I know it's very spotty (pun not intended), it doesn't have some music I like and I wouldn't call my tastes particularly esoteric. However, for enough people in English-speaking countries it has enough even outside of pop that anything that's missing is a long-tail situation.

Spotify and Netflix are the two things where when I say I don't have an account for them I generally expect a weird look.

I've cancelled my netflix account a few times; and I might be about to do it again.

It lost its enormously deep catalog some years ago, where I found oddities like (untitled), and the recent spat of original content has been disappointing.

Moreover, it's lost its appeal as a safe platform for kids' content; given that while I can limit my children's access to certain shows with a passcode, _I cannot hide_ the shows! Only someone without kids would design a catalog with parental locking that cannot filter locked content.

My wife finds the aggrandizing of violence and cruelty found in American television to be distasteful, and I find it boring; and so we often find ourselves looking elsewhere after loading Netflix and finding mostly violent content.

We do enjoy their cooking shows; but we're having better luck with Disney+ and Curiousity Stream for general family entertainment.

>I've cancelled my netflix account a few times; and I might be about to do it again.

At what point is it "cancelling" instead of "renewing your subscription"?

Renewing is automatic and without service interruption; cancelling involves a service interruption. I'll go months at a time without Netflix available in our house because there's nothing desirable to watch on it.

There is enough music on Spotify outside pop to not bother with music that is not on Spotify.

Disagree. No idea if it's there now or not, I haven't checked in years but they had no Alien Sex Fiend, Damned or Jesus and Mary Chain. Oh and no Soft Cell either although that might have been because of a song called Sex Dwarf. This was formative stuff for me and I still listen to it pretty regularly.

Maybe its because you haven't checked in years, because most of those artists you listed are there. I'm not sure about Damned, did you mean The Damned? If so, every artist you claimed as missing is available.

Alien Sex Fiend: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WVnBgqJfj9Iw9gpBed9fJ?si=zd...

The Jesus and Mary Chain https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rjlerN21ygkIhmUv55irs?si=-y...

The Damned: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VeL8VhaMjHTPc5uovFl3h?si=q9...

Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/artist/6aq8T2RcspxVOGgMrTzjWc?si=va...

Sex Dwarf - Original by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/7A5qOucdF0zyXo2x7vAoCO?si=nno...

Sex Dwarf - Remastered by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/6TaHShmHB955lxcJ92V0gs?si=cXo...

Sex Dwarf - Original, Deluxe Edition by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/7bt41cmNUkjCP8CQekIwBO?si=0tl...

Things have indeed progressed. Thanks for going to the trouble.

In my case, it's very few songs I like that are not on Spotify. I remember Neil Young going away and then going back on Spotify . I simply didn't listen to his songs for some time because while I like his art, it wasn't worth the effort to download his songs or subscribe to his expensive higher quality music streaming service.

Absolutely, and I don't pretend to believe that every single recording someone might want to listen to isn't covered by traditional music streaming services. However, it seems to me and many of my immediate peers like most people are pretty well serviced by services like Spotify. Even several of the musicians who comes in to play at a local pizzeria I frequent self publish on Spotify, and I'd probably only end up buying half of their CDs. ;)

While Spotify's breadth is impressive, it's all only as permanent as are licensing deals. I've had a bunch of things disappear from playlists.