Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#151

Post by Traster » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

darkwater wrote: post #136

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.

Why on earth would Spotify be getting a discount on GCP?

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#152

Post by munk-a » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #134

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Isn't the fraud risk still generally born by credit card companies at the end of the day?

I think we can legitimately talk about the costs of maintaining the app-store as a marketplace, and we can talk about the future costs of providing updates free of charge in perpetuity and orchestrating the infrastructure to host those various downloads... but that's about where their service offering ends. App review is a joke, the rating systems on both platforms as absolute trash and often gamed by publishers (remember Uber's in app prompt about how many stars you'd give them that forwarded you to the app-store if you gave them 5 and otherwise just offered you an internal complaint form if you gave them anything else? Everyone does that).

I'd question whether Apple and Google are really providing a service or just exploiting a captive market.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#153

Post by dmitriid » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #137

dmitriid wrote: post #130

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 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.

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

I've yet to see any of these discussions to blame both. And your own comment literally never mentions the Big Three.

> can all be screwing over creators in conjunction with their publishers.

I prefer not to wade in to conspiracy territory. Apple may have power over the industry, but they are an outlier. The rest do whatever the industry tels them to.

Quote, [1]. Emphasis mine

--- start quote ---

Spotify primarily makes money for music from two sources — from Spotify Premium subscribers as well as from advertisers on Spotify’s free tier. Roughly ⅔ of this money is paid out to music rights holders.

--- end quote ---

Guess who are the rights holders. They get 60-65% percent of Spotify's revenue (not profit). Care to ask them where this money goes? No one ever dares to.

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

It's either publishers or indie aggregators (two or three of them). Spotify doesn't pay artists directly. If it tried to do that, the big publishers would immediately pull their catalogs. And the vast majority of popular music on the platform is likely to come from big publishers, not from indie aggregators.

[1] https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/?question=how-do-artists-...

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#154

Post by enos_feedler » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

rusk wrote: post #85

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…

> let's focus on lowering that percent A noble position but it seems to have been going other way unfortunately. Not sure how you would do that … further regulation or introducing artificial competition in the market. I think the most pro-business approach is to quash the monopoly and open up the market.

Going the other way? The fee started at 30% and has only gone down from there (ex. 15% for subs active > 1 yr). I believe the fees will fragment further and give developers the option of paying less but receiving less too. For example: You can pay 5% less but you will only show up in app store search results. Or something to this effect. We will never get blanket 30% take rates again. It was a simplification when the market was early

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#155

Post by bowmessage » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #151

darkwater wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why on earth would Spotify be getting a discount on GCP?

Bulk/multi-year commitments to a single cloud provider often come with steep discounts.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#156

Post by enos_feedler » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

gondo wrote: post #147

enos_feedler wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google also makes Pixel phones, arguably this is a tiny fraction of Android market.

And I support Google copying Apple’s revenue sharing model on Pixel devices only. Other OEMs should be receiving more share.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#157

Post by Bilal_io » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

enos_feedler wrote: post #123

kobalsky wrote: post #109

keep in mind that it's not for everyone, it says: "pilot will allow a small number of participating developers" it's also an agreement, so it's very likely that they are requiring price parity. in that case the only benefit of picking a different payment processor for end users would be for they joy of typing their billing information again. regardless, looks like a step in the right direction

For the reason you mentioned I don’t think its a step in the right direction. Carriers already know how to charge their users. Google and Apple should let the user choose their carrier as a systemwide in—app payment processor. Its a small fix, its a good user experience. Arguably even better than what exists today. And is a step in the right direction (move away from Apple and Google controlled things)

Or they could allow app devs to integrate with the OS payment API, so that when I want to pay, I get prompted to choose if I want to pay with MyBank App, MyCreditCard App, or ThirdParty App.

But I'd also like legislation to force apps that I subscribed to,or paid through to allow me to unsubscribe with a single click.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#158

Post by kyrra » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

onelovetwo wrote: post #17

criddell wrote: post #14

> represents a first-of-its-kind option in payment choice and offers opportunities for both consumers and developers What is the opportunity here? For consumers is it that you can pick who you pay? That doesn't sound like much of an opportunity to me. What is the opportunity for developers?

So there is no user choice, technically just a lesser commission. Nothing stopping Google from upping this 5% "fee" to 10% when they feel like it. This is still a loss for devs, I was hoping we can just rip of Google garbage payment system and use something like Stripe, or whatever new companies that would've emerged to fill our needs. Obviously they'll give a sweet deal to massive companies but not the small devs.

Googler, opinions are my own.

What issues do you have with the Google payments system? With the stripe bring that Google does not already have? (Outside the fee issue most people raise)

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#159

Post by FredPret » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

mr_aks wrote: post #138

falcolas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple/Google app stores are a service connecting users to app creators, and all the points about Spotify also apply to Apple and Google. In the case of Apple, they literally created the entire market, from the CPUs all the way up.

If 30% is too much, publish your content as a web app. If you want to play in the walled garden, pay the cover charge.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#160

Post by lxgr » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #88

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…

Steam lets developers sell keys without the tax using their own systems. In addition to this you are allowed to list your games on other storefronts for PC.

Do you know if there is any revenue sharing happening in the background in that model?