Idk who needs to hear it, but stop buying this shit. If it has a computer inside, but you can’t flash your own software onto it, just pass. If you’re unsure, look around, find the nearest Linux user and ask for help.
To be fair, next to no one bought this. And the people that payed $90 for this are probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
This is basically a dumb android device with one app - an auto friendly version of Spotify. To use it, you need to pair it to your phone via Bluetooth. So, yeah, it assumes you have a phone in your car with Spotify on it.
Also it costs about as much as a cheap externally mounted CarPlay or Android auto screen. So, yeah. Not great.
If you want to put auto friendly app UIs in an older car, go get a cheap CarPlay or AA display. Those are platforms that have been around for a decade, and Apple & Google have long partnership agreements with automakers that are likely to ensure those platforms will be supported for years to come. Hell, Apple is still supporting ancient iPod connection protocols 20+ years later.
This thing was the Rabbit R1, but for a music streaming app.
the people that payed $90 for this are probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer
maybe, but even stupid people should be protected from being taken advantage of.
They should at least get a refund of 50% of the purchase price.Nope, I’m fed up with stupid people getting rewarded for their stupidity. I knew that PPI was a scam years ago and I payed higher interest rates because of refusing to sign up to it. Years later all the stupids got their money back. So fuck 'em, fuck them all. Also the stupids keep voting for Nazis Yes I’m pissed.
Proton Pump Inhibitors?
Producer Price Index?
Plastic Pipe Institute?
Sorry payment protection insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_protection_insurance
Thanks!
A few months ago my wife wanted to buy an electronic picture frame and I had a hard time explaining this to her.
Edit: an internet connected picture frame.
Well ok, an electronic picture frame is not much of an investition and works without internet. Well, most of them. Ok, you have to research it before buying.
These fuckers disabled car mode in the android app to make you buy one of those and now they’re killing it. I used car mode in my car and the moment it stopped working was when I cancelled my subscription.
What did car mode do? Was it when it switched to big old buttons? Mine used to do that until I got Android Auto in my new car…so up until about a year ago
Yep exactly that. My car back then didn’t have Android Auto and this was the only way to skip tracks while keeping my eyes on the road.
Edit: looks like they brought it back later: https://www.xda-developers.com/spotify-car-mode-testing/
So stop being their customer.
I did 4 years ago
Everybody buy your music. These streaming platforms are trash.
Yes, yes buy. Do not sail the high seas.
I want the bands to get some money. I buy from bandcamp when musicians are sensible enough to sell on there, or on their sites.
I wish list stuff until a Bandcamp Friday comes around where artists get all the money. I’ve stopped buying physical media, so waiting on a digital purchase isn’t an issue for me.
Bandcamp was sold off, no point using them going forward.
The site is still the same, you still get your music to download, the band still gets most of the money. 100% still a point in using them.
Dude Bandcamp had been sold twice and the product has not changed from a user experience and I only use Bandcamp at this point…I will say you NEED to download anything you buy to archive your collection but at the moment Bandcamp still pays bands, still allows unlimited streaming and still amazing.
Do I expect it to remain amazing…nope, but for now it’s still amazing.
For now, they still provide DRM free downloads in FLAC. And they still pay the artists on the Fridays. I’ll continue using it till they inevitably fuck it up.
I’ve almost never paid a cent for music.
My concert ticket stack is thicc though, and I have SOOOOO MANY hoodies, t-shirts, cups, and random bullshit. I’m not paying for DRM, but you can’t DRM a comfy zip-up!
Don’t give them any ideas
Or pirate the music, then send some money in an envelope to the artists themselves.
Absolutely. Even if you pirate from some, and buy whole albums from a few when you can afford it, you’re supporting artists instead of the shareholders of tech goon overlords.
Me too…I’m at 1500+ albums. But I do download them too for when the sad times to come…
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I’m afraid that that information has had to be [redacted]. Choose another path.
Lidarr is pretty keen if you already have sonarr and radar running.
Am I the only one who finds it super annoying, that “detection through sound waves” (Sonar) does video things while “detection through light” (lidar) does the sound things?
WHY?! Swap names already! It’s driving me nuts!
I find the choice of name for Readarr more annoying, since we already had Radarr
RIP what… was there for a decade. It was godly. Your other reply knows what’s up. So does the god Orpheus, he knows some heady chunes
Oink. Waffles.
Wait……
Or both Bandcamp for the win
There are three morbillion songs and I have no idea which ones I like. Streaming platforms became popular for a reason
Yeah most people don’t care to maintain a local music library. It’s a lot of work and compared to streaming services that do it for you this offers no real benefit. If you listen to lots of new/different music all the time, streaming is actually far cheaper.
It’s cheaper because the band doesn’t get paid as much. The streaming service keeps most of the meager pay.
People make up for it by buying merch or going to shows. Margins on those things are much better for the artists.
In every service I know of, the platform takes a minority of revenue
Yeah this is fucking peak internet snobbery. “Just spend thousands dollars on music” ok.
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I just realised iTunes (store) is no longer a thing. Everything’s just streaming now.
Time to bust out the walkman
iTunes was an unhappy medium. I liked how you can actually buy albums, but they gave the MP3s weird filenames to make it more difficult to move to another device. I did it anyway, but I had to find the right folder, figure out what track it was, and rename the track. I’m against it but it’s still better than streaming.
You can still buy songs on iTunes and load them to an iPod, MP3 player, or in my case to my Navidrome instance for my own personal self-hosted streaming.
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YT + Music is worth its weight in gold.
I recently encountered a song I could only stream but not buy anywhere without DRM. Kinda wild because it has over 5 million YouTube views.
If anyone knows how the buy Slow Song by The Knocks, lmk.
Everybody
buypirate your music. These streaming platforms are trash.Also this. But I want the bands to get paid.
Ok that’s reasonable
The bastards barely started selling it a few years ago. I feel like some responsibility should exist. It isn’t a company that is going under, so it shouldn’t be able to just casually kill the devices tied-service it only recently sold.
Agreed. Anything sold with the intention of being used with a subscription service should have 10 years of support.
Anything discontinued should stop being protected by copyright law, and the manufacturer should be forced to give every piece of information they have on that product.
We need new laws y’all. All these companies should be forced to collect all their e-waste as part of their products lifecycle.
If a company produces any product and the company has a market cap over $1billion, then they should be responsible for collecting and recycling all their trash.
Spotify is an evil company. Bad for artists, bad for consumers. I’m glad to have quit using their service.
What do you use instead?
Local SSD
If you care about artists not being screwed over, Tidal is usually the first recommendation.
I use a combo of streaming stuff I bought on Bandcamp with their app and playing local files. In addition to albums and EPs, I have bought a lot of singles on Bandcamp. I put all the singles in a giant constantly growing playlist on the Bandcamp app and then set it to random shuffle. It takes more effort than using something like Spotify, but I personally like it a lot more because it’s only full of music I know I like and I feel satisfied because I supported the artists I like.
Currently using a combination of Plexamp, WinAmp, Bandcamp and Apple Music.
This was predictable. Everyone has a phone. Phones have CarPlay and Android Auto.
The fact that they named it “Car Thing” made it clear that it didn’t have much of a valid use and that they didn’t really have a lot of confidence in it.
It’s annoying that they even created it in the first place. It’s more annoying that they now predictably are not supporting it anymore. It should be illegal.
Remember kids, never place buttons for a service on a remote if you don’t know if the remote will last longer than said service :)
I bought this for my old Cadillac that only had a tape deck and it was amazing (with a Bluetooth cassette). I haven’t used it since I got rid of that old Cadillac about two years ago now. Pretty limited use case but it still sucks to kill shit for no reason.
I didn’t know Bluetooth cassettes were a thing, although if I think about it then of course they are. What’s the sound quality like?
The sound is honestly not bad, better and less hassle than an FM transmitter. There are 3.5 mm ones too that work pretty well but I had a few of them and they fail where the cable meets the cassette. I passed it on to a friend with a whole house cassette system when I got my new Cadillac
I’m waiting for some FOSS developers to hack this thing and run custom firmware on it. Or someone who creates their own “Car Thing” using an Arduino or Raspberry Pi.
Stop feeding these parasites.
Either buy physical or self host!
Both. Buy physical media, rip the audio files and put them on your selfhosted music server (e.g. Navidrome). Or pirate the music and buy some merch to compensate the artists.
imo they should refund everyone who bought one and collect all the devices to recycle.
Xmanager is calling everyone’s name. Thank me later 😁
Edit: really? I get downvoted for helping? 😂 I love you all, too!
What does Xmanager do? I read the site, but nowhere does it seem to describe the product
No ads Spotify.
What it do
Spotify premium for free. No ads, you can skip as many times as you want, you can pick songs and it works with Android Auto.