It has ads if you refuse to pay for the service. And if you want to keep the music without DRM, you can try something like Amazon Cloud Player or Google Play or use your own server. There are plenty of solutions for music now.

I happily pay for Spotify, so no ads. I want to pay, I just want to pay a price that's affordable, and consume it in a way that's convenient.

And anything it doesn't have, and I want (Beatles, previously Led Zep), I tend to have already bought, and have available via iTunes Match.