I know people like to shit on Spotify. But it's the reason I stopped pirating music forever ago and the reason I've paid for it for years now.

It's fairly reasonably priced at $10-11/mo. It's available on basically any phone, computer, tablet, etc. And nearly every song I could ever want to listen to is just there, seamlessly. You can even download the songs to play locally for when you don't have Internet access. I will admit there are some rare occasions where a song I want is not available there, but it's so infrequent that it doesn't at all impact my listening experience. I can also very easily discover new music by generating playlists based on a song I like.

Now look at something like Netflix. It used to be this way...priced well and had everything you could ever want to watch on it. But now everyone and their mother has their own steaming platform. It's absolutely ridiculous. It's become as expensive as cable to get the same watching experience as TV streaming sites used to be. Sure there are people who say "well I just periodically subscribe and unsubscribe to the service I want to make it cheaper". And sure, it makes it cheaper, but it sure as hell isn't convenient. I don't want to have to fuck with all that shit. So I use illegal TV/movie streaming sites instead. Or I just watch YouTube videos or use free services like Tubi and Pluto. Paid for TV streaming services absolutely suck ass nowadays.

If we started having issues with artist and production company fragmentation, I would cancel my Spotify subscription. But thankfully that hasn't happened and I hope it never does. The trend doesn't seem to be looking that way thank goodness.

If you have a reasonably priced service that has everything I could want, I pay for it. If you don't, then I pirate. Simple as that.