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EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

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Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#21

Post by r00fus »

madeofpalk wrote: post #19
rantee wrote: post #11

Lost in all coverage of this battle of the middlemen is the effect on the artists actually making the product. How would lower prices make any difference in Spotify’s royalty rate bullying in a market saturated with alternatives that they already dominate? Are there really that many more consumers who want but aren’t already paying for a streaming service or using free alternatives? There are legit discussions to be…

Spotify doesn't set rates for what artists get paid, labels that make their music available on Spotify do. "Artists don't get paid fairly" is a tale that existed long before Spotify existed.

Are you sure about this? I hear the rates vary by platform. For example Tidal was pushing for much higher royalties as part of its push to get more artists to sign with it.

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#22

Post by piva00 »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #14

[flagged]

Apple Music subscription can even be purchased in the System Settings of Apple's OSs (through Apple One); it doesn't pay 30% to Apple when subscribed in the OS or through the Music app; it's distributed embedded into iOS, macOS, iPadOS without you downloading the app.

It's anti-competitive, clearly, which harms consumers.

I really want to understand, what's the actual argument for Apple here?

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#23

Post by Someone1234 »

rantee wrote: post #11

Lost in all coverage of this battle of the middlemen is the effect on the artists actually making the product. How would lower prices make any difference in Spotify’s royalty rate bullying in a market saturated with alternatives that they already dominate? Are there really that many more consumers who want but aren’t already paying for a streaming service or using free alternatives? There are legit discussions to be…

Fairer App Store policies allows more streaming choice for consumers, including potentially opting for "fair trade"-style offerings that give more to artists.

Right now, both Apple AND Spotify have an anti-competitive advantage due to the app store (with Apple Music getting a massive advantage, and Spotify getting a better deal than new competition entering the market).

Although a lot of streaming payment rates are set upstream of streaming services.

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#24

Post by rantee »

madeofpalk wrote: post #19
rantee wrote: post #11

Lost in all coverage of this battle of the middlemen is the effect on the artists actually making the product. How would lower prices make any difference in Spotify’s royalty rate bullying in a market saturated with alternatives that they already dominate? Are there really that many more consumers who want but aren’t already paying for a streaming service or using free alternatives? There are legit discussions to be…

Spotify doesn't set rates for what artists get paid, labels that make their music available on Spotify do. "Artists don't get paid fairly" is a tale that existed long before Spotify existed.

And if publishers and/or labels were able to obtain better rates - via direct negotiations, the CRB, or otherwise - presumably some of those fractional cents per stream would trickle down to the artists and songwriters who are already in notoriously oppressive contracts with the major label and publisher oligopoly.

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#25

Post by rantee »

r00fus wrote: post #21
madeofpalk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify doesn't set rates for what artists get paid, labels that make their music available on Spotify do. "Artists don't get paid fairly" is a tale that existed long before Spotify existed.

Are you sure about this? I hear the rates vary by platform. For example Tidal was pushing for much higher royalties as part of its push to get more artists to sign with it.

Yes, the rates vary by platform. In the US, there's a combo of statutory (or CRB-approved) rates on the publisher side, and negotiations on the label side.

On the publisher/songwriter side, streams are not "public performances" under the Copyright Act (in the US), so royalties are not handled by the court-sanctioned monopolies that have been in place since the early 20th century (ASCAP, BMI).

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#26

Post by mort96 »

piva00 wrote: post #22
anonymouse008 wrote: post #14

[flagged]

Apple Music subscription can even be purchased in the System Settings of Apple's OSs (through Apple One); it doesn't pay 30% to Apple when subscribed in the OS or through the Music app; it's distributed embedded into iOS, macOS, iPadOS without you downloading the app. It's anti-competitive, clearly, which harms consumers. I really want to understand, what's the actual argument for Apple here?

> It doesn't pay 30% to Apple

Isn't that because it pays 100% to Apple?

I get that there's a competitive advantage to not having to siphon off 30% of revenue to another entity... but how do you actually solve this here? One option would be to split up Apple and require the services division to be an entirely separate company, and maybe that would be a good solution... but if we assume that Apple will be allowed to sell subscription services going forward, and that Apple will be allowed to take a cut of subscriptions going forward, how can this problem possibly be solved?

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#27

Post by piva00 »

xvector wrote: post #20
smoldesu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems much more plausible to me that America is guilty of protectionism by neglecting to regulate their domestic tech businesses. Europe stands to lose nothing if Spotify goes bankrupt, but disrupting the mobile duopoly threatens America's iron grip on exported surveillance.

I'm glad the US does not adopt EU policies. Else we might see the dearth of progress in consumer technology that the EU has experienced over the past 20 years. Someone actually has to incentivize building things and getting shit done , and the EU is clearly not it, as the last two decades show. (There is probably a middle ground between the US and the EU but I'd rather err on the side of not shutting down consumer te…

Care to expand on exactly how EU's regulations on antitrust is responsible for what you consider "the death of progress in consumer technology"?

The much simpler explanation is that the USA is a 340 million people market, richer, and more homogeneous in terms of language and culture for companies to develop products, no need to localise products into 30-50 languages to reach all the potential markets, no need to expend on marketing campaings tailored to some 20+ different cultures, with varied consumer behaviour, etc.

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#28

Post by granzymes »

Hard to see what harm to competition there is in a market that has steadily grown, with Spotify at the top, during the entire period in which Apple was allegedly harming the market. Spotify doesn’t pay the Apple tax and yet charges the same as all the other market participants.

Going to be very interesting to see what the EU courts say in a few years.

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#29

Post by fsflover »

xvector wrote: post #20
smoldesu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems much more plausible to me that America is guilty of protectionism by neglecting to regulate their domestic tech businesses. Europe stands to lose nothing if Spotify goes bankrupt, but disrupting the mobile duopoly threatens America's iron grip on exported surveillance.

I'm glad the US does not adopt EU policies. Else we might see the dearth of progress in consumer technology that the EU has experienced over the past 20 years. Someone actually has to incentivize building things and getting shit done , and the EU is clearly not it, as the last two decades show. (There is probably a middle ground between the US and the EU but I'd rather err on the side of not shutting down consumer te…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39418713

Re: EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case

#30

Post by madeofpalk »

r00fus wrote: post #21
madeofpalk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify doesn't set rates for what artists get paid, labels that make their music available on Spotify do. "Artists don't get paid fairly" is a tale that existed long before Spotify existed.

Are you sure about this? I hear the rates vary by platform. For example Tidal was pushing for much higher royalties as part of its push to get more artists to sign with it.

Reasonably. Without any specific knowledge, Spotify doesn't actually own the rights to music - it's the rights holders (labels) that chose to make their music available to Spotify under the terms they want.

It's 10 years old at this point, but Sony's leaked contract with Spotify basically outlines that there's no such thing as a 'per stream' rate. Roughly, all the money available was split between the labels (with most favored nation clauses to get them even more money) https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotif...

Also:

> Contrary to what you might have heard, Spotify does not pay artist royalties according to a per-play or per-stream rate; the royalty payments that artists receive might vary according to differences in how their music is streamed or the agreements they have with labels or distributors.

> In many cases, royalty payments happen once a month, but exactly when and how much artists and songwriters get paid depends on their agreements with their record label or distributor

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/

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