For music, to avoid this with record companies, I use a youtube downloader to rip songs from youtube then go to shows or buy shirts. Admittedly probably harder with movies or games, though.

This is ridiculous. Spotify has been effectively doing dumping as an economic policy, and now that they have a sizeable portion of the market share, they’re turning to enshittification to make a profit. I see nothing defensible in that. The fact that they can’t turn a profit means that they’re trying to drive out competitors with less VC money.

We as consumers are not obligated to ensure healthy profit margins for random megacorps, and especially not ones engaged in anti-competitive behaviour, and it’s embarrassing to defend that. I’ve never used Spotify and I never will, but the idea that they lose money on every user tempts me. I second the other guy in the comments: If it isn’t economically viable, it shouldn’t exist. It’s just wannabe monopolism otherwise

I switched to Thunderbird because of that bullshit. It’s getting worse. I’ll be looking for a good Linux distro for my next laptop.

Thanks for the suggestion! It does ask for your password, so are you sure it’s 100% secure? I tried it out, but it seems like it only copied something like half my subscribed communities, but better than nothing.