clerkdecourse I am not seeing such a requirement. Visiting with a blank browser profile without pop-up, ad or tracker blockers, I do get a consent pop-up, and it is definitely less than ideal in that it requires clicking through to "Learn More" before offering the choice to "Disagree to all", but at least consent is not required as far as I can tell.
I have never used Spotify myself, although I do use Qobuz which along with Tidal and Deezer seem reasonable for mainstream music streaming and where the payout is very much better than that of Spotify, as well as Bandcamp (even though that is owned by what Wikipedia calls "the largest music licensing platform in the world"; I make an effort to use Bandcamp Fridays to the artists' advantage) and 7digital for purchases; though 7digital recently changed their payment processing so as to require going through Paypal, with no alternative payment processors offered. I also buy lots of CDs both new (yes they are still available!) and used, and copy the music onto the computer for convenient listening as well as preservation (CDs do age and eventually lose data integrity; I have had a few old ones that have shown significant numbers of read errors). From there I copy to elsewhere and transcode from my default of FLAC (usually to MP3 for things that for various reasons cannot handle FLAC) on an as-needed basis.
