I think the era of Spotify dominance and music availability is coming to an end. Not sure what the next stage is going to look like - but I personally just canceled my subscription after over a decade of using Spotify exclusively. There is a lot of music that has never been available on Spotify, plus some music is disappearing due to artists and labels realizing they are not making any money from Spotify streaming. Plus no lossless, plus the relentless upsell of podcasts and now audio books.

I would be fine subscribing to a specialized streaming music service, or two.

I'm super happy with my Spotify subscription. Sure, maybe 5% of the things I want are missing, but 95% is pretty good.

I left for 2 reasons:

1. Their recommendations became unbearable. I love discovering music but Spotify is not the right service for that anymore. Daily playlists are just several of my favorite artists shuffled. Genre playlists are just several of my favorite artists shuffled. Track radio is just several of my favorite artists shuffled. “Best of techno” playlist? Floating Points and Four Tet - both artists I listen to a lot, but they are not techno, and are not “best techno” - a genre that spans decades.

I don’t know if they overfitted their models and at this point I don’t care.

2. I am fed up with the podcast and audio book push. Not interested in either, don’t want to see it anywhere.

So you didn't primarily leave for the lack of catalog coverage. Ok.

I never said I did. Spotify doesn’t have some of my favorite music but I have it in either lossless format or on vinyl.

There is a ton of stuff not on Spotify. It might align well with your tastes, but they are subject to licensing issues. I’m not even talking about live versions or sessions, but bog-standard albums.

But if they are not on spotify then where are they? I don't know anyone who buys CDs these days and torrent sites definitely don't pay artists anything.

Sometimes directly from the publisher. Anecdotal example, I like an album by a band Tap Tap. They were short lived and based out of the UK. US Spotify does not have that album, but I can purchase it from their publisher at the time (ironically named Stolen Records).

But how many people buy directly from publishers? Maybe some hardcore fans - but who else?

And another thing - I've discovered lots of artists through Spotify and Youtube. If they weren't there - I would't even know that they existed.

>We need the same, but for movies and tv shows.

And audiobooks! Audible is stupid.

How is it stupid? I haven't paid attention, but I thought audiobooks were now on a Spotify-like system?

If only! Audible is like Amazon Prime Videos - selection of free access books and then, depending on how much you pay per month, one or two "premium" books. Of course most of the books you really want to listen to are "premium." So essentially, you get to rent one book for ~$15/month or two for ~$23/month.

IOW - stupid.