On the other hand, Spotify spent a lot of money trying to lock up and monetize what used to be one of the most free and democratic mediums in existence (podcasts), have been hostile towards third party devs and manufacturers by way of deprecation of libspotify and refusing to enable interop with devices that don’t implement Spotify Connect, and have been endlessly pushy towards their customers with their endeavors.

With that in mind it’s difficult to feel too much sympathy for them. It’s too bad that more open streaming services (which ironically includes Apple Music, which allows third party clients) haven’t usurped it yet.

Spotify’s biggest purpose is to serve as negotiating leverage for the 3 big music licensing businesses against Apple/Alphabet/Amazon.

As far as I can tell, their only hope is if copyright terms are drastically shortened, so a good portion of the music they need to stream is public domain.

I bet they would have made more money by offering subscriptions on iOS despite the fee because of the reduced friction for consumers. Spotify, epic, et al just want to have their cake and eat it too.