Spotify made 1 billion $ of profit in 2024. Hard to call that unprofitable.
My point is, it (and Youtube) killed piracy for the most part when it comes to music. Trading CDs full of mp3s used to be a sport in school a decade or two ago, these days why would anyone even want to invest the time when Spotify has everything anyway at a price point school kids can afford it?
Netflix used to become the same thing for movies, but the greed of studios killed it and now it's more expensive to have the large stream services than cable TV.