As far as I know, this is rarely Spotify's choice; usually this is done by an artist, or more commonly their distributor, intentionally pulling their music from platforms.
As far as I know, this is rarely Spotify's choice; usually this is done by an artist, or more commonly their distributor, intentionally pulling their music from platforms.
No, Spotify as a business is not to blame here. But the concept of storing our media in a fashion which allows it to be erased or altered (e.g. in the cloud) has consequences.
For me the albums are unlistenable because I can hear that it's not e.g. Marty playing on Rust. And the songs are just slightly different in so many places, it is unexpected and unnerving to hear something one is so familiar with being suddenly altered.
I'll listen to most performances of e.g. Beethoven's 9th and enjoy and embrace the changes and differences. Likewise, I'll listen to Rust in concert with the different guitarists and drummers (and bassist now) and enjoy their interpretations of the music. But albums recorded by the original artists are in my opinion a canonical immutable piece - some remasters for sound quality may be in order (The Beatles are a great example) but those remasters aim for preserving the original art. Not so with these rerecordngs which serve only to cut royalty payments to the original guitarist and drummer with whom Dave is now in a feud, the art itself (and fans of the art) be damned.
Bait and switch is the name of the game with Spotify and Netflix. No wonder they're shoveling money into creating their mostly garbage IP they can own.