That may be just it. I've been a paid pro user for almost a decade (back before and when their app was good); I ultimately abandoned my subscription when I realized I don't use the service much anymore (something about them suddenly losing quite a lot of mainstream-ish music).

That brush with their current app I described before happened when my wife wanted to evaluate Spotify subscription as a source of children songs. We both quickly realized that youtube-dl and manually copying MP3 files to the phone offers a much superior user experience to the Spotify app.

I can’t figure it out on Premium either, but if it’s actually just removed for free listeners then maybe it’s a money thing. Perhaps hiding direct song access pushes people to listen to music with cheaper royalties or something.