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Addressing Spotify’s Claims

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Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#231

Post by mythz »

rocqua wrote: post #213
mythz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes there is. It's called anti-trust law and a large part is about pure market share. That's not a law against having one, only abusing one.

Mergers get blocked simply because the resulting company would have too much market share. That is a straight up ban on monopoly.

> That is a straight up ban on monopoly.

No, it's still not illegal to have a Monopoly. The FTC can block mergers that can create them if they believe it will harm consumers, e.g. through higher prices caused by less competition, but they typically won't block them if they think consumers will benefit through operational efficiencies gained by consolidation.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#232

Post by westpfelia »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #206
westpfelia wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I wonder why companies are getting carried away with this kind of profit destroying greed again and again. They are killing their own golden goose. " Could simply be that they dont know what the world will look like in 5 years so they might as well cash out while they can. No use playing the long game when the next big game changer could be around the corner?

Could be, but I very much doubt they see it that way.

Maybe not Google. But I would be a little shocked to find that Apple at least doesnt think that way to a degree. I mean... Look what the Ipod did. The Ipod was a game changer.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#233

Post by josephg »

infinity0 wrote: post #210
josephg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I totally agree that the app store is a monopoly and leveraging the iOS app store to pressure spotify (a competitor to apple music) is anticompetitive. But I'm very confused how you're twisting Apple's huge contribution toward LLVM and Webkit over the years into some evil act. Even if all you want is for GCC to be the best compiler it can be, work on LLVM has contributed to that goal by raising the bar. Predicta…

> But I'm very confused how you're twisting Apple's huge contribution toward LLVM and Webkit over the years into some evil act. I'm not twisting anything into an evil act, read my words more closely. Some of Apple's contributions to open source have been beneficial to the rest of us, because there are competitors to keep them in check in those areas they chose to do open source in. You should have no doubt that, had…

What areas are there no competitors, in the space of things they opensource? LLVM has GCC. Webkit has (amongst others) blink. Darwin has Linux. FoundationDB has dozens of great competitors.

And even in the absence of competitors, how is new permissively licensed opensource software a bad thing? How, exactly do you weaponise opensourcing decent software which has no competitors? Can you give some examples?

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#234

Post by xvector »

infinity0 wrote: post #189
ms013 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They owe nothing for anything they legitimately use: that’s the consequence of open source licensing as a developer. If a developer expects a project to get a fair share of revenue from projects that use it, they are free to adopt a licensing model that dictates that. That is a perfectly reasonable licensing model. I get it: I had an open source project that HP built a product around many years ago, but modulo a coup…

The fact that they set up the legal structure of the "App Store" in a more restrictive/monopolistic way than traditional GNU/Linux package repositories, is no excuse if they are going to start playing the "moral" card like in OP's link. They benefit substantially from open source and give very little back in concrete financial terms, yet complain that Spotify is asking the same thing and portray them as freeloaders.…

> In reality, Apple are doing far more freeloading off of other projects than Spotify is doing off of them, legal or no.

You cannot make any moral assumptions here because the whole point of many of these open-source projects is that people can use them freely, with no obligation - moral, or otherwise - to contribute back.

> should be a free marketplace, like how regular GNU/Linux package repositories have worked for decades.

Yup, this'll end beautifully. It won't devolve into a malware-ridden mess that destroys the privacy and security of users. The users that pay for a curated ecosystem and idiot-proof privacy/security.

Package repositories might be great for the HN crowd. But I think it's fairly blind to think it won't harm Apple's target audience.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#235

Post by emsy »

andromeduck wrote: post #192
headmelted wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still missing the point. Apple owns a mall (iOS). In that mall, Apple owns a book store (iTunes). Amazon also has a book store in the mall (Kindle). Apple does not want to sell Amazon's books (Kindle format ebooks) in it's store (iTunes). Ok. Apple decrees that no store in the mall shall sell any books but iTunes books, which only they may sell. Not Ok.

Amazon is free to sell books in their app, they just need to pay a portion of their revenue for the privilege of doing so much like in the mall.

And Apple is forcing everyone to sell in their mall and no other. That's pretty much the point.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#236

Post by infinity0 »

xvector wrote: post #234
infinity0 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they set up the legal structure of the "App Store" in a more restrictive/monopolistic way than traditional GNU/Linux package repositories, is no excuse if they are going to start playing the "moral" card like in OP's link. They benefit substantially from open source and give very little back in concrete financial terms, yet complain that Spotify is asking the same thing and portray them as freeloaders.…

> In reality, Apple are doing far more freeloading off of other projects than Spotify is doing off of them, legal or no. You cannot make any moral assumptions here because the whole point of many of these open-source projects is that people can use them freely , with no obligation - moral, or otherwise - to contribute back. > should be a free marketplace, like how regular GNU/Linux package repositories have worked fo…

> You cannot make any moral assumptions here

I'm not making any moral assumptions. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of Apple's moral assumptions that they're making in their posting.

> It won't devolve into a malware-ridden mess that destroys the privacy and security of users.

Windows, GNU/Linux, and in fact Mac OS X itself, are all doing fine. The real security problem is elsewhere, it is disingenuous to use this as an excuse for monopolistic practises.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#237

Post by schrodinger »

askmike wrote: post #216
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that 30% is egregious oligopoly pricing, but 1% is definitely insufficient to run a payment service and a software distribution platform that includes any sort of fraud prevention and support.

In 2018 (edit: 2017) they made roughly $11.5 billion[1] with their 30% cut. 1% instead would be $383 million a year. You think that wouldn't be sufficient to run a digital store (including the things mentioned)? Pretty sure you can do it with far less than that. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples-ap...

2 or 3% goes directly to the credit card processor, no?

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#238

Post by saagarjha »

valleyer wrote: post #229
saagarjha wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, if FreeBSD didn't want that to happen, they should have licensed under GPL.

FreeBSD quite famously is not licensed under the GPL but rather under a BSD-style license.

I am aware of this. Hence the reason for mentioning it–Apple clearly chose to use BSD because it's not GPL, but I don't think it's fair to complain that Apple is bound to contribute back. This is the tradeoff the project made when they chose the BSD license.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#239

Post by xvector »

life_of_sigh wrote: post #201

From apples blog "And developers, from first-time engineers to larger companies, can rest assured that everyone is playing by the same set of rules." This is the key issue spotify has, Apple music is not playing by the same rules, in fact their monopoly on the app store its undermining Spotifies fair competition. Its undermining it becuase Apple Music a direct competitor of Spotify effectivly doesnt pay the 30% Apple…

> Its undermining it becuase Apple Music a direct competitor of Spotify effectivly doesnt pay the 30% Apple tax which makes it hugely cheaper.

...as is the case with every native app? Notes doesn't have to pay the same tax as paid notes apps, for example. The only solution here to establish "fairness" as you want it is to abolish any marketplace fees entirely, and that's pretty nonsensical, given that 15%/30% isn't a bad fee as far as middlemen go.

> prevents them from linking to a landing page to describe Spotify business model, it prevents them fron doing anything or Apple will pull the app off the store.

And so every single app would simply link to an external payment system. The App Store would cease to generate any meaningful revenue. Apps would freeload off of an expensive and involved review process, reaping all of their benefits, while not contributing back to the service or platform which allows them to exist in the first place.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#240

Post by chj »

xvector wrote: post #224
chj wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, why don't Apple Music pay its "fair share" of 15%~30% to Google since it's hosted on Google Play? They are also using Google's tools and ecosystem.

Google also takes a 30% commission.

Apple doesn't have to pay because Google is so generous as to allow them to link to their own payment method.
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