Technology

The problem (or at least mine) is not the concept of music streaming subscriptions but with Spotify in particular because the alternatives are in fact better in multiple ways.

Most alternatives offer lossless audio for the same price for example. On top of that, Spotify reportedly pays artist second to worst, only surpassing Amazon Music (and is still not profitable).

Besides that (although that’s opinion), their app hasn’t improved in a very long time either. Instead of building solid library management (which they had at dome point but removed) they add an overt focus on playlists and algorithm based recommendations and they make it annoyingly difficult to add titles that aren’t on the service to your library. Also, the app still does not offer a light mode.

And, since you‘ve mentioned Apple‘s shit service: They did a 180 and are currently offering what is in my opinion the best package for people who are serious about listening to music: Great organized app that still offers great algorithms and hand curated playlists and recommendations if you want to use them, however they’re not the focus, your library is. Great audio quality with most of the music being lossless and lots even hires lossless. By now they have even (almost) caught up with apps on non Apple devices: Android, PlayStation, XBox, Roku, webOS, Samsung TV, web an probably a few more. Since the last update they’ve even finally added the last feature most other services had that they didn’t: collaborative playlists.

Spotify has a few pluses, still, like even better support for more devices (better windows client, native linux client, androidTV client) and the Spotify device control feature is rather cool. However, I‘d argue the alternatives are definitely not (all) worse. I haven’t even mentioned deezer, which also has a very decent app and YouTube music, which is amazing but comes free with YouTube Premium and the ability to add any YouTube video to your playlists if what you‘re looking for isn’t in its library.

While I don’t wish for Spotify to go bankrupt and disappear, I‘d still recommend taking a look at the market once in a while. Switching services is relatively easy and the competition isn’t sleeping.