Spotify created a patent. Does that mean they will actually use it? Plenty of companies file for patents for all kinds of ideas, just to have a patent in the warchest for litigation and to hold IP.
Time to support and use alternative, free/libra, self-hosted solutions. https://funkwhale.audio is one off top of my head for Spotfiy.
Spotify (EDIT: for some people) solves the content problem for a low fee. Self hosted requires either spending lots of money, or in lots of regions something that probably qualifies as copyright infringement.
(EDIT: noted that this isn't universally solved, and thanks for responses pointing this out)
> Disk and USB space are cheap
Apologies for any ambiguity. When I was refering to spending lots of money, I wasn't considering the costs of self hosted infrastructure (servers, backups), but rather the cost of acquiring the media in the first place.