alt Hacker NewsWell obviously you could just pirate it instead right? Like piracy or not, spending more money or listening to less music are not the only options. Hell you could not pirate it and just listen on youtube - that's another option.
The real cost to self-hosted is time and complexity. But there are all sorts of alternatives to simply not using Spotify anymore - not just self hosting.
Sure - but as you can see here the focus on "ditching spotify" is often ethical. You can absolutely use services that have an artist pay-rate of $0 per stream, but I don't think people typically advocate for that - and indeed this author does not seem to either (otherwise they would have no collection size issues).