The ads in podcasts is why I left Spotify. Doesn't really seem like premium when the main content I want from them still has ads
Seriously considering just getting a record player so I can get rid of these middle men though. It's too much.
Do it! I started buying CDs again, and it's great. I get the best quality sound — we can argue about that another time ;) — all the music is _mine_, and after I convert it to FLAC for my walkman or iPhone (play via VLC) it's as convenient.
Like a sibling comment, I now also buy CDs and LPs of albums realeased in the pre-streaming era, depending on which format the album was made for. But I always immediately rip the CDs into FLAC because I'd forgotten how brittle they can be in terms of a slight scratch ruining one or more tracks.
And for more recent stuff that I really like, even if I hear it on Spotify, I try to buy it on Bandcamp or similar, so there's some cash going directly to the artist.
What all that doesn't solve for me is discovery, which I find is significantly better on Spotify than the Apple Music service. (Or the worse audio quality of Spotify compared to Tidal - my test album is always Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin. There's no hiding when it comes to the synth hi-hats at the beginning of Xtal.)
At this point, we need a bill in Congress to establish that "ads are ads" and that "ad-free must be ad-free".
I mean Spotify already kind of does it with JRE. It doesn't feel right that he's got his own ads despite the very lucrative deal he got, and I'm still forced to listen to him drone on about yet another generic vpn service even though I'm paying for a subscription.
Once they dial in the optimal combo of ad rate and cost to skip, personalized to each user, oh boy the money will flow.