I just buy the music I want from bandcamp or the band. I can organize and rip whatever and keep it backed up incredibly simply.
Then I put it on whatever device I want to use. Do you remember album/tape/CD collections. It’s like that but digital. The tech gives us all so much more control, it seems a shame to stream from a source like Spotify. Just stream your stuff to yourself, or put it on a tiny piece of silicon.
You can use Spotify like the radio I guess. A really creepy, ultra-payola-driven radio. Why not own some digital media, though? Like pay some artists directly and listen to their content digitally.
Who the fuck really needs Spotify to distribute their content? Maybe shitbags that NEED a corporate entertainment structure to survive. Fuck em.
Spotify isn’t genius. They just created a cultural choke point and they are gonna milk it like a starving baby cow. Having the investment and cooperation of the big labels allows and maintains this lucrative exploitation of creative labor.
Edit: There’s an episode of the Nerdist when some jerk from Linking park was on. He talked about getting royally fucked by the label they were on. That terrible band could not have been drilled into the culture without major label support and payola. They deserve nothing because they are a sacchrine confection of the corporate music industry. They are a golem of mass-market, general-purpose angst. They only positive thing from linking park was the singers suicide.