Knowing how crap Spotify app is (an Electron monstrocity on the desktop) that's for the best.
except its not electron and it doesnt hog half as much as itunes
Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
211–220 of 865 posts
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#212Just because Apple can do as they please, doesn't mean they ought to be allowed to. Antitrust is a useful tool for when players end up controlling monopolies and using them in anti-competitive ways.
Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic. There is a stronger case against Amazon for selling Amazon-branded, well-moving products like batteries and diapers, even though they don't stifle the other brands.
> Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic.
Having had to take antitrust training at my company in the past few weeks, I can say that you are very mistaken if you think antitrust only kicks in when the company is a monopoly.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#213It's time to trot out Cory Doctorow's talk on DRM to Microsoft (2004):
https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
> "Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone's records."
I remember when Apple's M.O. was to build insanely great hardware, and make money selling that hardware. It was the Other Guys who would do shady things like bundle browsers with OSes and do things explicitly against users' preferences to promote their own platform and ecosystem. Apple never really started with that until the iPhone.
Now they do all of this ecosystem-lock-in stuff because they're not solely interested in revenue from hardware sales now. It's lame and scummy and un-Apple.
I'd love to be able to use the Google Assistant and Signal Messenger on my Apple Watch, and use Spotify on my HomePod, and use iMessage on my Pixelbook. Real shame that I pay top dollar for hardware and that I can't.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#214It's hard to have much sympathy when you know that this was written by the marketing department of a company with a $30bn market cap.
This looks to me like a blatant attempt to latch on to a perceived popular sentiment that Spotify thinks they can use to to have the government give them a big advantage that they didn't have before.
Call me cynical but it's hard to see this as anything but self serving.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#215Can someone help me stop playing the world's smallest violin here? Spotify knowingly built a low margin business living in the pocket of the labels (who force Spotify towards razor thin margins) and Apple/Google (who have, since before Spotify launched, operated app stores for their platforms which are to some extent curated and which are not free market economies). Spotify feels aggrieved that Apple does not allow i…
A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribes to Spotify through Apple devices. This cost doesn't doesn't exist for PC users, for example. They probably could live with it but I can understand why it feels like an artificial cost that Apple came up with. It would be an understandable cost if they were selling the Spotify App through the App Store and using the actual store i…
> A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribes to Spotify through Apple devices.
Can you even subscribe through the app? Spotify could simply yell you so go to your web browser to subscribe. That’s what Amazon does for its video etc and it doesn’t seem to cause them any problems.
I subscribed to Spotify via their web site and it works fine on my phone. I’m sure they pay nothing to Apple in order for me to listen. That makes me feel that this is a publicity play by Spotify no matter what the more general (non-Spotify) merits of the issue might be.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#216The claims in here are pretty wild, particularly around how Apple has favored its own products: - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch - It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod - It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri - It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis - It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies I genuinely hope Europe t…
> - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch / HomePad But they've blocked every streaming music thing, right? It wasn't a vindictive campaign targetted at Spotify as this timeline is suggesting - no-one got to build streaming music apps for the Watch or HomePod IIRC.
Yes, every streaming music thing but Apple Music. Available in watchOS 4.1 (vs 5.0 a year later for spotify). And for HomePod since release AFAIK.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#217Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created. They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple pla…
>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS. That comparison doesn't really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market. >They should be FORCED to have an open platform, Just because YOU want this doesn't mean the Apple users want it. I'm utterly conten…
>That comparison doesn't really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.
Market share is not the only criteria for determining whether a company has a dominant market position under EU competition law. Apple have a substantial share of the mobile phone market and they have a total monopoly on iOS app distribution. If you want to sell apps to ~27% of consumers in the EU, you have no choice but to go through Apple. End users might have a meaningful choice, but developers don't, which is highly relevant in this case.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#218Just because Apple can do as they please, doesn't mean they ought to be allowed to. Antitrust is a useful tool for when players end up controlling monopolies and using them in anti-competitive ways.
Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic. There is a stronger case against Amazon for selling Amazon-branded, well-moving products like batteries and diapers, even though they don't stifle the other brands.
Apple/Google is pretty much a duopoly. Which can be as bad.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#219They have some valid complaints, but "if we use Apple's payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so" isn't one of them. The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app. Apple has long allowed content providers to opt out of using Apple's own payment system (and paying Apple a cut), but without being able to p…
> They have some valid complaints, but "if we use Apple's payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so" isn't one of them.
But Spotify doesn't want to use Apple's infrastructure and is compelled to do so regardless.
Spotify is saying that if using Apple payment infrastructure was free, then not allowing other options would not be a problem, but since it's not free, not allowing anything else is a problem, not that Apple charging for the use of its payment infrastructure is a problem in itself.
Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
#220Slightly off-topic: I find it intriguing that Spotify keeps on calling their users as 'fans' instead of users or customers!
Slimy and disingenuous corporate PR speak is everywhere. They probably have something equally repulsive for their employees.