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 your “locked in”.
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
Funny you mentioned RedHat’s cancelation of Stallman.
I didn’t mention that? I don’t write on Wikipedia.
But don’t you think his views on pedophilia are unacceptable? He says he has changed his mind and that’s great but doesn’t excuse what he said.
I usually agree with his views on software but the rest is often questionable
“Just find another
jobplace to livehead unit”-deliberately obtuse bootlickers
I cancelled my paid Spotify account because 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.
Renting music sounds like hell to me. If the songs can’t exist as files on my computer (Opus, Ogg, MP3, etc.) then I’m out.
ive donated to slsk. I like the song radio and album radio features of spotify, found one of my favorite bands that way
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
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.
It’s not optimal, and I would like for uploaded music to just show up in the regular search, but there is a top navigation bar where you can just switch between where to search (uploads being one of the options). Also YTM has the upside of showing YouTube uploads as well, I could always find obscure bonus EPs that only came with the physical CD because someone uploaded it, which is really handy
I’m still pissed ytm no longer allowed me to view playlist songs like it would in gpm
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.
You think they that much care and attention into the app?
But seriously, yeah, I had pretty much the same experience -Google Play Music just worked beautifully, whereas YouTube Music was a steaming turd on Android. I gave up after six months and two phones and went to Deezer, never looked back
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.
Their queueing system sucks. All I want to do is queue up some songs but instead YTM fills my queue with tons of crap I’ve never listened to before because that’s how they make money. They put my manually queued songs at the END of the queue so I have to move them up 20+ spaces. There’s literally no way to do it other than creating a custom playlist every time I listen to music, and they intentionally made that take more clicks/taps than queuing. I don’t get how people are ok with the YTM app, it’s terrible.
I hate YTM and I hate that I can’t cancel it because they bundle it with YouTube premium, which my partner uses every day. Screw Google and they anti-consumer manipulative bs.
Their queueing system sucks. All I want to do is queue up some songs but instead YTM fills my queue with tons of crap I’ve never listened to before because that’s how they make money. They put my manually queued songs at the END of the queue so I have to move them up 20+ spaces. There’s literally no way to do it other than creating a custom playlist every time I listen to music, and they intentionally made that take more clicks/taps than queuing. I don’t get how people are ok with the YTM app, it’s terrible.
wrong.
- you can disable automatic queuing by hitting the ‘auto-play’ switch in UP NEXT
- you can queue songs by long-pressing and hitting ‘play next’ (which will put it in front of the queue) or ‘add to queue’ (which will put it in my the end
No, I’m not wrong. Option 1 does not exist on my phone. There is no switch.
And the “play next” feature also sucks. I don’t want to “play next”. I want to build a queue like literally any other music app and that isn’t what “play next” does.
Edit: I don’t see that “auto-play” switch on the web app in Safari either.
yes you are, it must be there unless you’re using an obsolete release of the app. Below is a screenshot how it looks like
yes, you can build a queue by “adding to queue”.
So I finally figured it out. this is how that toggle works:
- it only appears when you manually search for a song or select a song from certain groups on the home page.
- it does not appear to appear if you select a song from “listen again” or “quick picks” in which case the app forces you to listen to whatever is in their queue unless you manually clear the queue.
So no matter what it’s still a bad experience.
oh yeah, you are right-ish. it doesn’t show up if you launch a “radio”, which innately is a automatic, end-less playlist of similar music. I do agree though that this should be more visible in the UI
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.
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Time to give Napster a shot!
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
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 straight-up theft.
The hardware is free for subscribers to the service…
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 localised 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.
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…
The hardware is free for subscribers…
If you buy it outright it tells you that you need a subscription.
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.
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.
Poor-poor multibillion company has to
nickle and dime youearn sometging to eat
I considered getting one of these a couple years ago and saw Spotify was discounting them heavily and even giving them away for free in some cases. I didn’t wind up getting one but do wish they would release a simple player + speaker like this for home use.
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…
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
$3.50
$3 take it or leave it
My phone mount attaches to my car’s air vent and I’ve been using it for years. Cost maybe 15 bucks.
I think this is the real takeaway from this post. Someone bought this thing.
Why not just buy a phone mount and play through your phone?
It has the nice big knob so you can change the music while looking at the road…
Can’t you get Bluetooth steering wheel controls for like $30?
Fits with the stupid, low effort, cave-man speak error message “Need Premium Account”
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.
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Every single modem and cell phone I’ve ever owned have worked without a subscription to anything. My internet and ability to make cell calls were limited after my subscription ended, but the devices themselves were easily repurposed to other uses.
In my country nobody (or at least, most people don’t) buy their own routers, it’s always a subscription on top of the existing internet service
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Just responding to the edit;
Modems work with other providers. You don’t own the infrastructure that connects the internet -> subscriptions.
Phones make it impossible to root or change batteries? I don’t own the device, byt at least it’s not e-waste yet.
The car thing you don’t own since the software makes the hardware e-waste.
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Public companies obviously intentionally want to make everything as shitty as possible, just to extract money, but lets accept the hypothetical that subscriptions will actually be banned. Wouldn’t that be great?
You would basically be treated the same as Tier 1-3 ISP’s, pay for the cost of the routing to the company. That phone plan that costs ?? €/$ a month becomes “Pay as you use it”. Flat fee per gigabyte / message etc. These plans were at least here in Finland, and I think my phone bills were around 4-5 EUR a month and a cap that you cannot exceed that month, though smartphones and data plans weren’t a thing. Now everything is a subscription.
Now back to hardware vs software. You obviously pay for the software also when buying the hardware, but for whatever reason the user doesn’t own any kind of rights around it. This has obviously become much worse the past few years (TV’s have ads etc). I really don’t think that the issue is anything you listed, the issue is that greedy companies want to use the subscription model rather than play fair. Phones and modems are EOL at best in a year. I have a PFSense router that cost me less than a router from my ISP used and it’s EOL and security is something I don’t have to worry about.
Modems and routers have most of their features dedicated to home networking and are not usually made by the ISP. Them connecting to the internet is one of the smallest features they have. The other features are related to offline networking and tight security, you can actually just plug an ethernet cable to the wall and get connection from your ISP. Same as using a modem and putting it in “bridge mode”, which will completely bypass the features of the modem/router.
The issue here is that the companies don’t want to provide value, they just want to extract as much money as possible, which is wrong. Laws and regulations are desperately needed and even something as radical as banning subscription services for user devices would be a net positive. Renting Tier 1-3 operator infrastructure for your router/modem to work is completely different than “You have the device and the software, but we block you from using it, since you don’t pay”, which in my opinion is ransomware, not subscriptions.
For right to repair and owning these devices, I completely agree with you.
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So what use is a consumer modem without an internet service?
You can still use it to network with other computers over the telephone network. Heck you don’t even need to do that via the actual telephone service you can just run some wire.
But I think what was actually meant by OP is “tied to a specific subscription service” as well as “disables features that don’t need a subscription service when you aren’t subscribed”.
Phones, arguably, don’t perform their primary function without cell services.
You can use them as e.g. smart home remote. The cellular modem is going to go unused (at least apart from emergency services) but that’s only a small portion of the hardware, and modems were only ever locked to subscriptions (at least over here) if the phone is subsidised by that subscription. I don’t think they even do that any more, they replaced it with minimum contract durations. In any case even back in the days you could unlock it after some time or coughing up some money.
that’s why I think it should be root-able, serviceable, and speak in standard open protocols
Yep I wish rootability was included in the new EU regulations, it would solve so many issues at once. OTOH: It would solve the issue for people who are tech savvy enough to do such things, gotta be careful with our own elitism there. Enjoying consumer rights should not hinge on being a grease monkey.
I know this is a hard sell for many, but consider this: You aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are.
Deception followed by coersion is an excellent way to increase shareholder returns.
Why do you hate capitalism?
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
policecapital 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.
What is this device? I’m confused as to why it even exists.
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.
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.
How does that boot taste?
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Ok bootlicker
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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
unfortunately I’ve not released any crack and the reason behind it is that I develop them in a way that you can read what they do (which function they hook, what do they expect and more) using https://frida.re so the crack ends being a javascript file that is run through a power shell script. so no “copy this dll” or “disable your antivirus” - super clean and you can always see what the crack does. my base is ALWAYS that you download and install the app from the manufacturer
due to that though I “can’t” release the scripts to the public as:
- I’ll go to jail
- the companies will start to implement anti-cracking measures as I give them exactly the way I crack their app on a silver platter
Russian forums are truly the peak of hacking
Based coder brings the freedom.
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I guarantee you that some idiot working there thought it was “quirky”
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.
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.
I know, right? A bit hot in some parts of the world, but in general, things seem nice.
You wouldn’t download a storm cell.
🤣
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.
Yeah, I love streaming for music. About $10 a month and I get seemingly every song I’ve ever looked up. Streaming video has a lot of problems with fragmentation, but music doesn’t seem to have nearly as bad of an issue. I use YTM and have never not found what I wanted to listen to. $10 is like the price of a single CD (or was – it’s been well over a decade since I’ve even looked at the price of CDs).
I’ve also listened to a lot of full albums on streaming (it’s often what I do when I discover a new artist that I like) and there’s never an album that I’d want to buy every song from. My music tastes are also very diverse. My liked songs are full of tons of songs that may as well be one hit wonders to me. That doesn’t translate well to buying CDs.
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 actually really love the idea of spotify, but their execution is fucked. Joe Rogan’s getting billions and musicians who make up the overwhelming majority of the plays get microscopic returns per play. That’s bullshit.
FLAC or some other lossless format is better.
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/
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 🥺
