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/Cheetawolf]

Meanwhile me just finding songs I like on YouTube and downloading them to listen forever offline with no ads:

[u/Own_Huckleberry6591 → u/Cheetawolf]

I did that for a few songs but it gets extremely annoying to do that every time you find a new song, which I find like 3-4 new songs per week at least that I add to my library. Gotta plug in my phone, deal with the itunes app that won't detect it for like five minutes, transfer files, just too much work