I don't have to listen to it consecutively. But I listen while driving, while studying, while working. I certainly fall in the category of indie fan listening to a lot of music from catalog artists, not hit makers.
My main gripe is that because of this stupid model, it pushes a lot of the artists I would listen to away from spotify because it doesn't connect them directly with the revenue stream they should be getting from their true fans. Artists have a hard time surviving without that.
But there's a separate listener: the explorer. The value of any given track is exceedingly low, but these are the people you depend on for the discovery function. Personally, I prefer that role, but the cost before Spotify was exorbitant unless you were an industry insider.
If you think on principles, Spotify should in the long term aim for maximum customer satisfaction. This means optimizing the satisfaction per customer instead of per music play, seems to be currently done. By concentrating money on bands each user listens to each of those bands (getting more money) should theoretically improve in quality (and give Spotify more attention), increasing overall user satisfaction. It's a simple reasoning.