FWIW I went through a phase of this (feeling like streaming services were full of low grade stuff) until one day when basically nobody seemed to understand me except Amazon Music, which has an almost eerie recommendation mechanism that I think people don’t talk about much because the rest of the app is so meh.

In one single afternoon Amazon Music served up loads of niche old favourites I had not thought to search for, introduced me to a couple of artists I would not have known existed otherwise, and probably rescued my failing love of music.

I now play a game with it and pick somewhat diametrically opposed aspects of my music tastes in quick succession— Superorganism, Cardiacs, Gavin Bryars, Nanci Griffith, Vivaldi, Anouskha Shankar, say — and then see what it comes up with. Invariably one of the recommendations will be something I already adore and one will change my life.

I stumbled into the Chris Thile multiverse this way, for instance.

Spotify is full of AI slop trying to pass as artists. That’s garbage

Also, the company has a pretty terrible leadership: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-...