Spotify to Brick Its Own “Car Thing” Device, Won’t Offer Refunds

In 2021, Spotify launched Car Thing, making the product available in the United States the following year. The device was described as “a new smart player that fills your car with music, news, entertainment, talk, and more.” The product is now being discontinued and will cease to be operational. The Car Thing expires on Monday, December 9, 2024.

In a statement to Ars Technica, a Spotify spokesperson said, “The goal of our Car Thing exploration in the U.S. was to learn more about how people listen in the car. In July 2022, we announced we’d stop further production and now it’s time to say goodbye to the devices entirely.”

Spotify does not plan to make a new version of Car Thing or a similar physical product. The company suggests that Car Thing owners find a suitable way to recycle or dispose of their devices. There will be no refunds or trade-in options.

On Wednesday, May 28, three plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against Spotify in a New York federal court. In the complaint, obtained by Pitchfork, the plaintiffs claim that they “would not have purchased a Car Thing if they knew that Spotify would stop supporting the product within just a few months or years of purchase.”

In addition, the plaintiffs allege that they “reasonably did not expect Spotify to discontinue its support for, and disable use of, the Car Thing simply because Spotify did not want to maintain the servers for the Car Thing, therefore forcing its customers to download firmware that rendered the product useless.”

The plaintiffs are asking for Spotify to pay damages, issue a “refund in the amount of the MSRP to each Spotify Car Thing purchaser,” and more.

Pitchfork has reached out to the plaintiffs’ attorney, Tyler Litke, as well as a Spotify spokesperson for comment and more information.