This is basically an admission that their original ad revenue model didn’t work.
When half the ads seem to be for Spotify themselves, it was clear they never had the impact they thought they would.
They probably needed to get the volume of ads up significantly to do proper targetted ads. I was always waiting for the day I seemed to get a ad suited to my listening tastes, but it never happened in 2 solid year’s listening!
I think £10 per month is far too high for something that relies on a full-time data connection.
I wont be paying. I’ll put up with the restrictions for now and see how it goes.
I’ll be using Last FM a lot more again now I think.