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Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

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Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#131

Post by maratc »

laurent92 wrote: post #44
drusepth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this is a "feature". Is the price different, or the features gained different, or does it just determine who ends up getting what % cut? I can't imagine most people actually care whether Google or Spotify is getting a bigger piece of the same price they're paying either way.

The conditions and trust are different. I personally believe that letting Google have my credit card is allowing a kid with no supervision to play with my life savings; While some others will believe Google provides better guarantees than Spotify when you want to unsubscribe. At least competition will allow us to see “who’s better” and what T&C customers care about, and that’s the important point.

It's not a choice of who's better; it's a choice of who's not worse.

Given a choice of Apple vs. anything, I can't see myself choosing anything over Apple.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#132

Post by OmahaBoy69 »

nerdjon wrote: post #60
rkk3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe costing 30% more isn't worth centralizing the subscriptions

I fully understand that I am... maybe closer to people here but in the grand scheme of things financially I am in a better state than most people. But so I was curious, I have $762 worth of subscriptions a year through Apple. So I could save $228.60 if they were all 30% less. To me that is worth it. But I would also like to point out, that many of the apps I am subscribed too. I am only subscribed too because it was…

How the hell did you manage to rack up $762 in yearly subscription fees...?

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#133

Post by kevincox »

endisneigh wrote: post #125
kevincox wrote: post #106

> Together, we’ll work to innovate in how consumers make in-app purchases, deliver engaging experiences across multiple devices, and bring more consumers to the Android platform. I wanna vomit. The fix is just deleting 3 lines of your policies. The world will innovate on its own. No need to limit innovation to a couple companies who are big enough to negotiate.

Why not just use f droid and not be behold your the play store at all? Or just host on your own site?

Because it adds a lot of friction to the average user.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#134

Post by mynameisvlad »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #115
nerdjon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making the situation worse for consumers. However to be clear, that percent is in the same area that game consoles and I believe Steam (someone correct me?) charge. And we accept that. When the 30% rule for the App Store came down, our smart phones were basically the same as a game console. Most people did not expect these devices to become the central part of all…

> than sure the percent needs to be lowered and I am not arguing that Yes to 0% and any percentage of revenue should be made illegal. Google and Apple can charge whatever fixed values they want or even charge based on a wide variety of vectors but a % of revenue should be explicitly illegal that kind of blatant rent seeking is a quintessential example of something the government needs to stamp out.

Apple and Google are providing a service, so why exactly should they not get a cut of revenue?

To be clear, 30% is too much, but aside from payment handling and taking on fraud risk as a result of that (3-4% is generally the industry standard for card not present transactions), they provide a subscription management/payment API for IAPs, as well as app packaging and distribution, reviews, etc.

That certainly is worth more than 0%.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#135

Post by kitsunesoba »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #115
nerdjon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making the situation worse for consumers. However to be clear, that percent is in the same area that game consoles and I believe Steam (someone correct me?) charge. And we accept that. When the 30% rule for the App Store came down, our smart phones were basically the same as a game console. Most people did not expect these devices to become the central part of all…

> than sure the percent needs to be lowered and I am not arguing that Yes to 0% and any percentage of revenue should be made illegal. Google and Apple can charge whatever fixed values they want or even charge based on a wide variety of vectors but a % of revenue should be explicitly illegal that kind of blatant rent seeking is a quintessential example of something the government needs to stamp out.

Doesn't this ignore the reality that a service with many of subscribers puts dramatically more strain on marketplace systems than a service with only a few subscribers?

For example, a smalltime dev isn't going to see hardly any refunds, but a dev on the scale of Epic Games is going to be seeing something on the order of tens or hundreds per minute. Should that not be accounted for?

That said, this could be accomplished with tiered fixed fees. An indie dev would probably land in a low rung where costs are tiny, where a triple-A game studio would get charged substantially more.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#136

Post by darkwater »

bogwog wrote: post #107

Google sees the writing on the wall. Their billing monopoly is under threat, and is probably not going to last forever. This situation looks like Google allowed Spotify to add their own payment system with some terms. The obvious one is that they need to keep Google's payment system alongside their own. A less obvious (but IMO likely) requirement may be that Spotify cannot offer a much lower price through their billi…

And Spotify will probably also get less discounts in GCP to compensate part of that. I'm totally speculating, just to be clear.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#137

Post by falcolas »

dmitriid wrote: post #130
falcolas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply as Apple (google, steam, microsoft, sony, etc) does.

> I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply Never ever in all these accusations do people mention The Big Four [1]. It's always Apple to blame. And Spotify. And Deezer. And Pandora. And... Even though music distributors control all f the market, collect all the royalties,…

This is where I shrug my shoulders and say "Why not [blame] both?"

It can be that Apple, Spotify, and Google can all be screwing over creators in conjunction with their publishers.

That said, not all musicians on Spotify go through publishers.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#138

Post by mr_aks »

falcolas wrote: post #121
nerdjon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making the situation worse for consumers. However to be clear, that percent is in the same area that game consoles and I believe Steam (someone correct me?) charge. And we accept that. When the 30% rule for the App Store came down, our smart phones were basically the same as a game console. Most people did not expect these devices to become the central part of all…

So, Spotify also reportedly takes 30% of the revenue before paying the creators. This isn't an Apple/Google/Spotify thing, it's a service thing.

I don't understand this argument. Spotify is a service connecting listeners to the artists and infrastructure and development of said service has its cost whereas Google/Apple charge fees for the app store which Spotify subscription does not require.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#139

Post by enos_feedler »

vertis wrote: post #124
nimbius wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed. both of these companies --google and apple-- have leadership that see this as a hill to die on. Apple looks ready to go to the guillotine for the right to gouge startups, while Google seems more amicable to try obfuscation tactics to keep their hand in the cookie jar. my opinion: a couple million dollars invested in F-Droid might do the world a whole lot of good. if you were say, epic, you might consider an a…

The difference between iOS and Android though is you absolutely can avoid the Google Play app store and install items directly (or through stores like f-droid). I'm not a fan of either ecosystem really, but Apple is definitely worse on this one metric because there is no ability to NOT pay them.

Well - Apple makes everything. From my point of view, they are more similar to a game console platform where a completely verically integrated product experience, including marketing spend and everything sort of justifies a partner-like split of revenue. Google is really just hobbling together a pretty shitty phone platform, with terrible OEM support and drivers OEMs do all the work that Apple does but Google slides in there with the app store and takes a cut. To me Google is much worse
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