Using a Spotify Car Thing in 2024 (and why it will soon be eWaste...)

Ah yes, the Spotify Car Thing. A niche tech product for those who wanna control their music in an older car. However, this product is going to be bricked by Spotify in December 2024 rendering it as eWaste. Just how useful is this little gadget and does it deserve an early grave?
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Daniel D
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0:00 - Intro
1:32 - Unboxing and first use
9:26 - Using it in my car
13:17 - RIP Car Thing
17:08 - Potential Solution #1
19:18 - Potential Solution #2
20:58 - This sucks + Outro

[@thatguyaadi]

I feel like that the volume indicator not disappearing when muted is an intentional feature. When you're driving it is useful to have an obvious indication that the reason music isn't playing is that it is muted. Certainly could've been implemented better.

[@Lillfot]

Just like the awful thing most TVs do, where they spam the "mute" icon somewhere on screen (some extra awful ones even move if around)

[@exturkconner]

I mean in a car it's pretty useful to know. Okay so this is muted. When I unmute it this is going to be the volume level. Unmuting a tv or a computer and having it blast isn't a big deal. You aren't going to accidentally swerve your tv into oncoming traffic. You aren't going to grind your pc into a jersey barrier because you are startled.

[@doffynotnoffy]

Playing with my thing?

[@PCIeTeam]

nahhh you're wild for that LMAO

[@morganmillrepost]

@@PCIeTeamI find it funny

[@zenvio]

playing with my thing rn

[@PCIeTeam]

@@zenvio oh HELL NAW you got the guts to say that :D

[@matteofo]

i’m doing it, are you?

[@th1nXD]

never knew spotify made cleaning cloths :O

[@ToxicMothBoi]

A factory makes them and spotify just commisions them to make some :D

[@MakHoles]

The ideal thing would be a mod of the Spotify app that adds the functionality of the car thing back in

[@frokfrdk]

That's my exact pitch in thsi video, I hope this is possible

[@NeoManiac_90]

I've been advocating for people to turn it into an Android Auto/Apple Carplay device, like a car head unit. This can theoretically run some sort of software that is similar to any modern car unit and allow for wireless connections. The device has trash specs, and is slow just like any car head unit. The amount of storage is more than enough to get something like an offline maps installed and working.

[@togoxo]

it has the specs of a low end android phone from 2012. it can run android but its just too much work for anyone to do to get it running

[@sihamhamda47]

@@togoxo I'm sure newer android can't even run on it. Anything newer than Android 7 requires 1GB of RAM or more.

[@oakbricks]

@@togoxo its possible to get android auto/apple carplay on it because all it needs to do is receive a video feed and give the phone user output (kinda like HDMI or AirPlay). All it would need would be a linux distro that has the appropriate software and a USB port

[@togoxo]

@@sihamhamda47 why do you need android 7 so bad? android 4.4 is still a perfectly fine os

[@FaeComputing]

Still more useful than the rabbit r1

[@mihkelkastehein9470]

agreed

[@EnderRobber101]

@@mihkelkastehein9470somebody watched Netflix and played Minecraft on it

[@yahiax]

nah rabbit r1 is a pretty good little android thingy

[@FaeComputing]

@@yahiax if it was like $50? Yeah it's worth it to mess around with, not for the ai features, just to put full android on, but $200 usd is NOT worth it

[@mintybudgie]

at least they wont brick the rabbit r1 in several months

[@zuzzo_]

Can I just say right, this guy may be one of the most underrated tech KZbinrs on the whole internet right now.

[@teh_supar_hackr]

I've only just heard of this thing a week ago and am already disappointed it's being discontinued.

[@justanotherpxrson]

Bricking devices should be illegal. At least these are hackable.

[@fakerealgamer9368]

yeah but it has a real real bad processor so it will be bricked u cant do anything with the car thing

[@tobyash]

Mitski is bros workout music 😭

[@montgomerymontgomery]

The problem with your proposed solution is that there is a limit to how long you can have downloaded songs before having to connect to the internet to verify the upkeep of the subscription. It just lengthens the time that it is useful. This is also assuming that you can get a device that you keep offline and never connect to the internet.

[@summerchilds]

The Car Thing runs a webpage in Chrome; it’s not loading data from the Spotify app on your phone but rather getting its data from the built-in Chrome webpage. People are calling it a hard brick because Spotify is refusing to update it. Additionally, the Car Thing doesn't have enough horsepower to run Linux or any other OS. For example, it has the same amount of RAM as an iPhone 4.

[@bbbbraxton]

spotify branded car :3

[@AmirRazan]

When your stream of ads is disrupted by 15 seconds of driving UwU

[@abunk8691]

Heard of the car thing when a lot of channels were covering it, but it never made sense since I need a phone or some device to connect it with to be usable. It looked neat, but that was about it. If it was a self contained proper Spotify device with that UI and a way to get internet connection maybe it would have aged better.

[@bandu6969]

YOOOOOOO new frokfrdk vid

[@gamecuber6]

pro tip: you can cut off the blue removing tab to make the plastic screen protector a real screen protector i remember finding one a few months ago on ebay for like 25€, i should have bought it :(

[@awesomeferret]

The real tragedy is how useless it is overall due to the hardware being so horrible. It's already been open sourced, so at least there will be aftermarket firmware mods. But the things you can do with it will be so absurdly limited. You really will have to be willing to waste time and money to build a project around this in the future (unless you're making a KZbin video about it, I bet that till get some views due to the backlash to this).

[@cassiuscartland]

That thumbnail...

[@crasht3424]

I agree with you frokfrdk that Spotify will just patch the software to disable but Spotify is also good at supporting older version of there app they just dropped support on ios 6 for iPhones and ipods so just have an old phone and disable auto update and should be good for a temp fix

[@movetvisrael]

Oh, I seen my name on the screen THANK YOU!

[@-fuk57]

*saw

[@HismumYT]

What's up guys it's (a sound my accent can not let me produce) your channel deserves alot more subs, the content is so cool and so is the host

[@mintybudgie]

fh-rock-fur-duck

[@HismumYT]

@@mintybudgie you see the problem is fh from the very start I was doomed to fail

[@jace-vo2xl]

i still use an mp3 player (hifi walker with rockbox) for my regular music needs, having a specific thing for music has saved my phone lots of battery & feeling for physical buttons while driving or cooking or taking a walk instead of having to stop and look at my phone has been better for my anxiety & safety. conceptually this would be such a cool idea, i'd love an interface like this that works with multiple streaming platforms & other inputs like mp3 players. i hope the people working on mods can keep this thing alive and open it up for everyone to play with.

[@tech_and_stuff_2022]

"members first" I WANTED IT EARLY TOO.

[@lucymorrison]

i love watching frokfdk play with his (car) thing and touch its knob

[@O.V.]

Mitski at the gym, 10/10

[@hadivong]

Try using it after being discontinued who knows will work

[@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862]

goddamit this item is actually really good for something i wanna build in a car.... i hope the community can figure out how to keep it alive later,

[@confused.cat.]

Just mount your phone instead

[@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862]

@@confused.cat. yes and no. This device allows you to have "multiple screens" attached your phone. Carplay/android auto is 1 screen with 1 app. The phone is 2nd screen with 2nd app. Then that car thing has the ability to be a 3rd attached screen. This is incredibly handy if you don't want to deal with swiping between apps /running 3 apps on 1 tiny screen. This works on android and iPhone

[@idonotknowwhyyoutubeletsyo5893]

No physical mods needed. But either forcing it to accept different apps or even running a different system are the other options. And nobody wants to do that themselves.

[@yannick7230]

You can get devices very similar to the car thing that have full carplay/android auto compatibility and interface with your original car radio.

[@JACKHARRINGTON]

you can also get cds at the local opp shop

[@Francisepearce]

yay! cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

[@bruhgamerwolf7936]

1 million subs soon!

[@benonyangore1536]

His content is actually so enjoyable

[@bruhgamerwolf7936]

Totally also reminds me of dankpods

[@ToastKidd]

u bought it on my bday :)

[@bradye21playsIndieHorror]

I first heard of this about a week ago. I thought people were being funny. But that's the real name.

[@valvium]

"Playing with my thing"

[@songwritterjblk]

Sick

[@bandu6969]

yo how 9 hours it came out a minute ago

[@frokfrdk]

@bandu6969 I had the video out early for channel members overnight until I made the thumbnail for it this morning

[@bandu6969]

@@frokfrdk oh ok hi frokfrdk

[@KOSMOS1701A]

an answer in search of a problem if you ask me, not surprised its getting disposed of.

[@zan00o]

The hacking community is working on a super easy app for hacking the car thing for a seemless setup

[@Windows8frfr]

playing with my thing to this video

[@PCIeTeam]

excuse me WHAT that's specific

[@ToxicMothBoi]

You can already modify app id's. Ofc you'd have to try and make the code the same as spotify's code when it comes to commu icating with the car thing but besides that there could be diffrences like enabling multiple file type support like flac, wav etc. I'm sure people are gonna go it since its been open sourced. People are alreadycon it

[@fab555trainspottingandmore]

Crapify. Better use CD's and iPods again

[@TheApqleGuy]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="94">1:34</a> leet ar thing👍

[@confused.cat.]

Spotify should've given this UI to the phone app, so you can just use a mount to attach your phone and it will be much faster and have a better screen than this Thing

[@ejc5million]

It sadly wont be able to be used for that much because of how underpowered it is... But i'm sure people will create at least some things for it

[@Shibes770]

What I don’t understand is that I own a device with very similar specs to the car thing and yet it’s perfectly capable Fiio m7. Yet Spotify seems to think that those specifications are useless. And by similar, I mean,half a gig of ram and 4gb ram although the amlogic inside the car thing has four cores. And the Fiio has an old smart watch CPU. I’ve gotten the fiio to do some mighty big tasks for its specs, and I fully expect the car thing is capable of the same tasks.

[@awesomeferret]

Spotify aren't the only ones who think it's useless. There are other KZbinrs who lament the extremely low end hardware.

[@Shibes770]

⁠​⁠@@awesomeferret is it not capable of being forced to run android? If it is indeed stuck on something Linux based then I suppose you’re right. But if you could run android on it, a lot of the really early android hi-fi players have been able to get away with using absolute potato hardware with relatively stripped down versions of android. Regardless, it’s a shame that Spotify is doing this all hardware has a use. What would be really cool is if you could use it as an external display with some onboard controls like the knob. And my specific use you could use it as a miniature MFD so that I could have what’s appearing on head on radar without having to take my eyes off my surroundings. Or you could have it set up as a rearview mirror for when you’re in third person mode on a racing game.

[@Lollllllz]

@@Shibes770 In theory it can (the Amlogic s905d2 in the carthing is related to the s905x2 which has seen duty in android 9.0 tv setup boxes and Android 10 Go technically supports Devices with 512MB ram) but whether it would be done would depend on the completeness of the available source code and the amount of developer attention the car thing will achieve.

[@desert2.025]

imagine getting sent a zip bomb on that thing

[@ukraineball953]

💀💀

[@krustiiik]

I just love that thing. Was about to buy it from ebay and then, they announced they'll brick it... Wtf spotify. Is there something similar on the market?

[@Wiertelus]

mitski and aphex twin hooooly based

[@MysticAidenAnimatez]

Are we just gonna ignore that he listens to Mitski? :3

[@domcaixote]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="145">2:25</a> you're with your girl in the car, you say you'll use your thing with her and then you get this out of your pocket

[@BeyondTech12]

Apple iD account lock is not a soft brick as you call it it’s hard coded into the motherboard

[@polocatfan]

I think what it's doing is piggybacking off of your phone's internet to tell the spotify website what you're listening to as it's synced across every device iirc.

[@MrCed122]

The OS in my car has been f*cked since the upgrade to Android 12, it doesn't change the name of the song anymore (or it does completely randomly, like every 2 hours), shuffle doesn't work and it just doesn't even say a song is playing sometimes. I wanted something to make Spotify easier to use and I'm very happy I went with one of those cheap Android Auto tablet-thingy that just stick to your dashboard, the Car Thing was definitely an option I looked into and decided against. Sure, those chinese device are kinda slow and the touchscreen isn't the best, but at least, it WORKS and since it's Android Auto, it won't get abandonned in a few months.

[@joãopedrothejohn]

rip bud 🪦

[@adelate64]

nice

[@shmulikeilat]

Looks like when the volume is on zero the buttons will not appear, kind of an indication for "mute". Bad UI/UX

[@user-xs1us5fr1w]

playing with my what

[@Superporscheknower]

This video seems like a dankpods video

[@DOGthebarkingdog]

shout out funky stuff

[@TropicalCancer]

Womp Womp!

[@wongvunyu8461]

The car thing? Kachao???!!!

[@SoosRamirez1]

imma buy one so i can sue them

[@EnriqueMcQuade]

Can you run Android on the Car Thing?

[@JoelGorostieta]

I don’t see why you cant just turn it into an mp3 player. its simple enough for something with those specks, and 4GB is still a lot of songs.

[@aur_xt]

wow

[@sherme]

most useful spotify product:

[@cristthomas]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="55">0:55</a> that's my bday lol

[@ammarchiya]

Try To Use the Lenovo G550 in 2024

[@jsnotlout3312]

I want one :C just to find some way maybe to put linux on it and run some random stuff lol

[@jakeyyyyyyyy]

i cannot believe you are old enough to drive

[@tkaczyk245]

Bro get yourself cheap carplay/android auto screen from China. I'm rocking it for a few months now and it's great for old shitboxes

[@CleroPata]

I thought you were joking when you said Car Thing, but it is actually called car thing 😂

[@o0julek0o]

/mu/ core music taste

[@Kyermike]

vehicle reveal

[@smoozL]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="760">12:40</a> you just showed a solution

[@CombustOrange]

A THING

[@kaktusgoreng]

Well at least they made this thing (haha) open source right? R-right?

[@awesomeferret]

I think you were trying to make a joke, so in case you didn't hear, it was open sourced. He even mentions this in the video.

[@Brick_Soup]

Based C418 tracks

[@cakedon]

no way they made garbage time into a real thing

[@waldfruchttee]

512mb ram? thats the minimum of debian 12!

[@masonrawdon155]

This sucks I wanted this but never got it I eventually saw someone use it in there gaming setup as a mini monitor below there main one wich I loved and wanted one immediately then a few days later same thing they announced the cancelation smh

[@j.v.b.4040]

Or, someone could make it into an android auto/car play device

[@mcch1n]

that would be great

[@BlockyEmerald]

frok a confirmed kendrick fan?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[@TeeterteteTertretwteerew-mb4te]

Hackntosh NOW

[@TeeterteteTertretwteerew-mb4te]

YES

[@mrskwrl]

Honestly they should just release some firmware to run Android or something on it before they discontinue it. SMH

[@Windows8frfr]

also what os does this thing run?

[@frokfrdk]

Some flavour of Linux

[@Windows8frfr]

@@frokfrdk try to get normal linux running on that thing lmao

[@DerKlemm-Crafter]

For me, the Car Thing is just disappointing. Still, I can relate to people having fun with it and it's a shame that it becomes eWaste quite soon.

[@amanyouel_e24]

game on it

[@MihaiMan-ir5tf]

man u can literally mod everything as u wish trough software its just about your skills , even if i consider this device useless, and useless is my android router too wich i will modify to be an android emulator at hardware level

[@cole_tech_offical]

Can you flash android on it?

[@-10]

The specs seem weak for that

[@MichaelStoneham]

How can Spotify brick this? Don't update it and be ok.

[@theanimeotaku2794]

You could've just bought a Bluetooth to radio car adapter I bought one on Amazon for like $14

[@frokfrdk]

Those don't sound great, still can't use the car's built in controls with it

[@theanimeotaku2794]

@@frokfrdk well you can use your phone's screen obviously when your stopped or whatever or your phone's voice commands

[@anton_idk]

I *never* use liked songs...

[@TechByGage]

Imagine you could get it to run a Linux distro 😂

[@frokfrdk]

It runs Linux out of the box

[@lukchem]

The EU when a Company uses their own charging cable: YoU cAnT dO tHaT tHaTs AnTiCoMpEtItIvE. The EU when a Company artificially destroys devices with no real reason: I’m fine.

[@test113]

This Product was only officially available, sold and supported in the USA. So no, the EU does not care.

[@lukchem]

@@test113 Okay then nevermind.

[@mcch1n]

u didn’t go over everything in the box 😢😢

[@frokfrdk]

I showed the moist towelette, the rest of the stuff in the box are just various mounts

[@mcch1n]

@@frokfrdk you must go over everything! but anyway did the CD mount come inside the box?

[@frokfrdk]

@@mcch1n it did come with the CD mount

[@Ruslan.88266]

Or you could just use car play.

[@anton_idk]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="739">12:19</a> *you surely mean that the *left side* is the correct one ;) (No anger ofc, great Video!)

[@ivandkridd]

just mod it

[@Space_Reptile]

would be neat to just turn it into an android auto mirror type device, the knob is a nice thing to have and if its just an android auto display, you can use any audio player you like

[@marcopisco]

mod it