• Spotify is retiring its Car Thing gadget that it launched in 2021 at the end of 2024.
• The Car Thing could control Spotify with touch and voice commands but production was stopped just five months after it was made widely available in February 2022.
• The company says Car Thing owners should wipe the device and dispose of it.

Spotify Car Thing is was a gadget for your car that made controlling and using Spotify easier. Easier than the in-car entertainment system most cars ship with today? Probably not but maybe it made sense for those with older vehicles.

The Car Thing was available exclusively in the United States from 2021 on an invite-only basis. Spotify then opened up purchase for all Americans in February 2022 but then stopped producing the Car Thing five months later.

Now, the bell has tolled for Car Thing.

“We have made the decision to discontinue Car Thing. This means that Car Thing will no longer be operational. This decision wasn’t made lightly, and we want to assure you that our commitment to providing a superior listening experience remains unchanged. We acknowledge and deeply appreciate the support and enthusiasm you have shown for Car Thing. It has been an incredible journey, and we are grateful for all the miles we’ve shared,” Spotify writes on a product support page.

Time of death for the gadget will be called on 9th December when the product will effectively be dead. There will be no open-sourcing the tool, no other ways to use it, the product will just be dead and won’t function.

The reason? It effectively boils down to “we don’t want to support it anymore” but is framed as streamlining the product offering.

Customers can’t even trade in the Car Thing which retailed for $89.99 and are instructed to just, toss it. Responsibly of course.

“We recommend resetting your Car Thing to factory settings and safely disposing of your device following local electronic waste guidelines,” Spotify writes.

Truth be told, the Car Thing was a dumb unitasker that only allowed you to control your smartphone’s Spotify app so it was never really going to become a must-have piece of tech. Of course, Spotify seems to have a tendency to ignore common sense.

Just recently chief executive officer Daniel Ek was dragged for realising that maybe laying off 1 500 employees would prove challenging for the company.

“Although there’s no question that it was the right strategic decision, it did disrupt our day-to-day operations more than we anticipated,” Ek said during Spotify’s Q1 earnings call. “It took us some time to find our footing, but more than four months into this transition, I think we’re back on track, and I expect to continue improving on our execution throughout the year getting us to an even better place than we’ve ever been.”

Spotify says it has no plans to release a new Car Thing and the way this has been handled, we suspect folks will be steering clear of any hardware the company releases in future.