Edit: started a free trial of Qobuz, it might be the winner for me.
I’ve been meaning to distance myself from Spotify for a while now but I’ve got a lot on my plate and their service has been very convenient. I’ve been paying for no ads since 2014 so I haven’t heard the ads personally but have seen multiple sources online describe them and confirm they they haven’t stopped as of today. I cancelled immediately. Not sure how many Spotify users there are on Lemmy but I just thought y’all ought to know what they’re up to. Spotify let’s you write a message saying why you’re cancelling and I was very descriptive. Hopefully they’ll back down just like Disney with Jimmy Kimmel.
No. At one point it was owned (partially? majority? don’t recall) by Jay-Z, who sold most of his stake later on to a different company that has its own problems, but as far as I know isn’t nearly as bad as Daniel Ek and all the AI generated music and “fake” artists issues plaguing Spotify.