Yeah, maybe I’ll have to re-evaluate Spotify at that point, as it does have a full catalog. Never liked their UI, but with the Sonos integration and voice control, I could live with it, I suppose. Not convinced they can survive the competition from the big boys, though.
Since it's been awhile, you really should re-visit Spotify.
Back when...I'd been thru em all. I settled in with rdio as a daily driver because they, well, just had the best UI and feature set than anyone else. Yes,
Spotify was a train wreck on the usability front and their aesthetics were downright dirty. Back then, they were totally
playlist centric on library management with practically no album oriented collection aspect at all. That was annoying & aggravating.
On the heels
(about a year prior) of rdio's demise however, Spotify overhauled their schtick and adopted a more conventional album oriented library
option. That was a big positive step forward and greatly improved their UI. While playlists are still central, you then could now view and manage your entire library "conventionally". So when rdio went tits up and I was a refugee, I chose Spotify. At the time it was mainly because there were third party library import tools to move my hefty rdio show directly into Spotify. It was awkward at first having everything dumped into 2 giant (11,000 tracks) playlists, but it worked and salvaged all my hoarded shite. It was damage control time with slim of none other option than staring from scratch. Sans rdio...I toughed it out and made do.
Moving forward, Spotify has continued to improve...since "when". They regularly massage and tweak their UI and feature set such that, frankly, on whole, no other service can touch today. Collection centric when you want/need it, much improved static mobile menu nav, personalized Discover Weekly/Daily sets, New Release Radar sets that are tuned based upon
your entire library, Shazam/SoundHound integration, Private collaborative
(friends/family) playlists, gappless playback, an overwhelming amount of fun/functional 3rd party API plugins. And gratis of their market share muscle...they've damn near ubiquitous native integration across the gamut of third party hardware folks.
While I'm still not a fan of their UI's
(2006 is calling) "dark theme", meh..that's a livable and minor aesthetic caveat considering what the rivals offer in terms of overall utility and innovation. Speaking of innovation and "raising the bar" in this space, here's a difference I've come to realize. While I'm sure Amazon, Google, Apple, have a squad of engineers that "stay busy" with UI and algorithm tweaks, there's just something different with Spotify in this universe. They just seem more focused, active, and open in that realm. Despite their relative huge size, they remind me of rdio engineering-wise as they frequently conjure shit up and throw it on the wall. Meanwhile it appears their competitors simply hang out to see what sticks and copy it; but not until it becomes "a thing". I dunno, Spotify just seems to be more "scrappy" and WTF wish-list accommodating in this space presently.
So yeah, you owe yourself a favor. Give it another whirl. Feed it
(upload/match) as full as you can with your existing library to seed their system, play around, and let stew awhile. I'm confident it will abide.
Disclaimer: I've mentioned this before but I feel it's due again. Thanks to a few industry connections and affiliations, I'm fortunate to have had and maintain comp streaming accounts with Google, Pandora, Tidal, and Spotify (Premium). Earliest dating back to 2007. During which time, despite having "free" access to the aforementioned, I paid out of pocket for rdio....because it was that much better than my comp'd alternatives. IMO rdio was the best and most ground-breaking service at the time in on-demand streaming. At the time, Spotify suked ballz in both form and function (at least for what I wanted from a streaming service). I only played with it occasionally to keep abreast of all the players on the field.
Goes without saying that things have changed and morphed greatly the past 5 years on this landscape . While Spotify isn't the holy grail, it sure as hell ain't yesterday's Spotify. While I have other major player free options, my saddle is strapped to Spotify as the most satisfying and robust horse.
To bring this semi-circle jerk back to Pandora/rdio --
-Pandora ****ed up bigtime.