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Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

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Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#221

Post by FredPret »

munk-a wrote: post #172
FredPret wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the biggest difference is that Spotify isn't a monopoly at the end of the day - it's a popular service. A lot of people still use different methods to listen to music like YouTube, iTunes, bandcamp and a plethora of others. If you, as a band, want to make money on your music you aren't required to do business through spotify, it's a choice that most people make because it's free money. On the other hand if yo…

But the very concept of being an mobile app developer was brought to life by Apple, and later Google. 15 years ago, you could not really be a pro app dev. Now, you can, but with a 30% cut. You are strictly better off. And if you think the 30% is too much, do something else.

These companies created something that grew into a foundational element of modern life in about a decade. That’s amazing and should be awarded with trillions of dollars. The market should reward this corporate behaviour extremely well, and punish the IBMs and GEs and Boeings harshly.

As an aside, Apple et al are also not resting on their laurels, and keep pushing the envelope. My 2 y.o. + iPhone is literally better than on the day I bought it. I’m more than happy to pay more for apps / subs to get this.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#222

Post by newuser94303 »

olau wrote: post #66
nerdjon wrote: post #45

As a user, why would I choose this? I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have…

I know that a consumptionist attitude is popular these days, but as a user of something like Spotify I would surely prefer as much as possible of my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians instead of in the hands of a company controlling the market place. To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of al…

Is there a way to pay for musicians but not the podcasts.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#224

Post by alpb »

Traster wrote: post #218
bowmessage wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ok sure, but that's not likely to have anything to do with app store pricing etc. That's just GCP trying to acquire customers. They're not going to start trying to punish customers for other decisions because that would be an incredibly way to shoot yourself in the foot. This is a problem AWS already sees a lot.

Smaller companies who partner with large companies like Google or Microsoft see these large co's as single entities and not through their sub-divisions. Spotify probably partners with Google in Ads, Android, Cloud areas at minimum. Spotify is already a publicly-known large GCP user. So they might be just playing their chips.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#225

Post by sunflowerfly »

judge2020 wrote: post #18
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?

The opportunity for developers (read: the investors and C-level management at companies) being able to save marginally on their cut to Google by allowing the user to select non-Google Play billing. However, I wholly imagine Google agreed to this because they'll still get their cut of subscription revenue on the backend, so Google might only take 25% instead of 30% when the app doesn't use Play Store billing.

And, make it more difficult to cancel the subscription.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#226

Post by xphos »

Maybe this is controversial but the fact that it's "revolutionary" to use/not use a non play store payment options is a sign of monopolization of payment method this should already have existed. And while I know Google is not the worst (looking at you apple) it's still not an achievement in my eyes it's management imposed dilemma.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#227

Post by munk-a »

FredPret wrote: post #221
munk-a wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest difference is that Spotify isn't a monopoly at the end of the day - it's a popular service. A lot of people still use different methods to listen to music like YouTube, iTunes, bandcamp and a plethora of others. If you, as a band, want to make money on your music you aren't required to do business through spotify, it's a choice that most people make because it's free money. On the other hand if yo…

But the very concept of being an mobile app developer was brought to life by Apple, and later Google. 15 years ago, you could not really be a pro app dev. Now, you can, but with a 30% cut. You are strictly better off. And if you think the 30% is too much, do something else. These companies created something that grew into a foundational element of modern life in about a decade. That’s amazing and should be awarded wi…

The developer who made a useful website with a link to their paypal has been mostly obsoleted by app developers. Small tool development isn't a novel creation of modern mobile devices - it's just the packaging of these into bespoke binaries that have highly regulated distribution channels. A cynical person might assume that part of the reason Apple hated flash so much is that it threatened to stunt the upcoming app market. To lend some credence to this position, things like Kofi have taken off in recent (on my scale) years as HTML5 gained enough traction to essentially duplicate the functionality of flash without any of the security issues - I personally think this is what led to the feature to save websites as apps on iOS and that is something that doesn't threaten Apple much with their network advantage, but has the potential to cut into their revenue if it gets popular enough.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#228

Post by enos_feedler »

Bilal_io wrote: post #157
enos_feedler wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think if we got the OS level payments API that you envision Apple and Google would do a decent job policing the user experience

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#229

Post by enos_feedler »

smileybarry wrote: post #197
enos_feedler wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I would hate carrier-based charging. We still have a shared cellular account in my family so I would end up billing someone else, rather than my credit card, and that's on top of giving my carrier more lock-in (subscriptions? delayed billing? etc.). The Payment Request API existed in browsers for years (always saw it in settings but never in actual use other than Google Pay/Apple Pay), what about something like that?…

Yes thats what I see happening. On top of this there would be strict policing by Apple and Google to provide a good user experience. Carriers and banks would certainly be subscription providers. The reason why I like carriers specifically is because they invest in a core resource of the mobile computing experience. Apple provides the compute and storage, while Verizon etc provide the network. So far, Apple has captured most of the value in mobile computing due to aggressive subsidies. If carriers could take a small share of app revenue they would be getting something back. If I subscribe to Stadia via Verizon, it means Verizon can pump that money into mmWave 5G to lower the latency on that cloud gaming experience. I basically just want healthy investment into the infrastructure that matters. I don’t give a shit if Spotify gets to keep more money or not.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#230

Post by greatgib »

This is so terribly full of corporate bullshit snake-oil.

I would like so much that, one day, the whole tech community would decide to call out loudly each time of abusive PR like that is published. With something like "no one is duped by your shit, we are not stupid enough".

"User Choice Billing" => it is a feature when we don't racket you.

"When users choose Google Play, it’s because they count on us to deliver a safe experience, and that includes in-app payment systems that protect users’ data and financial information." => No, Google says that but users don't. Remember it's a racket they have no choice than using the Google store in most cases to have their device working. No one let you the choice to install your bank app from anywhere else than the play store.

"We think that users should continue to have the choice to use Play’s billing system when they install an app from Google Play" => this is legendary as a sentence: we decided that you will not have the choice to integrate our billing system. But we said the work 'choice', so like in communist Russia, it looks like that you decided to use us (...without constraint...)

"We also think it’s critical that alternative billing systems meet similarly high safety standards in protecting users’ personal data and sensitive financial information." => Even if the user willingly don't want to do business with Google's racketeering shit, still we decided that we will decide what the user and app developer can do. Because... fuck you!

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