> It was a pain > all worth the hassle for the teenage me

My perspective is this: If I accepted (like the OP) how "difficult" it was to set up a system for discovering music before, why wouldn't I accept a little "hassle" with Spotify? because I'm paying? No, personally, I'm paying for the music DB, not the app. dashboard? Ignore. Official playlists? Ignore. How difficult is that? It takes way less effort to get around Spotify "pain points" than any prior system, and none of these offer what Spotify does best: enriched API access to "unlimited" music.

But of course, we do need to complain to make things better (especially for the artists).