I think you underestimate the annoyance and frustration users feel when content disappears from their library. This is especially noticeable in playlists: when half of your favorite workout playlist suddenly disappears, it's not something you'll ignore easily.

People pay Spotify a monthly subscription for the convenience of being able to listen to the music of their choosing, at the time and place of their choosing. Anything that jeopardizes that convenience is going to be a problem.

It’s already happening, and it’s less of a problem than I thought it would be. Some of my playlists are 200+ tracks. A few songs go missing from time to time. I can never remember which tracks have gone, I just know something’s missing as the flow from song to song is off.

It’s extremely irritating, but not enough to make me go elsewhere as I can’t see any other service not having the same problem.

In case you’re not aware, there’s a setting to show unavailable tracks greyed out in your playlist, so at least you can tell which ones are missing.

Best I can tell, this feature is only applicable if the track is not available in the region you're in, and/or for tracks that are 'local music' that haven't been syncned to the device you're playing on.

If a song is removed from Spotify entirely, it just disappears from the playlist.

I'd love to be proven wrong, however, and start to see all the tracks that have disappeared in the past!

Where is that setting on iOS?

Yeah, it's already happening, that's why I brought it up. Right now it's not a huge problem, because it doesn't happen too often or on a large scale. Like you said, it's usually a couple of songs in a larger playlist.

Now, imagine the scenario comparable to what @bogomipz said above: "no Beatles, Pink Floyd, No Motown, No AC/DC". I'm betting all of us would be a lot more frustrated and irritated than we are right now. Maybe you won't do anything about it. Maybe I won't, either. But it sounds plausible that a lot of people will, whether they switch to a different service, come up with a solution of their own or simply revert to piracy.

I’m curious. Do a lot of people actually use a single music streaming platform? As an avid music lover, I get my new doses from various services. Spotify is the only one that I pay for. I mainly use it to discover the latest mainstream stuff from genres I don’t typically listen to. But the Beatles? Come on, why isn’t that saved in your hard drive somewhere?

Because it’s included in my Spotify subscription. Why would I pay ~200 dollars to “own” all the Beatles albums when music ownership is basically worthless?

Why would I save music on my hard drive when I have music streaming services?

I don't think most people are avid music lovers, and many people probably don't even use a computer for music at all, just their smartphone.

I don't think they would switch to another service, because another service is likely to suffer from the same problems of rotating availability. The only service I know of that doesn't suffer from that is piracy, which I don't think people will go back to on any significant scale.

Absolutely agree with your point. Happened to me a couple of times when the music just disappeared and I could not really understand the reason. Good, I am paying for a student (4.99 instead 9.99 per month), but it's still money and I expect the promised services to be fulfilled.

Indeed. Since the rise of ClearChannel in the '80's, the industry has been reducing the variety of popular music down to the chords, and repeats trite elements like the 'millennial whoop"*, as far as they can. Content for them is very much a simple commodity. The number of really successful songwriters is tiny.

For those interested in this one, small-scale phenomenon: https://qz.com/767812/millennial-whoop/

Most people listen to top 40 music and artists, and not much else.

Most people on Spotify don't make their own playlists at all, and just rely on the ones that Spotify supplies in the Browse tab, or listen to albums.

From a quick scan of the friend activity pane, if Spotify only had music from the past 5 years, 80% of my friends would still be able to listen to their music.

People complaining about gaps in their library are a definite minority.

Indeed. 99% of Spotify users that I know, prefer to play Spotify playlists instead of listen their own playlist...

There are so many people that listen to their ONE favorite artist all the time...I don't think that music is as fungible as you think.

If this were true, Bandcamp and Soundcloud would be killing it.

Spotify's catalog is so spotty that it is borderline useless for me. Most small indie labels still do not publish to Spotify

If you are the kind of person that will sometimes strongly desire to listen to only one song/style/artist, and that desire is so strong that nothing else satisfies it, then Spotify not having your track can be a big deal.

If I can't build a decent playlist because Spotify's lack of coverage, that's going to be a big deal to me.

The mainstream is not sensitive to nor do they care about the logistics of music distribution. I wish there was a way for Spotify to ignore these bullshit distribution deals because the only people who care about them are megalabels and their A&R reps. I don't know of a single artist making bank off streaming...

Spotify is mass market music platform, it's not meant to be an indie publishing platform, and it doesn't even make economic sense for indie artists to publish on Spotify.

It's like complaining about the lack of techno (especially remixes) on Spotify, that's what Beatport is for.

What does Spotify not fitting your niche case have to do with its mass-market appeal?

I don't know what music you listen to but i have a pretty broad and eclectic taste and still find Spotify to be amazing for discovery.

I have never been happy with Spotify/Pandora as discovery system. Nothing beats an hourlong mp3+tracklist with real DJs pushing real buttons :/