True believers in Spotify's Car Thing are furious it's getting bricked

• Spotify is bricking Car Thing, its first hardware launch.
• The company isn't offering trade-ins on the $80 devices and told users to trash them.

Spotify is scrapping its first foray into hardware — and early adopters are feeling left in the lurch.

That's because on December 9, the streaming platform's Car Thing is being discontinued and getting bricked.

Car Thing is a small touchscreen device targeting owners of older cars without infotainment systems. It connects to smartphones and car speakers, enabling drivers to control Spotify with voice recognition and buttons. It launched in 2021 for $80.

Now the device will be turned off completely and stop working, Spotify announced.

"This decision wasn't made lightly," Spotify wrote on its website, adding it was discontinuing Car Thing to "streamline our product offerings."

Spotify isn't offering trade-in options and told users to reset their devices to factory settings before throwing them in the trash in accordance with their local electronic-waste guidelines.

On Spotify's community forum and Reddit, Car Thing owners were not happy.

Many wondered why the devices couldn't stay operational even if production had ceased, and some threatened to switch to rival subscription services.

"If you don't make this right and my car thing stops working in December we will be switching to apple music," one user wrote on the Spotify forum, garnering 539 responses.

Some asked for compensation, and others requested Spotify unlock the devices so developers could create their own software.

"Feels like we're being punished for supporting them," one Redditor wrote. "Dissuades me from buying anything Spotify puts out in the future."

A Spotify spokesperson didn't answer whether the streaming service planned to reimburse Car Thing owners.

"The goal of our Car Thing exploration in the US was to learn more about how people listen in the car," a spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement. "In July 2022, we announced we'd stop further production, and now it's time to say goodbye to the devices entirely."