I shouldn't wonder if then conveniently enough Apple follows on with a subscription service of their own...
Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#32I shouldn't wonder if then conveniently enough Apple follows on with a subscription service of their own...
The record labels won't let them do it. That is pretty much the only reason the streaming companies exist.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#33Pretty soon..I'm sure it will be 30% of your advertising revenue. Rent? This is more like taking a chunk out of your paycheck. For all the employees out there I'm sure your company would love to take part of your check for the opportunity to work.
30%? do you get any other benefits from Apple? or is it "you take it and you like it."
Apple just has to do is sit there and let the small developers take all the risk. Are they loosing money on each phone sold? I can see charging a payment processing fee like PayPal. 30%? I just hope this doesn't set any precedent.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#34It's deeply disturbing that the people at Apple feel entitled to radically change the rules of the game whenever it suits them. This is like an extortion racket. Submit to their demands today only to find out what new whim strikes them tomorrow. How can iOS legitimately be called a "platform" when Apple pulls a leg out from under it every six months? Thank god Android scares them. I can only imagine what they'd dare…
Thank god Android scares them.
Evidence?
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#35I'm not happy to have predicted this in comments early today: (some slight paraphrasing) The current state of affairs - where Apple provides a nice sales channel (marketing in a sense) on their already highly profitable devices and where service providers bring attractive service to the platform - is a fairly even trade. Apple is asking for such a drastic renegotiation of this "trade balance" that I predict services…
Could be good news for the Android and Windows Phone 7 ecosystems. Seems like it'd be easy for most of these publishers and services to re-focus their mobile strategies on platforms that are more friendly to their business model.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#36What if Rhapsody offered a 23% discount for customers that subscribed via their website rather than through the In-App method? They could call Apple's 30% cut a "convenience fee" like online ticket sales.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#37It's deeply disturbing that the people at Apple feel entitled to radically change the rules of the game whenever it suits them. This is like an extortion racket. Submit to their demands today only to find out what new whim strikes them tomorrow. How can iOS legitimately be called a "platform" when Apple pulls a leg out from under it every six months? Thank god Android scares them. I can only imagine what they'd dare…
See Tim Bray's essay, which should be titled "Are You a Sharecropper?" http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... tl;dr: "[Apple] owns the ground you’re building on, and if they decide they don’t like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you’re toast." In this case, if they decide the rent covers your garden plot as well as the fields, you ante up or die.
Apple owns a very fertile piece of soil. You can grow 10x the crop there that you can grown any where else. Where do you want to farm your crop ?
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet there seem to be a lot of books as apps on the App Store considering there's this 30% cut. What kind of inside track should Amazon have on the poor shlubs who sell their books as apps?
The poor schlubs who sell their books as apps haven't cut out the middleman. With Kindle (or iBooks), the author simply uploads his/her work in a commonly exchanged format. Everything else is handled - distribution, payment, formatting, device compatibility. The works. As an author who wants to publish their book as a discrete app, suddenly you're engaging with a different middleman - the inevitable app vendor. The v…
Bookbaby makes it pretty easy, but I don't see how that even matters.
You're just arguing that there should be more middlemen, sub-platform-providers who get a special deal with Apple compared to original app authors.
We can all foresee what happens when providing a hammer factory is favored over providing a hammer. It's not good UX or good for consumers.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#39Just curious: shouldn't Netflix be worried? This entitles Apple, Inc. to not only Rhapsody's income, but also to 30% of the income from Netflix's streaming only plan. Presumably, this policy would also affect Netflix's hybrid distribution model.
I think Rhapsody's got a friend in Netflix.
This will be interesting, given how much Apple has promoted Netflix in recent store advertisements, and integrated Netflix with Apple TV. Does this mean that Netflix will be required to have subscriptions entered through the App Store? What about the restrictive privacy policy; will that hinder physical distribution?
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#40I'm not happy to have predicted this in comments early today: (some slight paraphrasing) The current state of affairs - where Apple provides a nice sales channel (marketing in a sense) on their already highly profitable devices and where service providers bring attractive service to the platform - is a fairly even trade. Apple is asking for such a drastic renegotiation of this "trade balance" that I predict services…
They're not allowed to reprice for iOS, unless they also reprice for all their other platforms. Quoting the Apple announcement[1], "we require ... that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app."