I rage-quit Spotify some years ago for similar UX reasons, and switched to YouTube Music. I can warmly recommend it, and that's from a Google-hater. Truly, it s

I rage-quit Spotify some years ago for similar UX reasons, and switched to YouTube Music. I can warmly recommend it, and that's from a Google-hater. Truly, it seems like all 3 competent UX designers at Google were put to work on YT Music. There's no pushy podcast crap, recommendations are rather decent, "play album" button actually plays the album, playlists and queues work as you might expect, playback is gapless by default, you can turn off autoplay (yeah, really, a Google product lets you switch off the AI), it's all very nice. Just, all the stuff that should be table stakes is actually right. And, of course, they got the biggest catalog of all because any YouTube video that the AI thinks might be a music video is indexed too! Lots of weird indie bootleg shit in my playlists. It's not perfect by a long shot, but oh boy is it better than Spotify. Note: I'm really only talking about UX here. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that YT Music pays artists like 10x less than other apps do, and the artists put up with it because YouTube (not YT Music) brings exposure and Google made it a package deal. Not sure how true this is btw.