Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

timetoplayfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 865 posts

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#161

Post by m000 »

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…

> Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store.

Yes, they get 30% only if you subscribe through the app store. That's already too much for a service that doesn't use Apple's infrastructure, but Spotify played along for a while. Their main complaint however is that Apple is outright censoring the Spotify app so that it makes no mention to other options for upgrading to Premium.

That's clearly foul play in my book. I wonder if you would still defend it if instead of Apple, it was e.g. Microsoft using Windows Defender to block Chrome downloads.

> There are significant costs associated with the app store, no?

You pay a $99 per year fee as a developer to Apple. That should cover their costs for general QA. If they feel that popular apps need to pay more, they can still set a higher fixed price. But claiming that 30% is to cover Apple's QA costs is ridiculous.

> Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants?

Because of the way they market Homepod. They present Homepod as interoperable with your iPhone, but it turns out they place artificial limits to interoperability. I wonder, what would Apple do in case of a mass-return of Homepods from customers unhappy by the lack of interoperability with Spotify or other apps?

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#162

Post by Grustaf »

GeekyBear wrote: post #139

They have some valid complaints, but "if we use Apple's payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so" isn't one of them. The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app. Apple has long allowed content providers to opt out of using Apple's own payment system (and paying Apple a cut), but without being able to p…

> The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app.

Well, you probably can’t advertise your apartment on AirBnb and then Link people to your own payment service that bypasses AirBnb’s fee either. It sort of makes sense.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#163

Post by jawns »

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…

> 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.

But Spotify's argument seems to be "you have to pay the same price as everyone else ... except Apple itself."

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#164

Post by acdha »

supermatt wrote: post #71

Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created. They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple pla…

> vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.

Congratulations, you've just reinvented the desktop adware / malware market. We know that if this is possible users will be manipulated into making bad decisions which are hard to recover from, and in many cases those bad decisions will be made for them by their carrier.

What I would support is that the app store should be more open: no refusing apps for competing with the built-in apps, and removing the ban on purchases which don't go through the platform — let the store owner charge for payment processing but e.g. Amazon should be allowed to sell you a movie on iOS without paying Apple a cut simply by using their payment system instead.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#165

Post by ppeetteerr »

I agree that Spotify is taking the right stance. In their position, working on whatever team is responsible for fighting Apple, I would also do anything in my power to fight.

Having said this, Apple can do as they please. They control the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the user accounts. The same was true of Twitter who effectively squeezed access to their API until one or two desktop clients remained.

The only two ways out of this is to legislate a lower rate (through campaigns such as these), or to create a competing platform that lowers costs for its users. Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#167

Post by rangibaby »

ihuman wrote: post #157
supermatt wrote: post #71

Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created. They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple pla…

> Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS What do you mean? Every time I've installed Windows, it came with Internet Explorer or Edge (which I then used to install another browser).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_editions#Edition_N

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#169

Post by jdietrich »

supermatt wrote: post #71

Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created. They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple pla…

>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.

There's nothing wrong with providing an app store as long as that store offers fair and non-discriminatory terms to all vendors. Charging app developers for the costs of running a store and maintaining an ecosystem is perfectly reasonable; using those charges to stifle competition isn't.

Engineers tend to want neat, perfect solutions that require no human judgement, but they're very rare in the real world. There are obvious and major disadvantages to a free-for-all versus a walled garden, for both developers and users. Customers have a right to choose a tightly-controlled platform, just as they have a right to shop at a grocery store that refuses to sell poisonous food. Banning app store bundling is a scorched-earth approach that would do more harm than good for the average consumer.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#170

Post by coldtea »

supermatt wrote: post #71

Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created. They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple pla…

>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS

They were never stopped from that.

They were stopped for abusing their monopoly (e.g. threatening OEM PC vendors that unless they bundled this or that, they wont get Windows for a special price, etc).

And that when they had a monopoly (e.g. close to 98% of the desktop AND business market) -- which in itself is not illegal.

Post reply on HN