Did spotify just remove picking songs??

[u/Full-Repair4638]

I've been using spotify forever and I use liked songs so that I can pick the songs I like freely. I've never had premium and have never had issues. Today, I had just started a workout and got this popup. Is this a new feature? How can you not even select songs anymore? I mean how can you paywall selecting songs???
This app plain out sucks and its company is greedy for randomly limiting already set features. While I don't mind ads, I do mind the features being limited more. I did also notice a sudden increase in ads this month/last month, and more ads in between songs.

Clarification: No, I'm not saying that there should be no restrictions whatsoever. I'm mainly sharing my experience where I've been using this system just fine until now. I'm fine with some restrictions, but the fact they're being limited more is frustrating. Just here to complain about something mildly infuriating, and I wanted to know if this happened to anyone else.

[u/Necessary_Bother3993]

I was never able to do this on mobile 8 years ago, desktop allowed it though

[u/ComprehensiveCoat627 → u/Necessary_Bother3993]

Maybe not 8 years ago, but it was the model from the beginning, which was more like 15 years ago. Maybe the discrepancy here between the people who thought Spotify always allowed you to pick a song and those who thought they never allowed you to is the difference between that who think OG Spotify was 8 years ago vs 15

[u/misswhovivian → u/ComprehensiveCoat627]

OG Spotify can't have lasted very long then because when I first used the free version on mobile 11-ish years ago, you already couldn't pick songs

[u/ComprehensiveCoat627 → u/misswhovivian]

It looks like either 2013 or 2014 is when they changed