EDIT: The only reason why I still had it at this point was because I could use it with other apps. However, now that my Spotify Subscription is cancelled, it doesn’t work with anything. It’s mildly infuriating because today, I can’t still use it with other apps like I was able to yesterday.

Please don’t make the same mistake I made. No one should buy this.

      • uis@lemmy.world
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        Sadly he is always right. I wish he was wrong all the time.

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            Thank Faust there are times he is wrong! At least I know we live in not the worst world imaginable.

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                Oh even without the controversies, the eating of miscellaneous foot attachments is wrong enough on its own.

                Edit: I do btw fully agree with rms being a crude piece of failed excrement

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                  I didn’t mention that? I don’t write on Wikipedia.

                  But don’t you think his views on pedophilia are unacceptable? He says he has changed his mind and that’s great but doesn’t excuse what he said.

                  I usually agree with his views on software but the rest is often questionable

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      “Just find another job place to live head unit”

      -deliberately obtuse bootlickers

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      Something tells me they just didn’t realize someone would buy a Spotify car play without already having a subscription.

      I mean really, you’re too cheap for 9.99/m but you’ll drop 100 bucks for something your phone already does?

      Seems like OP is just in a very unique situation that Spotify didn’t expect anyone to be in.

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        They say never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect, ignorance or incompetence. But with a corporations I’m pretty sure its the other way around.

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          I’d usually agree but this product seems exclusively intended for someone who’s heavily into Spotify, and the marketing clearly states you need a subscription.

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              Knew what? That people buying the device already have one?

              You still have it backwards. They didn’t sell you the device to get you on the subscription, they assumed only people with money to spend on a subscription would WASTE A HUNDRED BUCKS ON SOME DUMB SHIT LIKE THIS.

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                Am I missing something, or would basically any old smartphone work in place of this? I have a Pixel which sits in a cradle and takes care of anything I’d use this for. I guess a physical button or dial might be nice, but I have a volume dial on the car dash.

                Seems plainly obvious that it’ll require a sub. It’s a Spotify box.

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                  You’re correct, I have a five or six year old kindle fire i got for like 60 bucks that I rooted and installed stock android on, it’s just a really cheap tablet now. Works perfectly for stuff like this.

                  My last smartphone would also have worked.

                  This whole thread is just a bunch of moron-consumer apologists. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate corporations and their practices, but this is just a bad purchase and buyers remorse packaged as big corpos fault.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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          I mean, on all the purchase advertisements they said you must have Spotify premium to use this.

          They subsidized the price the device based on the expected return from convincing people to keep their subscriptions. Since it supports other clients they probably also have to manage software updates.

          Spotify is a bag of dicks for a lot of other reasons but this really doesn’t seem to be one of them.

      • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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        9.99/m is 119.88/y and it doesn’t stop. Maybe OP thought that the purchase was a one time purchase, and I don’t really blame him, since why would the thing exist if phones with a subscription can already do that it does?

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          I don’t really blame him

          He bought a piece of convenience tech designed for a specific piece of software, when said convenience tech is totally unnecessary to the function of that software, then got mad that he needed the software

          I am shocked that everyone in this thread isn’t roasting this dude nonstop. He’s an idiot.

          • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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            They just don’t consider personal responsibility to even exist. It’s the corporation’s fault they spent a hundred bucks on a thing your old phone and a 15 dollar magnetic mount could have done for you, because said device needs a subscription service.

            I had a guy tell me in this thread that I had “privilege” for saying Spotify didnt expect people without a paid subscription to be spending money on such an overpriced device. OP is throwing hundo’s away on stupid shit but it HAS to be the corpos fault somehow, people will toss logic right out the window to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay.

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          Doesn’t stop? You sign on the dotted line for a lifetime of payments? You can’t cancel your subscription?

          since why would the thing exist if phones with a subscription can already do that it does?

          That’s the exact logic that would lead someone with an ounce of intelligence to go “oh yeah, this product is a completely stupid piece of shit that’s marketed toward people with more money than brain cells.”

          Did it say anywhere on the package that it gets you a lifetime subscription to Spotify? No. Does OP understand that Spotify works on a subscription model? Probably, Saas isnt fucking new.

          This is the kind of boy-who-cried-wolf bullshit that keeps corporations from actually being held accountable, because people who want better worker’s rights and taxes on corporations look like idiots when lumped in with children like you who consider personal responsibility and thinking for yourself to be too scawy.

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    I cancelled my paid Spotify account because I can’t get them to stop fucking recommending Joe Rogan to me.

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      I’m moments away from canceling. Splash screens of some bullshit podcast or something I don’t want to see. Getting fed up.

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          Search for Github SpotDL And Navidrome

          No need to sail them seas, but maybe still use a vpn, just on case. Fun fact i heard from a friend of a friend: Youtube starts rate limiting after 50,000 audio-only video downloads, until you have a new IP.

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              Im not audiophile so I scrape audio with newpipe. Downloaded and stream quality are indistinguishably satisfactory.

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              I’ve also noticed that sometimes it downloads the wrong versions of songs. While my Spotify playlist has the album version of a song, it might sometimes download a live performance audio or a reprise version.

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              It’s free. You’re getting “free” quality. Actual quality anything costs money or requires theft.

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          I have hundreds upon hundreds of songs in my Spotify music library. Downloading them one by one sounds like hell. And then I wouldn’t be discovering new music either.

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            If you want to move them elsewhere(or even just get a csv export of them) there are apps for that.

            https://freeyourmusic.com will let you pay a one time fee to do it to as many services as you want, it’s a bit slow but it’ll get there eventually.

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            Renting music sounds like hell to me. If the songs can’t exist as files on my computer (Opus, Ogg, MP3, etc.) then I’m out.

        • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.ee
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          ive donated to slsk. I like the song radio and album radio features of spotify, found one of my favorite bands that way

      • histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        leave em sail the seas or tidal for the same price you get better audio so win win in my book either way

    • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
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      Allegedly, YouTube Music is about to shove podcasts in our faces with a soon to come update.

      I’m leaving YTM if they do that. I’ll go back to ☠️⚓⛵ and using locally available music.

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      I’ve been pretty happy with YouTube music. I got legacied in due to Google Music shutting down and thought I would hate it, but I’ve had zero complaints. Plus, it comes with free YouTube Premium, so I haven’t seen an ad in years.

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        I have so many complaints, Google Play music was fine. It did exactly what I wanted it to.

        YouTube music is like an alien looked at that app, and tried to recreate it exclusively by smashing it’s forehead against a keyboard until an app that started most of the time came out.

        • zourn@lemmy.world
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          I would actually argue that Google Play Music was the best music streaming app that I’ve used. It was great being able to upload music from CDs of small local bands and have it right in there with the other streaming music.

          Just today I had a hankering to listen to a specific song through my android auto, and instead of just being able to verbally ask the unit for that song, or even being able to search through the atrocity that is the YouTube Music interface on my head unit, I had to pull over, pull out my phone, search for the band, then click the uploads tab (because uploaded music does not show with the regular search results) and then click the song to get it to play.

          • RBWells@lemmy.world
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            Yes and the glorious “playing near you” feature of Play Music. That made the best recommendations for local shows, and I mean local, within a few miles, not just bands I’d listened to but always relevant and often small shows! That feature, I found several new bands I liked that way and good live music. YouTube has nothing like that. Also interface not as intuitive, more cluttered. My kids like it better because they do like having the videos available, but as I do not give a fuck about that but do like live music this is still not as good as the Play Music.

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            It’s not optimal, and I would like for uploaded music to just show up in the regular search, but there is a top navigation bar where you can just switch between where to search (uploads being one of the options). Also YTM has the upside of showing YouTube uploads as well, I could always find obscure bonus EPs that only came with the physical CD because someone uploaded it, which is really handy

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          YouTube music is like an alien looked at that app, and tried to recreate it exclusively by smashing it’s forehead against a keyboard until an app that started most of the time came out.

          You think they that much care and attention into the app?

          But seriously, yeah, I had pretty much the same experience -Google Play Music just worked beautifully, whereas YouTube Music was a steaming turd on Android. I gave up after six months and two phones and went to Deezer, never looked back

        • BeMoreCareful@lemdro.id
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          It’s definitely not Google play music, but I treat it a bit like Pandora twenty years ago and it’s ok for that.

      • Sharkwellington@lemmy.one
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        I would say the same myself. They don’t do the worst job for music discovery either which is important to me. Amazon Music drove me nuts constantly recommending Cage the Elephant and other well-known (profitable) artists instead of obscure music similar to my tastes.

        • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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          The algorithm on YT music is vastly superior to Spotify for new discoveries

          Oh, you used to listen to Metallica back in the day?

          YT music - Here, you’d probably like Shaka Ponk, Gin Wigmore and Royal Blood

          Spotify - hAvE YoU hEarD of A bANd cAllEd KiSs?

      • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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        Same. Honestly, I expected YTM to make things worse. That’s usually how those kinda things go. But it actually did get better for me. I jumped to Google Play Music because it had better selection than Spotify (at least back then). YTM kept that, but fixed the issues I was having with the desktop browser player sometimes getting stuck. And the more recent support for lyrics that are synced to the music is great.

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        Their queueing system sucks. All I want to do is queue up some songs but instead YTM fills my queue with tons of crap I’ve never listened to before because that’s how they make money. They put my manually queued songs at the END of the queue so I have to move them up 20+ spaces. There’s literally no way to do it other than creating a custom playlist every time I listen to music, and they intentionally made that take more clicks/taps than queuing. I don’t get how people are ok with the YTM app, it’s terrible.

        I hate YTM and I hate that I can’t cancel it because they bundle it with YouTube premium, which my partner uses every day. Screw Google and they anti-consumer manipulative bs.

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      There’s literally a feature on Spotify where you can hide an artist and never see it, fyi

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    That’s really dissapointing, did Spotify seriously release a hardware device that expensive, and mandates a subscription to operate?

    It’s a shame because it looks quite nice too, and is sadly guaranteed to be e-waste at some point

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      Are you kidding me? It’s been par for the course as far as car assessors go. Sirus radio was like 100 and still required a subscription. A lot of GPS were that price and most had subscriptions.

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        Don’t know why you’re being downvoted - enshittification as a viable consumer business model was pretty much proven in the auto space.

        Just like they want to charge you to use the heated seats you’re paying the gas to lug around anyway

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          Just like they want to charge you to use the heated seats you’re paying the gas to lug around anyway

          That’s not the same thing at all. As bad as e.g. Sirius or GPS subscription might be, at least with those the subscription is for ongoing access to new data being transmitted to you. In contrast, a subscription purely for the use of hardware already included in the car is literally theft.

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
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        Just because it’s percieved as normal doesn’t mean it’s something we should put up with though.

        With GPS subscriptions (the ones I’m aware of anyway) they will still navigate you from A to B when you stop paying the subscription, you usually just miss out on traffic updates, map updates and other localized enhancements. If there are any that deny you navigation outside the subscription that’s plain scummy IMO.

        I’m not familiar with Sirius Radio but from what I can see online, it’s a satellite radio subscription service that seems to bring new things to the table (like starting a radio station at the beginning of a last song etc). The hardware appears to actually serve a purpose, i.e. it’s the satellite receiver for the radio service subscription. I believe we could compare this to buying a Starlink dish for internet access, and paying the monthly subscription. The spotify device shown here is not a standalone device and is only fitted with bluetooth IIRC, requiring a phone for operation.

        In comparison to Spotify, Sirius does not appear to have ever had a free plan - whereas Spotify does… I see is no reason why Spotify could not make their free plan usable on this device.

        Edit: fix typo

        • Hyperi0n@lemmy.film
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          The device is free to premium users. It’s a marketing device for the premium subscription.

          The box clearly states that a premium subscription is required.

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            Glad to see someone mention that the subscription being required for use is clearly conveyed. It’s not like this was some hidden information

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        Those I don’t fault. Sirius has satellites to maintain and they don’t get ad revenue.

        GPS makers, well making maps on that scale is very expensive. Not everyone can be google and give it away to end consumers by harvesting user data and selling ads to businessplaces.

        Spotify though, fair enough to charge for the hardware but once bought should work with the ad-supported version of their product…

        • Hyperi0n@lemmy.film
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          The hardware is free for subscribers…

          If you buy it outright it tells you that you need a subscription.

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        I think I got an Echo Auto for $25 (during the public tests). It doesn’t need any kind of a subscription to use as far as I’m aware. It only does streaming still, but there are Alexa skills that let you stream from your Plex or Jellyfin server.

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      I considered getting one of these a couple years ago and saw Spotify was discounting them heavily and even giving them away for free in some cases. I didn’t wind up getting one but do wish they would release a simple player + speaker like this for home use.

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    Why would you even buy this? Literally just buy a phone mount and use your phone. This thing was a textbook example of a useless product.

    • dingus@lemmy.world
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      Seriously, what does this do that a phone doesn’t? Am I missing something? Even early Android/iOS devices could run Spotify in their time (although not always anymore). What does this do?

      • Morpheus@lemm.ee
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        Whenever I’m driving, my phone is almost permanently mounted as a GPS. I also own the car thingy, it has very intuitive hardware buttons and a dial on top of being touch screen. This way I can leave my phone on the GPS screen and adjust Spotify controls on the car thingy without taking attention of the road.

        The only real shitty thing I would argue is that you NEED Spotify premium not just to control your Spotify, but also to control youtube/mp3 player/ any other media that you would want to play through your phone.

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          very intuitive hardware buttons

          Now there is an actually sensible product: A phone holder with nice hardware buttons, exposed to the phone as a USB keyboard.

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            I’ve got a bluetooth steering wheel control (add on for ~$15) that adds play, pause, volume control, and next/previous track.

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    They named their device “Car Thing?” Just looked it up. Why not just buy a phone mount and play through your phone?

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    Deception followed by coersion is an excellent way to increase shareholder returns.

    Why do you hate capitalism?

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      Deception and coercion are by definition not part of capitalism. If those things are happening, capitalism has broken down.

      Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.

      — Wikipedia

      I’ve highlighted the parts the conflict with deception and coercion.

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        You’re quoting capitalism’s sales pitch of capitalism.

        Go to your local tent city in every city if you want to see what “voluntary” looks like, dying of exposure and police capital defense force harassment while serving as capitalism scarecrows to keep the working poor scared shitless into “voluntarily” showing up to be exploited for already wealthy people’s further profit for their unquenchable greed.

        Capitalists aren’t even willing to admit being greedy, only acting on “rational self-interest.” If you want to believe what capitalism claims to be, you do you. If you want to see what capitalism is, use your senses and your critical thinking skills.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          It’s a definition. When something doesn’t match the definition, it doesn’t meant the definition is wrong it means it’s wrong to call that thing that term.

          Greed is, by definition, irrational. But greed vs generosity is independent of capitalism.

          If you want to see what “capitalism” is, learn what a definition is and how that relates to reality.

          If there are people who truly have no choice, then you don’t have a free market and you don’t have capitalism. However, I will say that I was homeless and during that time my choices were constrained but didn’t disappear. I stopped being homeless because I made the right choices while homeless. This “having no choice” thing is simply not true.

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    I have a car thing, I use it at my desk for media controls. It is pretty great.

    But the product description was pretty clear that you needed premium to use it. The same goes for using any third party Spotify client. Shouldn’t have expected otherwise.

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      Buying any physical hardware that doesn’t function without a subscription should be a illegal, not something you should expect.

      • IdleSheep@lemdro.id
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        But the point is that the description of the product clearly stated it needs a subscription to function. You literally buy it with that understanding. If you didn’t read the description then it’s 100% on you.

        Whether it should be legal or not, or whether it’s ethical or not, is a different discussion. But the product wasn’t disingenuous about how it works, so complaining about how it works exactly as advertised is a bit silly.

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          Every single modem and cell phone I’ve ever owned have worked without a subscription to anything. My internet and ability to make cell calls were limited after my subscription ended, but the devices themselves were easily repurposed to other uses.

        • krotti@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Just responding to the edit;

          Modems work with other providers. You don’t own the infrastructure that connects the internet -> subscriptions.

          Phones make it impossible to root or change batteries? I don’t own the device, byt at least it’s not e-waste yet.

          The car thing you don’t own since the software makes the hardware e-waste.

            • krotti@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Public companies obviously intentionally want to make everything as shitty as possible, just to extract money, but lets accept the hypothetical that subscriptions will actually be banned. Wouldn’t that be great?

              You would basically be treated the same as Tier 1-3 ISP’s, pay for the cost of the routing to the company. That phone plan that costs ?? €/$ a month becomes “Pay as you use it”. Flat fee per gigabyte / message etc. These plans were at least here in Finland, and I think my phone bills were around 4-5 EUR a month and a cap that you cannot exceed that month, though smartphones and data plans weren’t a thing. Now everything is a subscription.

              Now back to hardware vs software. You obviously pay for the software also when buying the hardware, but for whatever reason the user doesn’t own any kind of rights around it. This has obviously become much worse the past few years (TV’s have ads etc). I really don’t think that the issue is anything you listed, the issue is that greedy companies want to use the subscription model rather than play fair. Phones and modems are EOL at best in a year. I have a PFSense router that cost me less than a router from my ISP used and it’s EOL and security is something I don’t have to worry about.

              Modems and routers have most of their features dedicated to home networking and are not usually made by the ISP. Them connecting to the internet is one of the smallest features they have. The other features are related to offline networking and tight security, you can actually just plug an ethernet cable to the wall and get connection from your ISP. Same as using a modem and putting it in “bridge mode”, which will completely bypass the features of the modem/router.

              The issue here is that the companies don’t want to provide value, they just want to extract as much money as possible, which is wrong. Laws and regulations are desperately needed and even something as radical as banning subscription services for user devices would be a net positive. Renting Tier 1-3 operator infrastructure for your router/modem to work is completely different than “You have the device and the software, but we block you from using it, since you don’t pay”, which in my opinion is ransomware, not subscriptions.

              For right to repair and owning these devices, I completely agree with you.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              So what use is a consumer modem without an internet service?

              You can still use it to network with other computers over the telephone network. Heck you don’t even need to do that via the actual telephone service you can just run some wire.

              But I think what was actually meant by OP is “tied to a specific subscription service” as well as “disables features that don’t need a subscription service when you aren’t subscribed”.

              Phones, arguably, don’t perform their primary function without cell services.

              You can use them as e.g. smart home remote. The cellular modem is going to go unused (at least apart from emergency services) but that’s only a small portion of the hardware, and modems were only ever locked to subscriptions (at least over here) if the phone is subsidised by that subscription. I don’t think they even do that any more, they replaced it with minimum contract durations. In any case even back in the days you could unlock it after some time or coughing up some money.

              that’s why I think it should be root-able, serviceable, and speak in standard open protocols

              Yep I wish rootability was included in the new EU regulations, it would solve so many issues at once. OTOH: It would solve the issue for people who are tech savvy enough to do such things, gotta be careful with our own elitism there. Enjoying consumer rights should not hinge on being a grease monkey.

            • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              You misunderstand. I have no knowledge about how smart you are. You could easily be smarter than me. What im saying is you need to reassess your tone and delivery, because it, and your edit only shows me and others that you are arrogant and therefore unable to properly assess other points of view.

              Address the possibility that i have a point on your own time, after your ego-required final comment to me. Whether you will address youself or remain as you are, it’s completely up to you.

              Goodbye

  • Izzy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What is this device? I’m confused as to why it even exists.

    Edit: I discovered it is literally called “Car Thing”.

    • Candybar121@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve never heard of it before, it looks like a smartphone that doesn’t do anything other than have the spotify app? Like is there any mapping or calling built in? And to lock hardware like this behind their premium subscription is wildly, not mildly infuriating.

      • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Man we’ve hit the point where people don’t even know about Sirius or XM radio do they? You paid to listen and you had to pay for the receiver, oh and likely an adapter to get it to work on the vehicle too.

      • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        All it provides is a simplified ui and voice control, the same voice control as the Spotify app. It doesn’t even play the audio, it is a remote for the app on your phone which is doing the real work.

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    1 year ago

    I have the hobby of cracking stuff like that (but mainly windows apps to tell you the truth) and there are many-ish people out there with the same hobby. search around a bit and google stuff like “Spotify Car Thing github” or “Spotify Thing bypass” or jailbreak. Heavily rely on github and russian forums. Also random small blogs

    If you’re so determined though and nobody else has done it and you’re fine not using it for 3+ months, there’s a very slim chance that I could find the time to bypass it

    EDIT: Yeap it’s cracked and it’s easy too

  • atomicfox@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    And? Their site clearly states that a premium subscription is required.

  • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I mean to be fair, Spotify as a company clearly would rather give millions to right-wing shitheads than ~anything else.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is absurdly difficult if you want to actually pay for individual mp3s. It’s like they want you to pirate

    • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I still buy CDs and rip them. All the music I want on my phone ready to play from headphones or the car

      • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I just bought a CD player a few weeks ago. It’s not very good (it’s a combination CD player/alarm clock, and the speakers are crap) but it’s nice being able to just put a disc in and press “play” instead of booting up one of my game consoles or plugging in my USB optical drive. I’ve started hitting up second-hand stores for CDs to play with it.

        • wieson@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think Spotify is 12€ p month. Let’s say 10€. A new album costs about 10€ digital or 15-20€ as a CD.

          So you could buy a new album every month and build up a catalogue.

          I buy them used for about 2,50€ an album.

          • lud@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I don’t always want an album though. Sometimes I just like one song on an album.

            Spotify is just so convenient. I have over 5000 liked songs on there.

            • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              I just download from youtube with yt-dlp or using blackhole app to import spotify playlist or using some telegram bot to download songs from spptify links.

              Convenience is because you have been using it and made your liked playlist there. I download the songs I like and play it locally because that is even more convenient to turn of mobile data or put airplane mode on and play song with much longer battery life and no other app notifications. Also you can play it on any device with the added benefit of not getting tracked and getting advertisements

              • lud@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                You can also have offline mode on Spotify, my desktop has downloaded all 5000+ songs.

                Also yt-dlp is just piracy with extra steps. Might as well pirate the music to get it in good quality.

                • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  Offline mode on spotify is local media with extra steps. Offline mode is premium only. Also you still get tracked with the proprietary app. Spotify songs cannot be played in your favourite music player, device or whatever. I can copy some songs into sdcard to play it on an old speaker set.

                  Pirated music gets more convenient than what you paid for. Moreover, restricting saving and sharing media is kinda dumb and does not actually hurt artists or their revenue

        • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, I love streaming for music. About $10 a month and I get seemingly every song I’ve ever looked up. Streaming video has a lot of problems with fragmentation, but music doesn’t seem to have nearly as bad of an issue. I use YTM and have never not found what I wanted to listen to. $10 is like the price of a single CD (or was – it’s been well over a decade since I’ve even looked at the price of CDs).

          I’ve also listened to a lot of full albums on streaming (it’s often what I do when I discover a new artist that I like) and there’s never an album that I’d want to buy every song from. My music tastes are also very diverse. My liked songs are full of tons of songs that may as well be one hit wonders to me. That doesn’t translate well to buying CDs.

    • Acters@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I stopped listening to music, radio or nothing. I’m tired of being constantly stimulated, I desire peace and quiet

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I actually really love the idea of spotify, but their execution is fucked. Joe Rogan’s getting billions and musicians who make up the overwhelming majority of the plays get microscopic returns per play. That’s bullshit.