Too expensive for me. When I had the Google equivalent (now cancelled too) I found that I just ended up listening to the music I already know/own anyway, so what is the point of paying to listen to the music I have as MP3s?
I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.
Did you try the discovery features? Many people find them to be among the most valuable features of Spotify. I quite like the discover weekly playlist that is auto-generated every Monday, and the daily mixes are quite good as well. Or see in which playlists other listeners discovered an artist and see if there's anything else you like in there. There's also a "generate more like this" option in playlists' context menu.
I recently switched to SoundCloud free and the ads are really not that bad (only con for example if your playing off your phone and it hits a video ad you can't lock your device till the SD finishes). However if the device screen is locked you'll only get audio ads (short and sweet at that).
Like YouTube though it will suffer from take down notices on some stuff you book mark, as well as mainstream stuff you can only listen to the first 30 seconds (but I've never been big into what's radio popular).
Very true, that is one thing I find replacing a lot of songs with others to get quality. Which can be frustrating when you don't have spare time at all during the day.
I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.