About a year ago, maybe two years ago? Spotify started sending me feedback requests about the “Car Thing.” I was super confused about why anyone would buy something they could just use their phone for, and I finally caved and sent some feedback saying “I already have my phone, I don’t want more devices in my car. This is a bad idea.” And the requests stopped.
Guess they went through with it. Makes no sense to me. I use Spotify everyday, often for most of the day, I really have no issue with what I’m paying for, but that “Car Thing” just seemed like the most braindread venture.
I think it's selling point is supposed to be voice commands and haptic controls (actual knob and what not). The interface does look like it'd be superior to the phone (at least a non-android auto or whatever Apple's is called) though I dunno if it's $100 superior.
Yeah, when they announced this thing I saw this coming a mile away. Sucks for all the people that they scammed with it though. Unless you’re somewhat paranoid like me you probably would’ve thought it was neat, especially if you had an older car without an infotainment system.
I don’t understand the point of this device. Why not buy a replacement radio for the car instead? I bought a Pioneer one and it was a nice upgrade to my 2012 Mazda3 since I can plug in my phone to use Android Auto and get the screen to show Google Maps + pretty much any music app on my phone.
There’s plenty of 2010-2015ish cars with dogshit radios that are hard to find, expensive to get or literally impossible to find good replacements for, thanks to vehicle manufacturers killing of the DIN system.
Because buying a double DIN or even a single DIN radio can require buying a replacement bezel, disassembling your dash and often your center console as well, wiring in a steering wheel media control adapter, correctly wiring in the stereo, and having the knowledge to make adjustments when things don’t quite fit or go right.
“[just] buy a replacement radio” is not how it works at all.
Best Buy does this all for you for $80, assuming the person is in the US. I expect this is available most places for similar prices though. You can get anything from a BT only unit for $20 online to a much nicer unit with Android Auto/iOS’s thing. While the initial cost might be higher the opportunity cost of your thing being disabled is almost certainly much higher, as this thread’s existence seems to support. $150-$200 well worth it in the long run to do a head unit upgrade.
And then after I spend over $100 on a decent stereo, $50 for an adapter for my car, and the $80 to have some kid install it for me I’ll be $250 in the hole and still paying for a Spotify subscription so I can listen to music that’s not shit. Or for $100 I could buy a cheap ass tablet and shove it into my air vent.
Oh yeah, you nailed it. Clearly worked for the OP… I also didn’t put a value on said opportunity cost. Perhaps it’s greater than $250 depending on the individual. Subjective as opportunity cost can sometimes be. Not trying to ascertain or consider it is at best just short sighted, or perhaps at worst ignorant. Cheap junk, effectively rented according to the EULA, subject to the whims of the rights holders, is never the way.
I did it all by myself with no experience - wired up the wiring harness properly, installed the bezel, connected some sort of adapter so the car alert tones and steering wheel controls still work, etc. I bought the radio from Crutchfield who have lifetime phone support to assist with any issues (I didn’t need it though). I just followed the instructions they provided.
Car radios have become much more entrenched. My 13 Fusion has an external amp. Shit, my 96 Taurus did too. Plus if you have any phone, steering wheel, or other peripheral integration, you often lose those features. OP probably has integrated hvac buttons. Sometimes you can get adapters, sometimes the signals are buried in canbus lines
My 2012 Mazda3 has an external amp under the front passenger seat. I bought my Pioneer radio from Crutchfield and they included an adapter to make everything work. The amp works fine (most radios have a preamp output for this purpose), and the steering wheel controls work fine too.
My car just had a basic radio though. I guess it might be harder in newer cars with fancier radios. People that mount their phone or use things like this Spotify… thing usually have older cars/radios though. The newer ones just have Android Auto and Apple Carplay built in.
Lol why did you buy something without reading the fine print. Now suffer and keep complaining. Never buy anything that has a subscription model. If you paid $100 , that thing is yours ans you should be able to use it the way you want. Checkout YouTube Louis Rossman videos for some education.
Honestly this is such a stupid product… Just buy an Android Auto and/or Carplay device instead. They are cheaper, offer more features, and don’t force you to pay a subscription fee to utilize it.
Fuck products like this one. If you own it, it should be yours to use.
Do you have a recommendation for a good one of the Android auto things? They vary so much in price and I don’t know if paying more means it’s actually better
My wife and I use ours (I bought 2) all the time. We like the voice activation from the unit and we like the interface for seeing what’s playing better than we do our entertainment systems (we have used cars). It’s not a slam dunk but it’s good for what it does.
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.
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.
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.
No but direct downloads are all the rage. Here are my two favorite sites for free music. Every track is available in either 320k MP3, or FLAC lossless. So they’re even better than Limewire ever was:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
wrong.
you can disable automatic queuing by hitting the ‘auto-play’ switch in UP NEXT
you can queue songs by long-pressing and hitting ‘play next’ (which will put it in front of the queue) or ‘add to queue’ (which will put it in my the end
No, I’m not wrong. Option 1 does not exist on my phone. There is no switch.
And the “play next” feature also sucks. I don’t want to “play next”. I want to build a queue like literally any other music app and that isn’t what “play next” does.
Edit: I don’t see that “auto-play” switch on the web app in Safari either.
No. I’m not wrong, and I don’t appreciate you repeatedly telling me I am when you obviously have no clue what I’m looking at.
It isn’t there. I’m on Android 13 with the latest version of the app. There is no “auto-play” toggle anywhere. I’d upload screenshots to prove it but lemmy is throwing exceptions. I’ve checked every tab and settings page as well.
So I finally figured it out. this is how that toggle works:
it only appears when you manually search for a song or select a song from certain groups on the home page.
it does not appear to appear if you select a song from “listen again” or “quick picks” in which case the app forces you to listen to whatever is in their queue unless you manually clear the queue.
oh yeah, you are right-ish. it doesn’t show up if you launch a “radio”, which innately is a automatic, end-less playlist of similar music. I do agree though that this should be more visible in the UI
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