Better than ads and tracking
Even Netflix started showing pre-rolls when they were at the height of their power. If a company starts thinking of its users as captive, I expect them to do what almost every other company does in that situation.
Things are pretty fractured in online streaming right now. So hey, maybe none of the providers get to the point where they feel like they have you.
Generally, I am not sure that no-ads means no-tracking, either. Though, that could certainly be a selling point to paying for a service of any kind.
It was news to me that what I thought was a simple audio file also came with a bunch of analytics/tracking. I previously thought analytics were limited to simple events (play, pause, subscribe, finish, etc.) collected on Apple's side, but apparently not.