bolt on now?
I'll do it for $10.
$9.50
I think this is the real takeaway from this post. Someone bought this thing.
It has the nice big knob so you can change the music while looking at the road...
Fits with the stupid, low effort, cave-man speak error message "Need Premium Account"
Deception followed by coersion is an excellent way to increase shareholder returns.
Why do you hate capitalism?
I have a car thing, I use it at my desk for media controls. It is pretty great.
But the product description was pretty clear that you needed premium to use it. The same goes for using any third party Spotify client. Shouldn't have expected otherwise.
Buying any physical hardware that doesn't function without a subscription should be a illegal, not something you should expect.
But the point is that the description of the product clearly stated it needs a subscription to function. You literally buy it with that understanding. If you didn't read the description then it's 100% on you.
Whether it should be legal or not, or whether it's ethical or not, is a different discussion. But the product wasn't disingenuous about how it works, so complaining about how it works exactly as advertised is a bit silly.
A gas stove requires a subscription.
@pjhenry1216 @MyUnclesSecret Not quite. A gas stove requires gas. I can run it from canisters if I want to. In fact, I know someone who does.
It's much more like a stove requiring a specific gas brand to work.
What is this device? I'm confused as to why it even exists.
Edit: I discovered it is literally called "Car Thing".
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.
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.
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.
I have the hobby of cracking stuff like that (but mainly windows apps to tell you the truth) and there are many-ish people out there with the same hobby. search around a bit and google stuff like "Spotify Car Thing github" or "Spotify Thing bypass" or jailbreak. Heavily rely on github and russian forums. Also random small blogs
If you're so determined though and nobody else has done it and you're fine not using it for 3+ months, there's a very slim chance that I could find the time to bypass it
EDIT: Yeap it's cracked and it's easy too
The only thing I like about Russia. The warez
Thank you for your service, comrade
Based coder brings the freedom.
Russian forums are truly the peak of hacking
And? Their site clearly states that a premium subscription is required.
And was that the case since it first went on sale?
Yes. They said so in their announcement of the device's general availability.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-02-22/car-thing-from-spotify-is-now-officially-available-in-the-u-s/
Honestly this is such a stupid product... Just buy an Android Auto and/or Carplay device instead. They are cheaper, offer more features, and don't force you to pay a subscription fee to utilize it.
Fuck products like this one. If you own it, it should be yours to use.
Cars in 2030: to use brakes you need premium account. Sorry!
This thing that OP bought is a separate add-on to the car. As far as the car is concerned it doesn't exist and it's just plugged into a normal 3.5 mm aux device.
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
As a consumer, Spotify competes for my money with Bandcamp, who gave their cut to artists throughout covid.
Owning things is always a better model than renting them (edit: exceptions exist, none of which I need to be @ed about)
I'm enjoying Tidal as an alternative, haven't heard anything bad about them!
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.
Compared to when I first tried them a few years ago their catalogue has gotten significantly better
About 6 months ago I took my 750ish songs from Spotify over and only the FFXIV game tracks didn't get imported in the move
Compared to like 60 or so percent when I last tried I'd say it's come a long way
Same exact issue here. Lossless content is great, but their library is miserably poor in comparison
even more incompetent ****or greedy
Napster pays artists more, costs less… but the service was garbage.
Fuck streaming. Return to a big dumb pile of MP3s.
This is absurdly difficult if you want to actually pay for individual mp3s. It's like they want you to pirate
Nice weather we're having.
You wouldn't download a storm cell.
I know, right? A bit hot in some parts of the world, but in general, things seem nice.
The first generation iPod topped out at 40GB. It's felt like that for a long time, matey
I found my first gen iPod last week, the gen 1 with the spinning wheel and firewire maxed at 5 gig.
🤣
I still buy CDs and rip them. All the music I want on my phone ready to play from headphones or the car
I just bought a CD player a few weeks ago. It's not very good (it's a combination CD player/alarm clock, and the speakers are crap) but it's nice being able to just put a disc in and press "play" instead of booting up one of my game consoles or plugging in my USB optical drive. I've started hitting up second-hand stores for CDs to play with it.
That must be expensive as fuck.
I think Spotify is 12€ p month. Let's say 10€. A new album costs about 10€ digital or 15-20€ as a CD.
So you could buy a new album every month and build up a catalogue.
I buy them used for about 2,50€ an album.
I don't always want an album though. Sometimes I just like one song on an album.
Spotify is just so convenient. I have over 5000 liked songs on there.
I stopped listening to music, radio or nothing. I'm tired of being constantly stimulated, I desire peace and quiet
Instructions unclear burning 8 track tapes.
I mean to be fair, Spotify as a company clearly would rather give millions to right-wing shitheads than ~anything else.
How else will Joe Rogan be able to afford his basic necessities like subverting democracy 🥺
Out of all the things that Spotify is shitty for that's the least of my worries about them, and I fucking hate right-wing shitheads. People would rather see the artists they love starve if it gave them convenience to enjoy their art without actually paying for what they do.
It's honestly kind of baffling to see people go up in arms enough to side with fucking Disney "in support of artists" because AI is supposedly stealing from them and the same people go on with their lives and put on Spotify and feel self-righteous. People fucking suck.
/rant
Imagine if they had spent that $50 million on programmers instead. They could have had the best music playing app in existence.
Image Transcription:
A photo of a Spotify Car Thing with the text displaying on the screen under the Spotify logo: "Need a Premium account To use Car Thing you need to be logged in to a Spotify Premium or Premium Family account on your phone."
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Good human
I betcha someone in the piracy groups can help you jailbreak that thing so it will continue to function.
Edit: Yep someone in the comments linked you a GitHub project that should work
Wait, so let me get this straight.
You purchased a device that presumably has no local storage and are upset that it needs you to login to a server that can then stream you the music?
Or is this an issue of not having a paid account?
I guess Spotify didn't realize someone who didn't pay for Spotify would be likely to pay 100 bucks for a device to stream Spotify, and in most cases I'd say they're probably right.
FTFY
Take a look at rooting it, maybe you can find some way to use it to stop it from just being e-waste. https://npjohnson.github.io/Spotify-Car-Thing-Root/
That makes total sense else I'd be getting a lifetime Spotify sub for $100 and a $100 device thrown in as an unrelated bonus.
Wait till they put Denuvo in the car, for you montly driving plan.
Need to ask a crackhead like Empress to crack it for us. I'll trade prozac tabs.
I don't understand why people (guys, most probably) simp for Empress. Do they think she's gonna have sex with them or what?
Maybe they like that she is skilled and take the risks for cracking games? Or like some of her wild opinions? I can only guess...
you can appreciate her cracking skills and still hate her for everything else she does, like running a cult and refusing to tell anyone else how to crack denuvo, even though she literally makes zero money off it so she's literally just keeping it secret for clout (presumably to fuel the whole telegram cult thing)
Yes. My personal belief is they want account-bound services normalized by the time self-driving cars become viable. They would HATE for us to have the ability to lend our cars out to other people throughout the day without giving them more money
We are in the era that other than games, the companies have not yet caught up with anti-cracking techniques. I crack shit as a hobby and everything is fun and challenging until you start to mess with games. It's insanely difficult, a CONSTANT cat n mouse run and sooooo damn time consuming
How can I get started cracking software myself?
I don't use Spotify, but I selected a song on someone else's phone recently. The first time opening it in years and it opens up to an ad saying "buy our tshirts".
I couldn't help but think times must be hard 😅
You paid $100 to play music that you didn't own. It feels mean to put it that way, but it was never a foolproof plan if we're being honest.
There's a difference between purchasing a product and paying for a service.
Paying for Spotify would be the latter.
You’re right. They paid $100 for a remote control for Spotify.
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.
A lot of aftermarket radio installation kits come with adapters to make up for the odd sizes. Of course, there may not be kits for every car.
My 2012 Mazda 3 has an adapter available to fit a standard double DIN radio into their weird shape. I imagine those are available for lots of cars.
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.
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
You literally can’t buy them anymore! Spotify quietly canned the project. Support pages are still up but I can’t find a purchase option anywhere.
I bought one pretty early into launch and even then they were already heavily discounted. It was a weird choice for a peripheral, but personally I really wish they had tried a bit harder instead of giving up outright
They never even came over to the uk and I really wanted one. Nobody else makes anything like it either. I don't know why they canned it, I've only ever seen praise for it on YouTube and the like
I can't believe they ever came out with this product since every phone in the universe can play music in your car.
Genuinely do not understand who their market was here
There’s a niche. I’ve only ever driven older cars with less than stellar stereo setups for phone play. The idea is getting a small-footprint and quick to navigate stereo interface without actually having to replace whole ass stereo, and I find it pretty appealing!
For me the problem was connectivity. I assumed the car thing would act as a go-between for my phone and stereo, and it would remain always connected to the car audio system. Instead it’s just another thing you’re connecting to. It actually slowed me down significantly more than it helped.
If it could send/receive audio and just used your phone as a source, that’d be ideal for me. Like a suped up bluetooth receiver with spotify connectivity.
But weird, an android auto upgrade kit for my car would cost me 160. The Spotify thing is so not a good deal.
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.
This type of shit is why I just want a vehicle with a CD player that can hold multiple discs. Then I could just burn my favorite music onto a few discs and not have to worry about not having paid to have access to the music I want and don't have to worry about a song I dislike popping up randomly.
...or with a usb/sd port, there's no need to go back all the way to 90s/2000s tech for simple offline music playback
Hey dont dis 90s/2000s tech a cassette deck with an aux jack is rather versatile.
My car has a SD card slot that it will read music off of. The first week I had it, I loaded up a disc with as much music as I could. I haven't switched it out in 3 years.
It has been quite nice. Until this post, I had almost forgotten where my music was coming from.
There's a lot of better ways to do that like for me I typically ether just plug my phone into the line in port or if there isn't one I just pair my phone and play mp3s off of my MP3 player app and if your car demands you use a service just get a Bluetooth radio transmitter so your car thinks it's just listening to ordinary radio
One that can take a USB storage device or an SD card would be much better. Same result, but no messing around with discs and it can hold way more music.
this is what I did.
Used SpotDL to download my entire spotify library, put on USB, now I have my whole library available, even if my phone is dead
For $100 you can buy an aftermarket Android head unit with Android Auto / Car Play support, or add $100 more to buy a nicer version.
But that's precisely what they don't want because any day, it could be bricked by one of several companies.
A good solution 20 years ago but bluetooth and music files saved on your phone is a much nicer solution now.
I have done a2dp Bluetooth streaming for well over a decade now and it still works just fine and isn't married to any app.
You might really enjoy Plex + Plexamp. You own the library and choose your media but you don't burn CDs and can instead stream/pin (for offline) songs or playlists like you'd expect from a paid music service.
They offer a decent car interface as well.
High tech from the 90's :-D
MP3 CDs hold about 120 songs, which is pretty much the perfect amount to be able to curate while also not have to swap out discs too often.
Or 5 Meatloaf songs. I like his music but it would be nice if he could have figured out how to write a less than 20 minute song.
I got an old beater with a tape player and discovered they make Bluetooth adapters just like the old fm adapters i used years ago. Combined with a gig hdd dedicated to music on my phone and it feels like the old days again of burned cds and pirate bay
CDs skip when you hit bumps. Just use a thumb drive.
Is your deck is from a dollar store lol
You could buy portable DVD and CD players back in 2005 that would keep playing without a hitch even if you dropped them. Admittedly this was mostly down to them caching the content in RAM and spinning down to save battery power...
I haven't used a CD deck in over a decade. I literally don't know how CDs would even sound in my car's deck, because it's a dead technology. I genuinely cannot believe anyone in a developed nation would still purchase a CD.
So yeah, probably?
I get ya on the dead tech but for your info skipping on bumps stopped being a limitation on cds 20 years ago
Unfortunately I was pretty poor 20 years ago or id have been super jazzed about that.
TIL tho and I appreciate ya teaching me
The only reason to purchase a CD nowadays I think is memorabilia, or to support an artist/group.. aside from that it's pretty much as you say, physical media is a dying format.
Vinyl is an outlier, but even then modern vinyl players are noticeably worse than ones manufactured several decades ago
Or a very solid way of backing up important stuff like family photos, because no burglar in their right mind would steal a DVD from your home.
Back to downloading shit from YouTube!
Have you looked up jailbreaks? Quick search and I found a subreddit devoted to it and this.
I will go back to cassettes and 8-track before I give these greedy ass companies any money.
a good MP3 library is still the best "music streaming" option, just copy a few thousand songs to your phone and play them anywhere you want
I just tossed my headphone plug to cassette adapter for my truck because i recently updated my phone and nothing has headphone sockets anymore. luckily the bluetooth to FM transmitters have come a long way as well.
If you use anything by the monopolist assholes, you can totally expect to get enshitified. I swtiched over to Tidal a while back. They support artists, not hate speech. And the audio quality is better.
I largely agree, except that a few months back tidal changed the way they compensate artists so now it‘s exactly the same crap as the others. bandcamp is the way if you want to support artists.
Sell it and buy an Android Auto/CarPlay head unit. Then use Spotify in that. In my opinion, it's a much better experience.
I just use a Bluetooth -> aux adapter and my phone on a mount. Never wanted a screen on my dash.
How do you watch porn then?
In my car?
Where else would you watch it? 🧐
Doing this
Do you have any suggestions on which one of those to get? There are so many choices but they all have very bad English in their descriptions or spam Instagram ads so I don't trust them
Am I missing something, or why would you assume or expect that a Spotify peripheral could be used without a Spotify subscription? What even is this thing?
Because Spotify has a free tier that still let's you use the app and listen to music, just with ads
Based on OP it has other functions than just Spotify.
But things like that shouldn't need a subscription. It's a shitty thing to do.
Pelton, this car thing, etc. Have other functions that don't require the subscription but by making it mandatory they give you a unusable piece of junk if you ever cancel.
Wait, why would you buy that? Do you not have a phone?
I don't own one. But having real buttons is always an advatage for me when driving a car. I think my car can do everything the "Car Thing" did via the buttons on the steering wheel and the screen of the radio (or multimedia screen or whatever we call those nowadays), but if I had an car that can't I might have been interested.
Can I have it? I'd never buy one but I use Spotify constantly in my cab. It'd be nice to have it not attached to my phone.
Buy a second phone?
That's not just mildly infuriating. It's bloody exasperating.
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.
Fuck spotify, I use http://radio.garden
I bought one too, I think for $75 pre-lauch. Very underwhelming interface... it's barely usable. I think they discontinued them already.
Lol why did you buy something without reading the fine print. Now suffer and keep complaining. Never buy anything that has a subscription model. If you paid $100 , that thing is yours ans you should be able to use it the way you want. Checkout YouTube Louis Rossman videos for some education.
I think you don't watch him or you are troll(or both) because first thing you is started to blame the customer
Yes because some people are really dumb. Like sometimes you'll question how the fuck they made it so far in life.
Oof. I managed to dodge a bullet on this one. I preordered it,but never received it / was never charged.
I picked one up for like $5 when they were fire selling them. I've used it like 4 times.
My wife and I use ours (I bought 2) all the time. We like the voice activation from the unit and we like the interface for seeing what's playing better than we do our entertainment systems (we have used cars). It's not a slam dunk but it's good for what it does.
in my 1998 car i just put in an Bluetooth capable radio with good speakers and a subwoofer and nobody can disable anything because it's not connecting to anything except for a Bluetooth device. i'm never gonna by anything newer just because i can repair this cars myself and i really don't want the mechanics in my area to fix it because i can't trust them to fix it and not make it worse
Same but with a 1999, keep at it. You'll never regret practicing at learning how things work. Some of the skills transfer even when you change what thing you're troubleshooting.
yeah skill like that are always usefull it also helps that i'm an mechanical engineer (trou an apprenticeship) :)
As I'm known for saying in my friend group....
Yay capitalism
Makes me really love how gorgeous and functional CarPlay is.
Honestly, what else did you expect? Lifetime Spotify Premium for $100? It was a shit product ever since it was launched. You bought it, it's on you.
Ah, yes. You are at fault, not the corporate greed.
Both consumer and corporate were greedy
I would have expected that the ad supported Spotify would have still worked. There is still a free tier.
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.
Just my $.02
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.
That’s painful. Chargeback on credit card if Spotify doesn’t take that back.
Although why would you need something like this if you have a phone + aux cord + adapter/dongle?
Nice second Gen Prius (2009?). Needs dusting.
2006 and it needs to be detailed
Looks like my dash, but the better trim, I don't have sat button.
That's so sad I really wanted one of these, shame man. I hope you can flip it or return it or something. Don't listen to the people telling you it's stupid, it's a cool idea I had my eye on it as well. Thanks for the warning
Holy fucking shit, more importantly clean your car
Flash it
Google spotify premium mod apk and don't use gmail to make an account, it should work
Tryb XManager Spotify its on github
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.
That's a shame on you my friend
One more reason I hate sp0tify