Do you know any single person who travels outside of 4G coverage?
Because the $5/$10 mo doesn't do much for you in a National or State Park in the US two hours away from a major city.
So, if I have a playlist in Spotify to listen to on long hikes, I will find out that I can't play it when I get to the hike (unless I use Spotify all the time, or think about this crap in advance).
Thanks, I understand that I can jump through hoops to make it work.
But an MP3 works 100% of the time, every time, without any of that crap, or thinking; I copy the file to a memory file once, and that's it. No passwords, no accounts, no internet, no logging in.
Many bands I listen to have Bandcamp/SoundCloud accounts, which offer DRM-free audio downloads. I use that when it's an option - and it pays the artists orders of magnitude more than Spotify ever will.
If I have a CD from a local show, I will rip that.
Otherwise, I am not going to make my life more inconvenient for the sake of a major artist getting $0.000002 from my Spotify subscription. I'll pirate their work.
Yes, that is the premise of this line of conversation, that you're using a music service all the time.
(Also it might be able to check in even when you're not actively using it.)
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/add-music-and-listen-...
The problem isn't lack of data service on ships. It's things stopping to work offline.