A feature request to prefer explicit over clean and vice versa when possible has been on their request board for nearly two of those. For a long time it was difficult to even select or search for the version you wanted.
They ignore their customers, break their UI, fail to optimize for conversions to paying customers, how could they expect to be profitable?
So far I've been extremely happy with Tidal. It's gotten quickly better and I'm excited to see how the artist based model plays out. It's odd to me that the author laments the plight of the starving and ignored artists while calling Tidal a joke. Their stated mission is to improve the landscape for artists, they have a real opportunity to build on top of and change the indie scene and I think they'll take it.
"Let's user test it first."
...
"All right, results show everyone missed the numbers."
"Oh, ok. We'll flash them onscreen momentarily then which should make everyone happy."
"Ship it!"
You could always use libspotify.
I just want to fix the details about the Spotify client that I don't like. It's all js/css so why the fuck can't I? I can do anything I want with Atom, why not Spotify?
"OK guys — it's been more than a couple of months since we scrapped features that people like. Let's spin the wheel of misfortune, shall we?"
"Maybe we should hold more talks about how awesome our processes are, and how agile we've become — all the while letting our core product languish and not listen to our customers needs."
"Hey, could you take a look at this? I've spent all weekend creating a better version of the playlist-view. It uses twice the amount of padding from before. Maybe this encourages more in-depth listening, since you have to scroll a lot more. What do you think? It's nice, right? Perhaps we should also require the users to click and drag the scrollbar?"
(I love Spotify though. I just wish they put a little more effort into their applications — or at least made it customisable so I could make semi-permanent fixes myself. The only meaningful feature they have shipped that has impacted me the last two years is detection of duplicates in a playlist. Like seriously, what are you guys doing?)