tinsukE

With a fine of ~$27 million, I think they’ll just pretend to be working on it, get the “good guys, complying with legislation and opening up the platform”, not do it (or at least, not in any satisfactory way), and pay the fine, if it gets applied.

Potential bias: I’m a developer at Spotify.

“Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it.”

I don’t think the company forces you to do anything. It is their business model, how they can provide copyrighted music to you and have a share of the pie too.

I’d say the very idea that Spotify is forcing you to pay with time and attention or money so you can have music conveniently streamed to your devices is a testament to the company’s success. It created this business model and fulfilled an apparently basic need to the point you think that charging for it is unfair.

But “forcing” is too much. You can always buy discs, digital downloads and so.