Google will soon require you to provide your phone number first, before giving you 15GB.
But they will still bombard you with sponsored emails.
We need to move away from thinking that services that harvest your data and worsen the experience with injected adverts are “free”.
That said, many alternatives do have truly free plans. Check out Proton, IKMail or Atomic Mail, to name a few.
For more: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/music-streaming
email service is cheap. Just go pay for fastmail. It is easier to degoogle yourself than you think and not that expensive.
EDIT: Heh, I should have looked at the comm name more closely