Spotify isn't primarily about playing music for me, it's about finding new music to play.
And Spotify's just where all of that is. The quality of the radio recommendations, the fact that there's always a playlist for every TV show soundtrack, that artists put together their own playlists, the quality and variety of playlists overall, and it's where cool people I know create and update their public playlists.
None of the other services seem to come close in terms of that. I see links to Spotify playlists all over the internet. I don't think I've ever seen a link to a YouTube Music playlist?
It's also got a lot more niche music in it. I've switched because that. Practical everyone is on YouTube(willing or not), good luck finding that one self published song from 2009 uploaded from an abandoned account on Spotify though.
Exactly. Recordings of live sets, strange/interesting post/doom/stoner metal albums, and - for better or worse - all the bootlegged stuff that Spotify doesn't have because legal disputes as user uploads.
The Spotify app started suggesting me albums it labels as "Sponsored recommendations" a few months ago and it's really put me off. Now it's hard to trust how good it is at finding new music if Spotify is admitting to deliberately excluding most of its database and prefiltering down to its sponsors.
You're right though, the rest of the things you mention do make it much tougher to decide on whether to switch and what to switch to.
Spotify isn't primarily about playing music for me, it's about finding new music to play.
And Spotify's just where all of that is. The quality of the radio recommendations, the fact that there's always a playlist for every TV show soundtrack, that artists put together their own playlists, the quality and variety of playlists overall, and it's where cool people I know create and update their public playlists.
None of the other services seem to come close in terms of that. I see links to Spotify playlists all over the internet. I don't think I've ever seen a link to a YouTube Music playlist?