How could they discontinue this product due to low demand when it was released to market in February 2022 and discontinued in July 2022? It wasn't on shelves long enough to assess demand.
They were probably selling it at a loss or at least not enough profit to have it stand on its own. It only works with Spotify premium accounts so they could easily see who bought one and upgraded their account to use it. I'm guessing they just saw mostly existing premium users buying them and definitely not enough of them. There are plenty of ways to get audio off your phone and into your non-bluetooth car stereo for less money so it's more of a luxury than a necessity.
Who is this product for? Someone that is willing to spend money on a relatively expensive Bluetooth receiver and a premium account and someone that is driving an older car (possibly 8-10 years old at least) that lacks bluetooth. Frugal car owners might not have a lot of overlap with those with the disposable income for premium audio equipment and music subscriptions.
For $100, you can pretty much buy a new stereo that has Bluetooth and you don't need Spotify premium to use it. Even just $15 on Amazon will buy you a Bluetooth receiver that works with your car's aux jack or a cassette adapter. It's a neat device and definitely filled a niche for some people but it wasn't going to convert many users to a paid account.
> βThe goal of our Car Thing exploration in the U.S. was to learn more about how people listen in the car,β the company said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch.
The goal was not to build a consumer device for users who actually wanted to use the damned thing! So it apparently was never about demand to begin with, it was a learning exercise. Apparently the RLHF was so disastrous it only took 5 months to train this feature out of Spotify's business plan.
