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Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

timetoplayfair.com

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Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#111

Post by theon144 »

georgespencer wrote: post #79
5trokerac3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference comes in when Apple introduced Apple Music, a direct competitor to Spotify. So now, they're not only offering an essentially identical service, they're extracting a toll from their competition through their other holdings. To put this in 19th century anti-trust terms, the manufacturing company owns the railways and charges the competition a toll to transport their goods. It's a clear cut case for Spoti…

Hmmm. It's absolutely not that as far as I can tell. Apple is not extracting a toll from their competition through their other holdings. Nothing has changed for Spotify: if you want to sign up users through Apple's infrastructure, which has a cost associated with it, you have to pay the same price as everyone else. To repeat my question asked of someone else in this thread: Apple charges e.g. Mophie a fee to feature…

>if you want to sign up users through Apple's infrastructure, which has a cost associated with it, you have to pay the same price as everyone else.

And if you don't, you're out of luck due to the increasingly hostile restrictions on what you're allowed to even mention in the app - at least according to the website.

Can't say I'm 100% on Spotify's side, but to me it doesn't seem like Apple has anything stand on here, ethics-wise. Microsoft and the IE case comes to mind.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#112

Post by tumetab1 »

owenwil wrote: post #4

The claims in here are pretty wild, particularly around how Apple has favored its own products: - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch - It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod - It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri - It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis - It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies I genuinely hope Europe t…

> The issue of the 30% cut alone is enough for further investigation,

Not really, it's 30% for everyone, not just Spotify.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#113

Post by bgeeek »

yaseer wrote: post #2

Seeing this makes me want to get even further away from Apple's ecosystem. 4 years ago, I was all in- Mac, iPad, iPhone. In the last 4 years, I've been driven away by Apple seeming contempt for professional users. Their contempt for other competition is even graver cause for concern.

Like others, this is why I could never buy a HomePod and exactly why I like Sonos. I prefer choice.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#114

Post by 12298765 »

pedroaraujo wrote: post #93
georgespencer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribe to Spotify through Apple devices Not so as I understand it. Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store. That cost doesn't exist for Mac or PC, but Apple doesn't heavily curate and have costs associated with the wild west of downloading apps from the web. > it doesn't weight anything to Apple There are…

> There are significant costs associated with the app store, no? Part of the reason users gravitate towards the iPhone is because you can download high quality apps without malware, viruses, etc. That should be covered by the one time fee that developers pay to Apple in order to publish apps into the App Store. I am not sure if a simple binary needs a 30% cut of the entire Spotify profit to keep up with the costs of…

> Because Apple is using a completely different market, which they have a strong presence on, to increase the value of Apple Music and consequently devaluing any other competing music streaming services.

This is the core issue. Apple using their dominant market position in the hardware/operating system markets to push anticompetitive practices for their product in a different market (Apple Music).

I don't see how this is much different than IE. Maybe even worse in some ways. But regardless, it is very clearly manipulating the market artificially in Apple's favor.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#115

Post by westpfelia »

tomphoolery wrote: post #31
dmitriid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify not playing fair with artists Spotify is paying as much as music industry extorts from it. Where does the money go? Ask the big labels that are the ones paying artists.

The big labels aren't important, they're going to get their money anyway. This hurts the smaller labels, like my label, and countless others who never see a god damn dime from Spotify streaming. Meanwhile, Bandcamp streams the songs for free but they allow you to pay what you want. I've made at least 10x the profit from selling tracks on Bandcamp than I ever did in the streaming world. If Spotify wants to play fair,…

The problem is how do they break apart what to pay people. If they pay your record company a dollar every time a artist of yours is played and life time they get played say 100,000 times sure thats great for you. But are they going to make 100,000 off you? Sure they can make you a loss leader and parrot that they are a platform for the little dude.

But what happens when a major label demands that they also get a dollar every time a song is played. The next time Taylor Swift releases a new album the entire country of Sweden would be owed in Royalties.

Yea digital streaming doesnt pay jack. Even the best paying streaming services only pays .0064 cents per stream. Of course that doesnt add up to much considering they only have .65% of the market.

At the end of the day duder it sucks that you dont make shit from streaming services. It really does. But with how the entire streaming payout model works it just is NEVER going to be profitable for smaller artists. It 100% caters to artists that will pull in 100 million streams in a month. But how much does platforms like Spotify help artists on your label get noticed? I constantly try to find new artists that have under 100,000 listens on their top song to see if its some hidden gem or the next big thing.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/streaming-music-...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/03/how-much-...

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#116

Post by brmgb »

georgespencer wrote: post #73
pedroaraujo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribes to Spotify through Apple devices. This cost doesn't doesn't exist for PC users, for example. They probably could live with it but I can understand why it feels like an artificial cost that Apple came up with. It would be an understandable cost if they were selling the Spotify App through the App Store and using the actual store i…

> A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribe to Spotify through Apple devices Not so as I understand it. Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store. That cost doesn't exist for Mac or PC, but Apple doesn't heavily curate and have costs associated with the wild west of downloading apps from the web. > it doesn't weight anything to Apple There are…

> Why? They've made the hardware. Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants? (You can Airplay Spotify to Homepod.)

I perfectly understand why Apple would be as anti-competitive as they can away with on their plateform. It benefits them tremendously.

What I don't understand is why some comsumers, who are definitely loosing from the situation - even if you prefer the Apple solution competition tends to bring price down - are systematically defending Apple. It's not like we are talking about a small and endearing company here.

Out of curiosity, do people really view using Apple products as a life style choice ? I liked my iphone but as far as I am concerned it's a mass market device.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#118

Post by endorphone »

georgespencer wrote: post #44

Can someone help me stop playing the world's smallest violin here? Spotify knowingly built a low margin business living in the pocket of the labels (who force Spotify towards razor thin margins) and Apple/Google (who have, since before Spotify launched, operated app stores for their platforms which are to some extent curated and which are not free market economies). Spotify feels aggrieved that Apple does not allow i…

The complaint regarding the fee is not just that Apple takes such a large fee (which is reasonable for a one-off game where the exposure and back-end processing is beneficial, but is ludicrous for a recurring subscription from a large scale org), it's that you are restricted from offering any other payment options, or even alluding to possible other payment options. That is grossly anti-competitive and does absolutely nothing for consumers.

As a user of an iPhone/Mac/etc, but who loves Spotify, this whole thing just sours me on Apple a bit. Spotify works great with my webOS TV, and just about everything else for that matter. It supports everything. Its networking/streaming model is brilliant. The interface is much better than Apple music (with its bizarre integration with iTunes). That I can't use Siri to play a song is just obnoxious and turns me off of Siri, and whatever middle managers in Apple are pushing this are just doing themselves harm in the longer run.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#120

Post by dalbasal »

georgespencer wrote: post #44

Can someone help me stop playing the world's smallest violin here? Spotify knowingly built a low margin business living in the pocket of the labels (who force Spotify towards razor thin margins) and Apple/Google (who have, since before Spotify launched, operated app stores for their platforms which are to some extent curated and which are not free market economies). Spotify feels aggrieved that Apple does not allow i…

~~Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible?

I don't think we have a clear ethic yet, for these situations. There's obviously a ton of economic power in platforms. Since the msft-vs-netscape days, it's been controversial.

Ultimately... these are marketplaces, important ones and, considering their size, scope and influence... I think there is a strong case that "my house, my rules" is not a reasonable way of doing things.

Apple/Google's app & content stores are huge bottlenecks and being locked out of them is on the same scale as being locked out of the financial/banking system for certain companies.

Does "free market" mean anything useful, if the free market consists of a handful of unfree "platforms?"

There's a similar question for FB and Twitter. They are such big media channels that being locked out of one could (for example) make it impossible to run for elected office.

Things have different implications at large scale.

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