Spotify has announced that it would discontinue production of its ‘Car Thing’ gadgets three years after their initial introduction. Spotify announced the Car Thing accessory in 2021, which “allows users to control Spotify through car speakers when connected to a phone by using both voice recognition and preset buttons.”
The product was no longer being manufactured, the company initially said in a 2022 financial report. With the announcement that it will “no longer be operational” after December 9, 2024, Spotify is now discontinuing the Car Thing entirely. The Car Thing should be returned to factory settings and disposed of according to “local electronic waste guidelines”; the company is allegedly not going to provide trade-in options.
Having achieved record profits of more than €1 billion in April of this year, Spotify now boasts 615 million global users since its founding in 2006. Nonetheless, the news of the brand making cost reductions and employee layoffs is followed by the profit reports. Spotify declared at the end of the previous year that it was reducing its employment by 17% in order to save money.
This came after it had already decided to fire an additional 6% of its employees at the beginning of 2023, citing the need to foster “speed.” Additionally, the platform declared that starting of April of this year, all songs with fewer than 1000 plays would be officially demonetized.
