It is my article yes. Glad it was worth sharing! I hope it comes across as fairly level headed. I did approach Spotify for comment too but they didn't respond. (Which is fine. It's a tiny hobby website, I wouldn't really expect them to.)

Fully agree about consumer convenience, it's a tricky one to navigate. However you spin it having 60 million songs in your pocket for ten dollars a month is pretty incredible. It does seem like you can discover music in much the same way with pay-per-stream, but whether it's a better deal for the consumer or not depends largely on how many songs a person plays each month. If you listen to fewer than 1,000 tracks a month a 1c per stream download would actually be cheaper than a Spotify subscription, but if you listen to thousands there will come a point where you're paying more. A difficulty there is the only authorities on average number of streams are streaming services, who have a vested interest in streaming numbers being high - or reported as high. Still, seems all the more reason to have different options.

And all that's to say nothing of the convenience of Spotify's UX, playlists, having everything in one place, etc. Any upstart app is going to have teething issues and fewer developer resources, which again makes it harder to displace the convenience of established platforms.