At the end of the day, Spotify's north-star metric is average dollars of cost per minute of audio consumed; and to get that metric as low as possible. That's why they push podcasts so hard (and why they aren't in a separate app); Premium subscribers barely noticed when they still get ads in podcasts, beautiful double-dipping Spotify! It's why they want to get big into audiobooks; they're going to be a keystone in their justification for an even higher $20+/mo subscription.

Netflix was well on the same course; but instead made what was absolutely not an obvious pivot at the time, to just become a studio like those dozen other guys. In retrospect, it was a genius move because their access to fine-grained data on what their users watch became a differentiating factor to feed back into what the studio greenlights. But, it would have been the right move even if they didn't capitalize on that data, because there genuinely is no business to be built being a middle-man who has to pay for content. Spotify knows this, but they don't have the same escape hatch Netflix had; but they're tearing their app and users apart trying to find one.