[arghwhat]

"Spotify is essentially a media company" - they are definitely still a music streaming company with an ad-sponsored product-tier, even if the ad-sponsored tier is the most popular or most profitable. Also, when you have an ad-sponsored tier you are not streaming for free - you are paying by selling your attention, it's just that the resulting cash price of the subscription is opaque to the user.

This differs from e.g. Google that runs a large ad platform used not only by several of their own services, but also external products and services (other websites and apps).