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Spotify's Car Thing Accessory is Officially Dead
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You can't purchase music - just a license to access it (whether streaming or on physical media)
You can if you prepare millions of dollars and sign a contract with some musician.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Think beyond the moment/month. When you stop paying the rent, you lose access to all songs you enjoy.
Even if you buy only a few songs per month, you eventually own enough songs that you can stop buying new... and then enjoy them for free for the rest of your life, whether you ever spend another nickel on music.
In rent vs. own, very short-term lenses will always make renting look like a better deal. But then you look through a longer lens and there is always a point where owning overtakes rent. This particular rent proposition never ends. You can never convert without losing access to all... so that's a lifetime bill every month to maintain access to a rented collection. On the other hand, the owner can stop buying music at any time and possess & enjoy all of whatever they've accumulated to that point in time.
if you buy albums on sale, roughly two albums per month. Between that and all of the music you probably already own (or if you go used CD'S, lets say between three or four used CD's you can rip at higher quality than Spotify...
What I"m saying is, it's more effort. But within a year or two of canceling Spotify, you have a very large collection of music that sounds better, that you do, more or less own. you listen to an old iPod recently? with good headphones, it sounds better, and it's just... cooler to listen to music that way.
I still pay for a family plan of Spotify. I consider it a gift to the rest of the fam. And I don't mind discovering new music that way. But I have started to collect music, and I very much prefer to listen to music that way. Also, buying from the artist is better for them finically.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Used CD market is robust. If one focuses on the favorite artists, they can get 15-20 song "greatest hits" and/or "greatest hits compilations" of various artists to build up a library of many songs buyer really likes quickly. Used, this can be $2-$3 per disc, so $11/month could buy 3-4 such CDs each month. About 3.5 discs/month at about 17.5 songs per "greatest hits" disc = about 61 songs/month times maybe 3 years = up to about 2200 songs you really like.
There's also gifts for which CDs are easy for just about anyone to give. And what month is this again?
There's also Mommy & Daddy's probably sizable collection that probably has at least some songs Junior likes.
And then there's spouse/S.O. who will likely bring their own library.
The point is that once one gets on the "own" train, it doesn't take forever to build up a good-sized library of favorites AND, once you possess enough favorites, shuffle won't make them feel stale. If you turn off buying more music for whatever reason, you still possess all of what you own to freely listen & enjoy whether you ever allocate another nickel for music.
But cease paying the monthly rent for a rented collection and it's ALL immediately gone.
Renter logic usually views the equation from today- the present- easily rationalizing millions of songs for 1 months rent. Owner logic would encourage the renter to mentally time travel 30 or 40 years into the future and evaluate their rationale for renting by looking back at it. $11/month times 12 months times 35 years = $4,620. That day in the future when you turn off the rent payments, you have nothing to show for that $4620. That money and all of your music collection is completely gone. Put maybe $1K of that $4K towards the ownership approach above and you probably own 5K-7K "greatest hits" songs you really like. Those are yours to keep for life.
Renting in general is a kind of trap. You can present yourself living a higher life as a renter in the present for less cost than those startup "owners" at the expense of losing all when you cut off the forever payments. Owner model can make you seem relatively poor & struggling in the present but tangible assets you own pile up over time and are yours for life. It's up to each person to decide what is best for them- and frankly, it IS usually some combination for many (especially in their early days)- but- it most cases- older you will appreciate having something to show for money long-since spent than having it all stripped away when you cut off the flow of monthly payments.
Rent has its place in the world but when viewed through longer (time) lenses, owning is usually best.
There's also gifts for which CDs are easy for just about anyone to give. And what month is this again?
There's also Mommy & Daddy's probably sizable collection that probably has at least some songs Junior likes.
And then there's spouse/S.O. who will likely bring their own library.
The point is that once one gets on the "own" train, it doesn't take forever to build up a good-sized library of favorites AND, once you possess enough favorites, shuffle won't make them feel stale. If you turn off buying more music for whatever reason, you still possess all of what you own to freely listen & enjoy whether you ever allocate another nickel for music.
But cease paying the monthly rent for a rented collection and it's ALL immediately gone.
Renter logic usually views the equation from today- the present- easily rationalizing millions of songs for 1 months rent. Owner logic would encourage the renter to mentally time travel 30 or 40 years into the future and evaluate their rationale for renting by looking back at it. $11/month times 12 months times 35 years = $4,620. That day in the future when you turn off the rent payments, you have nothing to show for that $4620. That money and all of your music collection is completely gone. Put maybe $1K of that $4K towards the ownership approach above and you probably own 5K-7K "greatest hits" songs you really like. Those are yours to keep for life.
Renting in general is a kind of trap. You can present yourself living a higher life as a renter in the present for less cost than those startup "owners" at the expense of losing all when you cut off the forever payments. Owner model can make you seem relatively poor & struggling in the present but tangible assets you own pile up over time and are yours for life. It's up to each person to decide what is best for them- and frankly, it IS usually some combination for many (especially in their early days)- but- it most cases- older you will appreciate having something to show for money long-since spent than having it all stripped away when you cut off the flow of monthly payments.
Rent has its place in the world but when viewed through longer (time) lenses, owning is usually best.
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No longer functional? At all? Zero functionality? Wow. Darn. So it’s just 100% e-waste.
At least you can “discuss your refund options” for a few more days (whatever the heck that means, lol), but… wow.
At least you can “discuss your refund options” for a few more days (whatever the heck that means, lol), but… wow.
lol, there were a couple of mean streets when I grew up there though…
The theory of this makes a lot of sense and for many people it might even work. However, specifically with music, I don't feel your proposition is valid for a great deal of people. Music is something that is often consumed in VAST quantities. A song is a few minutes long. Most people don't just listen to music for a few minutes at a time. Many people listen to music, even if just in the background, for hours at a time. Over days, weeks, months, and years that turns out to be a LOT of minutes. If you are a type of person who can listen a very select amount of music minutes that are owned over and over again, then maybe this idea works for you. However, for MANY people, this is not a winning proposition. It is absolutely WORTH the money to have access to the variety. For many many many years this was radio. For many people this can still be radio. However, radio without ads cost money. That can come in many forms, satellite radio, Apple Music, YouTube Premium....pick your poison. But it costs something regardless.
Many things in our lives are becoming a subscription and I don't think that is good. However, paying to have access to vasts amounts of music with no ads is worth it to me and many people for whom music is a daily part of their life. I still purchase music ON TOP of paying for the subscription service. Why? To further support the artists. To make sure if I like something I will always have access to listen to it even if distribution rights change. To easily play offline or when I am traveling in other countries without fear of network IP issues. Etc.... But there is zero chance I wouldn't also pay for my ad free vast music catalog.
Many paths bring about happiness in life. Saving money can be good, but so can spending it, even if you are "renting"
That is ann easy solotion not requiring serious installation, but for that kind of cash I would consider a CarPlay head unit to replace the old stereo head unit. I did that with my 13yo Mazda 3 with a kenwood wireless CarPlay head unit. Even made the Bluetooth calls work properly!I liked my Spotify Car Thing - I drive a 15 year old Mazda it doesn't have any screen. Much nicer UI to pick songs than trying to unlock phone and use Spotify while driving.
They gave me a full refund back when they announced discontinuation - but I had to ask for refund.
Now I have a "portable CarPlay Unit" - a whole genre of devices I didn't know existed. I'm using this one:
CarpodGo
www.carpodgo.com
Its OK, but I miss the physical buttons on the Car Thing - much easier to use.
Some day my car will stop working and I'll move into the future. 178K miles and no signs of problems!
People that bought this thing had more money than brains, what's wrong with phone mount for a car?
I’m sure they will come out and say how Apple was to blame for the demise of this ‘Thing’ 
What does “ownership” of digital media mean to you?
I ask because the product is still downloaded from the servers, theres no physical material, and if a song becomes “unavailable in your region” post purchase (happens often on the Australian store), then you can’t access what you “own”
The issue is that the device was designed to stop working at some point in the future when a company decides to have it stop working (regardless of if the hardware itself still functioned or not).
I have a Nintendo 64. It was purchased in 1996. Nintendo discontinued it in 2002 (according to always-correct Wikipedia). My 28 year old hardware still functions to this day. I needed to buy a new AC adapter at some point. But other than that, everything functions as if it was still 1996. That because it was never designed to stop working because Nintendo was done with it.
The “Car Thing” could have been designed from the start to have some level of functionality even when the service was no longer supported. (For example, it could now be just a offline-only media player.) The people designing the product could have made that choice. Instead, people chose for this specifically to be the eventual outcome.
There is a thing called "radio". If you need "background music" (horribel term), radio is your best friend. There are hundreds of stations available over the internet that plays almost any kind of music 24/7. Just pick one and start playing, for free!
For decades we'd listened to the radio, tape that and occasionally bought records or CD's. That and going to the record store was part of kids culture back then (60ies, 70ies, 80ies). That's gone since we got the digital downloads/streaming. Aahh.. those were the days:
Yep... that's why I made a backup of my iTunes purchases each time, especially when the DRM was removed. Strangely enough when I got an album some time later when I re-dowloaded it, I sometimes got a different version of the same album - sometimes with some extra tracks.
But I have to say, using the Apple Music subscription offers uncompressed streaming and often higher bitrates/bitdepth than a CD offers. Still whenever I really want to have some album, I'll buy the CD.
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The number of devices sold was probably so small, and the costs of programming and updating it high enough, that it wasn't worth maintaining it any longer.
