I am trying the following services the next few months: Tidal, deezer, qobuz and pirating

yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-quality 3 --audio-format ogg

You can probably get a pirate hat online for a few bucks. And there are plenty of discoverability systems not based on integration with a subscription service.

Unfortunately most of the major players are involved in some sort of evilness as far as I am aware. Spotify/Google/Apple are all pretty unethical companies. Personally, I have made the decision to cut out the middle man and sail the seven seas while also supporting the artists I like by being a vinyl wanker and going to gigs.

As for streaming services (I am very happy to be corrected here because I am not certain) AFAIK both tidal and qobuz are good alternatives. Qobuz is based in France so your data will be safer but Tidal is a bit cheaper.

Soundcloud lets you play any song you want at any time, even on the free tier, and when you ask it to play a playlist, it only plays songs on the playlist.

You can have recommendations from an algorithm if you choose, but it's encouraged rather than enforced.

There are a lot more independent artists on it, and fewer big labels, or at least it feels that way because it doesn't seem to prioritise big labels over some person I've never heard of.

Spotify has an annoy-users-until-they-pay model. If you deliberately piss me off, you're not getting any of my money. Soundcloud just has ads.