(Full disclosure: posted originally on a different thread)

The story of the Emperor's New Clothes comes to mind when I think about Spotify this point in time. If your not familiar, "wiki" it. It doesn't seem like they're listening or recognize that they're exposed.
There's an article coming out almost every day mentioning that they've missed their commitment to bring Hifi to their audience. Hifi at this point is the minimum daily requirement. Some reviewers are speculating that they're holding back because their competition is offering the feature at no cost. But they are wrong. They are offering superior quality to what Spotify was proposing. Very astute move, Apple, Amazon. Other services like Tidal and Deezer lowered their prices and even offered a free tier. Spotify got caught off guard.
Personally, I believe if Spotify offered their Hifi tier at an additional cost some of those who are exiting the service would probably come back. Personally, it's going to be hard for me to return. Unfortunately, have seen what "real clothes" look like.
For the last few months, I've been giving consideration to upgrading my equipment because it seems like my speakers weren't cutting it with Spotify. I have two 5.1 home theaters setups in my house (one's on my desk) and I was looking at the prospect of replacing 9 of the speakers. Not cheap. Because Spotify was talking about Hifi and delaying, out of curiosity I auditioned Qobuz, Apple Music, Amazon Unlimited, and Deezer.
I almost fell out of my chair. I was blown away because I realized then I didn't need new equipment. I needed to feed my systems good quality streaming. Furthermore, I can most definitely hear the improvement when I go from CD quality to high res streaming. On top of that other services are offering offer Dolby Atmos Music, Spatial Audio, and other things that aren't even being talked about by Spotify. CD quality is now the minimum requirement. They haven't even shown that they're going to release that anytime soon. That's sad. Upsetting your customers is not a business strategy.
Some reviewers think Spotify may table releasing Hifi for other things. If so they may have "jumped the shark". I think the erosion of their base will accelerate. If they do this I don't think next year is going to be a very happy year for them. In some reviewer's eyes they were barely holding on to their frontrunner status. I suspect that's going to change.
I was rooting for them because I liked them very much. But at this point, I don't have a lot of faith in them. I hope they get this right because they've done so many things right. But if they get these next moves wrong they're going to look like Frankenstein-ish amalgam of Facebook with the long term success of Pandora. My $0.02...