Fantastic news. That's one big step towards making Spotify an alternative I can be genuinely happy using.
Spotify has been a plague to the music scene in many ways, just like illegal downloading. The reality is, if you're not Billie Eilish or Sia, putting your music on Spotify is often done begrudgingly and with the knowledge that you're throwing money away. With the human malware destroying the gigging scene globally, bands have been hit some of the worst in recent years. Their income and passion has been shot to bits.
But in spite of that, Spotify has been game-changing for me. I've found so much amazing music through it, and it's now my primary app for listening. The sound quality sucks. The app is extremely limited when I compare it to the custom versions of MusicBee and Winamp I've used over the years; even the shuffle function is terrible because it's not random. It's buggy. Bands don't see enough revenue from it. And there's more.
If someone came along and offered the same music variety, higher quality audio (it doesn't have to be FLAC and it doesn't have even have to CD quality), an app that's not built for simpletons, and supports the artists fairly, I will 100% jump ship even if it costs way, way more. But that doesn't exist. No one has come forward with that yet. So I'm left with two choices: One, miss out on tons of amazing music because I cannot afford to buy it all on CDs or MP3s. Two, continue listening to inferior quality audio of all the music I love dearly in a convenient but lacking package for dirt cheap.
If Spotify made a few improvements, even at a higher price, I'd pay it.