I used to have Spotify Premium, on the family plan. My wife almost never used it, but she had it. I put it on her phone, made her an account, added her to the family plan. So she had access. She just didn’t use it.

I left because, at the time, Spotify was not engaging with the Japanese market. About 10-15 years ago, the big western record labels in the US, UK, et al stopped signing new rock bands, stopped promoting rock music, and rock radio was quickly dying. Meanwhile, Japan was taking rock music and running with it, and a lot of the popular acts were singing in English, or mixed Japanese and English. And Spotify was not biting. You could get a couple Japanese bands on Spotify, if they were huge, but most of them? Not up there. I wanted rock music. Culturally, rock music moved east, and Spotify mostly refused to follow.

Apple Music had a six month free trial (this was… 2018?) and we dropped Spotify to Free and went with that. Worst case scenario, I figured, I’d just get six months of free music and go back. Now for background, I’m an iPhone guy, my wife uses Android. Even with an iPhone, I was using Spotify, because, at the time, it was just what you did. No one cared about Apple Music, it was a cash grab, it wasn’t taken seriously. But I checked it out, I imported all my playlists, it had everything I wanted… and it had all the Japanese stuff I was looking for. We never paid for Spotify again.

Best of all, my wife actually uses Apple Music. Apple Music is fine on an Android phone. She got a new Android phone at one point and was told her old one wasn’t worth anything. I took it, wiped it, and put a few apps on it. Of course I have Apple Music on it. Even on a 2019 Galaxy S10, it still runs. I’ve also got a 256GB SD card in it with a backup of all my music, so it has the streaming, and it has offline playback (via an app called Poweramp, but any offline music player would work).

I wouldn’t mess with Amazon or YouTube for music streaming. If I had to choose an alternative to Apple Music, I’d only consider one where their primary business was music, like Qobuz is a new one that looks promising, or maybe Tidal. Ironically, last I heard, Napster pays artists the most per stream, but it’s not the filesharing Napster. That app died almost 20 years ago. A streaming service (Rhapsody, I believe) just bought the name and logo.

I’m one of those guys who doesn’t need to pay for music streaming. I have a massive collection and I have room to expand it. I know how to take a CD and get the second best digital copy (the best being lossless) from it. My computers don’t have optical drives, but I have a USB-powered one that, with an adapter (USB A to USB C) works just fine on my laptop. Haven’t plugged it into the desktop yet. Ports are all in the back, it’s a pain in the knob, I’ll just use it on the laptop. I pay for music because I love music. More than movies, more than TV shows, more than books, and more than video games. I don’t see paying for streaming as a bad thing. Pay for what you love, if you can. A lot of people pay for services they don’t use. My wife insists on paying for Netflix. I never use Netflix. I think she uses it sometimes. I think it’s a waste of money. She doesn’t. So she pays for it. I pay for Crunchyroll because we both love anime, and I do it through Apple TV so everyone on our family plan can access it. I would not pay for streaming of dumbed down TV shows, but that’s just me. I pay for what I love.