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Addressing Spotify’s Claims

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Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#111

Post by dmitriid »

hoffs wrote: post #83
dmitriid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone would benefit from seeing what both pay the labels. Everyone speaks about “they only pay artists X per stream”. However, neither of them pays the artist directly.

Well that's not really their problem is it, I'm sure independent artists that do have their music on Spotify do get paid 'x per stream'. That is the problem with the music industry and their label signing deals.

There are very few independent artists on Spotify that get paid directly by Spotify. The absolute vast majority (easily 99.9999% of artists) are signed up via the four major labels or (if they are independent artists) via aggregators:

- Spotify only started signing up independent artists since 2017 or so [1] [2]

- Even there Spotify recommends you upload music through aggregators or labels [3] (I'm not even sure if you can get there as an artists without going through a label or a distributor)

> That is the problem with the music industry and their label signing deals.

The music industry has no other options but sign deals with labels. Because the major labels control the catalog of music that people listen to. Almost anything even remotely popular you listen to belongs to them: from Taylor Swift to Beatles, from Drake to Iron Maiden, from One Direction to Pink Floyd etc.

And the industry is too scared to say anything against the labels for fear of retribution. You go against Warner Music, they pull their content, and goodbye Slipknot, R.E.M., Skrillex, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Muse, Ed Sheeran, Eric Clapton, Ghorillaz, ... [4] You go against Sony, and... etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Spotify_for_Artists

[2] https://artists.spotify.com

[3] https://artists.spotify.com/guide/your-music

[4] https://store.warnermusic.com/all-artists

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#112

Post by ahmedalsudani »

isostatic wrote: post #104
cialowicz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work Moreover, that's the pot calling the kettle black. That's the app store in a nutshell -- Apple supplies the marketplace, but is also making a substantial chunk of money off of others’ work.

Exactly what my local store does. They pay the wholesaler 10 and sell to me for 15.

No, not exactly. You're free to buy from other stores, and suppliers can sell to them. A very important distinction.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#113

Post by threeseed »

bad_user wrote: post #55
eridius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re saying you get value out of Spotify’s services. That’s good. Middlemen exist because they’re providing some value. Doesn’t make them not middlemen though. Ultimately, if I use Spotify to discover an artist, I’m going to continue paying Spotify to listen to that artist and the artist themselves will be lucky to even make pennies off of that. I could move off Spotify and keep listening to that artist pretty easi…

Spotify would and does exist on all the other platforms, like Android, Windows or the open web. Apple created a lot of value with its first iPhone, but the world evolved since then. And yes, in your definition, Apple too is a middleman, because a big reason for why many people buy overpriced smartphones is to use apps. That you can't move those purchases easily to another platform, that's the lock-in effect of Apple'…

> That you can't move those purchases easily to another platform

You do realise that there are technical reasons for that.

You can't just lift an iOS, Linux, Windows, Android, PS4, Xbox etc app and just run it on a different platform. Especially if your target platform is a resource constrained one.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#114

Post by threeseed »

chrischen wrote: post #16
segphault wrote: post #7

> Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work. And it’s not just the App Store that they’re trying to squeeze — it’s also artists, musicians and songwriters. Uh, I seem to recall Apple being forced to reverse some brazenly greedy policies for their music service when a high-profile artist called them out and withheld content in protest. For Apple to characterize itself as a champion…

I think they may be specifically referring to the most recent royalties hike that was opposed by Amazon, Spotify, but supported by Apple. Was most likely a PR move to make Apple look like a supporter of artists.

So Apple does actually pay artists more but that's irrelevant because something, something "it's a PR move".

I would imagine that the artists probably care even if you don't.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#115

Post by saagarjha »

nolok wrote: post #84
bad_user wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple popularized trusted computing. And yes, it's as bad as we feared it would be back in the '90s.

Ehhh I feel like Unix/Linux popularized trusted computing, Apple merely added a price tag on it. But I may be blinded by my techie point of view about "popularized".

> I may be blinded by my techie point of view about "popularized"

Yeah, unfortunately it seems like we're still in the state where UNIX/Linux can't popularize anything, especially themselves, unless they're repackaged by someone else :(

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#116

Post by scoutt »

It's a symbiotic relationship, but if it reduces to "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" analogy it would be:

* the app store is successful thanks to apps like Spotify

* Spotify is successful thanks to the app store

I think the second premise tends to be more accurate to the case. If I make the most used app in the world today, I cannot take credit for pumping the success of the app store, because it was already there when I launched my app.

In either case, it's Apple yard, they set the rules and charge what they want. Don't place your main source of income in another person's yard.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#117

Post by chj »

exwiki wrote: post #4

> Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong. I think that's a very hypothetical claim. > Let’s be clear about what that means. Apple connects Spotify to our users. We provide the platform by which users download and update…

We can also say Apple Music wouldn't be the business today had Spotify not explored the business of music streaming years ahead. Now they just took the idea themselves and pretend that Spotify contributes nothing.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#118

Post by saagarjha »

tener wrote: post #9
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

This is a surprisingly open response to what is likely to be a legal matter, particularly given Apple's usual silence on... most everything. I definitely take issue with it's avoidance of the core issues though: That the services they provide aren't optional on the iPhone. They make it sound like connecting Spotify to users, and allowing them to use their in-app purchase mechanism is a service they offer that they sh…

My bet is they decided to respond due to PR issues. The response from the EU will likely depend to some degree on the public reception of Apple. The Spotify post looked very strong, so even if they don't fully dismantle it (as you noticed they dodge some issues) they provide enough arguments that it isn't immediately clear to bystander who is right.

> My bet is they decided to respond due to PR issues

This is the strange bit, since Apple does this very rarely. Or at least, they used to…

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#119

Post by kuschku »

bunnycorn wrote: post #92
infinity0 wrote: post #15

> What Spotify is demanding is something very different. After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace. Please Apple, pay all the open source projects that you use, a fair share of the reven…

Open Source, pay for Apple's WebKit and Apple's contributions to FreeBSD and other open source projects. Every Linux box that is connected to a printer (specially networked printers) runs CUPS in part by Apple. Also, FreeBSD is a small part of macOS, contrary to what some people want other people to believe, and FreeBSD is not in that camp of GPLv3, so no, FreeBSD is not on that disgusting echo chamber leaded by Stal…

So then Apple should pay KDE for KHTML, for WebKit is just a fork of that?

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#120

Post by saagarjha »

qalmakka wrote: post #88
infinity0 wrote: post #15

> What Spotify is demanding is something very different. After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace. Please Apple, pay all the open source projects that you use, a fair share of the reven…

This. They took half of FreeBSD without giving them a single cent, only to never give horseshit about them afterwards. They're didn't even add support for FreeBSD to Swift despite the fact it would cost them very little effort, just to underline how little they care.

To be fair, if FreeBSD didn't want that to happen, they should have licensed under GPL.
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