Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#121

Post by jdietrich » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

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…

I think you're wrong - Apple's behaviour in this instance is clearly an abuse of market power and I fully expect the European Commission to rule in Spotify's favour.

Apple are directly competing with Spotify in the field of streaming music services via Apple Music. Apple's total control of the app store and their substantial share of the smartphone market means that they have a dominant market position within the meaning of Article 102 TFEU. Apple are using that dominant market position to advantage their own streaming service and disadvantage Spotify, for reasons set out at length in the original article. Apple are required under EU competition law to give Apple Music and Spotify an equal playing field, which they clearly aren't doing. Apple might have a partial defence if they allowed sideloading of apps, but they don't.

The obvious precedent is the European Commission's action against Google in 2018. Google were fined €4.34bn for using Android to unfairly advantage their search business. Android has a dominant market position within the mobile OS market - if you're a small mobile device manufacturer, you don't have many reasonable alternatives to using Android. Google didn't allow manufacturers to pre-install the Play Store app unless they also pre-installed Chrome and the Google Search app, which is an abuse of their dominant market position. They used their dominance of the mobile OS business to unfairly advantage their search business, which is blatantly illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law...

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#122

Post by 5trokerac3 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

georgespencer wrote: post #99

5trokerac3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't whether Apple is violating antitrust regulations, it's whether the regulations will be enforced. Spotify has a slam dunk case in the regulation heavy EU, and a very winnable case in the US (and anyone who Apple competes with in this way). They build competing products and are putting an artificial restriction to the market that they control. What Apple is doing is a direct violation of the Sherman…

Thanks. How does this work for Amazon? Do they have to pay a % cut for every Kindle sold? Apple pulled its products from Amazon for a while rather than selling them there because they had to take a margin hit they didn't like.

There's a few good comparisons to make here, especially if we bring the Google Play Store into the conversation.

Apple is big enough to pull their products from Amazon. Taking it back to the 19th century, Apple owns their own "railway". The real quandary comes in if Amazon gets so big that there's no way for a small supplier to sell a product in mass without going through Amazon and paying their premium. I don't think we're anywhere near there yet.

Amazon also built their own Amazon store, to get away from the fees of Google's equally Sherman Act violating store, and in the process potentially violated the act themselves (Prime Music).

Edit: I just thought of another, slam dunk case, this time for Amazon, because Apple restricts purchasing Audible books in the app, even when using existing book credits.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#123

Post by parthdesai » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

steve1977 wrote: post #9

Spotify asking someone else to play fair, ha, that really made my day... I mean, of all companies, Spotify. Their whole business model is built upon not playing fair with content creators.

> Their whole business model is built upon not playing fair with content creators.

Who decides whats fair? Or are you forgetting that the go to website to download songs before streaming was thepiratebay?

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#124

Post by endorphone » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #78

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…

I was about to argue that in a free market, 30% would never be a reasonable price, but then I looked and that's what Steam charges and they have multiple viable competitors on the same platform, so now I don't know.

Steam has been hemorrhaging publishers as of late for exactly that reason, and has started offering larger publishers lower rates. That probably still won't be enough.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#125

Post by simias » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

numair wrote: post #17

Considering all of the dirty tricks and favoritism between Spotify and Facebook, I’m not sure they are the right messengers for this. Oh, and one of the early execs involved with Spotify told me, point blank, “that man needs to die already” in reference to Steve Jobs before his passing. Yeah, I was just as shocked as you might be in reading that. I doubt I was the only one aware of such dark sentiments. The executive…

Your comment is effectively only gossip and broad accusations. Leaving your anecdote aside, what dirty tricks and favoritism do you have in mind exactly?

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#126

Post by gurpreet- » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

Personally, as an app developer, I think Spotify is taking the right stance here.

I believe that Apple should take some cuts but not as high as 30%. I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%. Plus, I think that if Apple has a competing service, then it should waive the tax altogether. It's only fair.

If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I'm aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.

At least Google allows installing apps without the Play Store, perhaps it's time Apple permitted something similar with its apps? This could solve this whole problem and have other positive side effects such as people being less likely to jailbreak their iPhones.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#127

Post by hellopat » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

Is Netflix next? March 25th is right around the corner...

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#128

Post by Nextgrid » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #33

digianarchist wrote: post #10

Pretty annoying as an Apple Watch user to find out only Apple Music is allowed to store music on the device itself.

I don't see why other watchOS apps cannot store music on the watch itself. Don't apps get some local storage space? Why can't they use that?

See https://marco.org/2017/09/24/what-watch-podcast-apps-need.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#129

Post by Doctor_Fegg » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

12298765 wrote: post #114

pedroaraujo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thi…

Apple is not dominant in the hardware market in the same way IE was. Nowhere near.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#130

Post by gerardnll » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

0xCMP wrote: post #13

cujo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch I'm not sure this is 100% true. From browsing the spotify support forums many moons ago, some guy had built a spotify playing app for the apple watch, but spotify squashed it. Given that some random dev could do this, it doesn't seem like apple prevented anything.

If a random guy can make the app then Spotify could certainly have made an Apple Watch app. If anything it makes the case that if it were so simple for a single random dev that unless Apple itself were preventing it there is no reason the app wouldn't have been released.

For god sake, it's about policy not tech inability! You don't even need to read the website to know that. WatchOS has APIs like iOS, it's not a matter of being 'hard' to program. It's because if you're nobody, the spotlight is not on you every step you take. But Spotify being your competitor is being close watched.