Been using tidal for 2 years now, never had issues like that. Setting it up was easy enough, I could even convert my Spotify playlists over to tidal easily. Only issue was - one song on my playlists wasn’t available on tidal. So I am very happy using it. No ICE ads, no Israel ads, no Joe Rogan.

Same boat, 20 years now with them.

every time you log in, they try to rope you into a paid “upgrade” using the worst UI tricks and dark patterns known to man.

This is true, I once clicked it by accident without noticing, then got a bill in the end of the month. Called the customer service and they happily cancelled it and voided the bill, no issues there.