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Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

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Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#291

Post by ehsankia »

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…

> Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions

What you did there is subtle, but you're comparing apples to oranges. "payment card companies" charge 2-3%. It's platforms like Steam, Play store or App store that charge 30%. Those are not comparable.

I'm not arguing that 30% is the right number, but the analogy is very flawed. Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic. Let alone the dozens of other things that you get with a few lines of code (cloud saves, free in-game text/voice chat, workshop, marketplace, free download and easy patching, achievements, etc) and without having to host a single server or maintain anything. How much would it cost both in development but also hosting cost to code all of that yourself?

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#292

Post by judge2020 »

Drew_ wrote: post #250
kenhwang wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty standard Google playbook these days. Instead of building something and then cancelling it later when it doesn't gain traction to get their PR win, they decide to cash in on the PR win upfront with a big partnership announcement, then cancel the product before building it if it doesn't gain sufficient traction, thus saving on engineering costs and streamlining the typical Google technical offering lifecycle. Be…

This is such an odd conspiracy theory. This new effort is a response to regulation in markets around the world like South Korea [1] and the Netherlands [2] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/4/22763040/google-in-app-pu... . [2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/24/22852966/apple-netherlan...

This sure would have saved Stadia. Sadly, they'd already put in the work securiring partners (Bunge with Destiny 2) and basically had a full product that was first demoed in 2018 under the name 'Project Stream'[0].

0: https://youtu.be/yLPvyKvtbwE

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#293

Post by canadianfella »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#294

Post by ehsankia »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #238
AndrewDucker wrote: post #54

It has always seemed weird that if I use my Spotify account on my Android phone, iPad, and desktop, who gets a cut of my money depends on which one I use to set up billing.

That is because the person who does the billing incurs the costs...the billing isn't based on usage, it is based on who processes the bill.

processing fees are on the order of 2-3% at most, platform fees are 30%. That being said, the platforms do incur all sorts of other costs, but these costs are unequally shared across all apps. A free app with no ads does not pay anything but gets all the same features as a 100$ app who contributes 30$ on each sale. The problem is that there isn't a more "fair" solution.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#295

Post by eyelidlessness »

dale_glass wrote: post #205
falcolas wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or phrased slightly differently, Spotify takes 30% of revenue generated by selling access to artists' songs.

Seems pretty fair, since if it was easy for an artist to undercut Spotify, they'd be doing it.

I think it’s worth taking fairness as a separate question, especially when posing the question about alternatives.

This classic article by Steve Albini captures what monetizing music was like for artists before the Internet: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music

That said, many artists have objected to subscription models like Spotify’s (Taylor Swift notably), or a la carte like Apple’s (Pink Floyd and Beatles’ estates notably). Most paid Internet music services have been a mixed bag of inconsistent payouts and artistic control. Spotify is definitely among them, even if it might be more attractive than a Record Deal^tm.

In my experience and inferred from experiences of other artists, SoundCloud has the best exposure benefits for lesser known artists combined with the most freedom to monetize, and Bandcamp is the most straightforward self publishing platform for built in monetization.

Comparatively, Spotify is basically, like Apple, filling the void of the record labels they usurped. While their terms are comparably “fair”, it’s easy to understand why they’re not ideal for a lot of artists.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#296

Post by ehsankia »

obert wrote: post #149

Imagine if AWS, Azure, Gcloud were charging for your VMs a % of your business revenue… AppStores are services, they should have a fixed price like any other service, and that can cover also variable costs like cents per download, cents per review, etc

You're paying for compute, whereas you can put an app on a store for (basically) free. A million people can download your app and you wouldn't pay a penny more, whereas if a million people suddenly used your AWS app, you'd see a nice bump in cost.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#297

Post by viceroyalbean »

ikt wrote: post #272
chihuahua wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what I have been doing all along.

which is odd because Rogan made most of his money from Youtube which is also Google, youtube was his biggest promotional tool. So I imagine you don't watch youtube either?

I'm not sure those are directly comparable. For YouTube you are not contributing to Joe Rogan unless you watch his videos and add views/popularity/ad revenue. Spotify, however, signed a separate contract that (AFAIK) is unrelated to listening count. In that sense any Spotify subscription has paid into the money Rogan gets, which isn't the same on YouTube.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#298

Post by eyelidlessness »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #280
ikt wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is odd because Rogan made most of his money from Youtube which is also Google, youtube was his biggest promotional tool. So I imagine you don't watch youtube either?

He's still on YouTube btw, so still making money off the YouTube platform and gaining listeners/distribution from there. Also, there's far worse people than Joe Rogan who make a full living off YouTube, so yeah just completely ideologically inconsistent if someone is going to reject Spotify because of Rogan and still use YouTube.

Some of us actually don’t use either of these products. I can’t speak for the person who got the whatabout, but I think it’s presumptuous to jump straight to hypocrisy without any information about other choices and how they might or might not be consistent.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#299

Post by godelski »

endgame wrote: post #87
olau wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Since we are heading to a world with no cash, what's stopping the card companies from doing that after there's no way back? This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that day.

Honestly I think it is more concerning the data that they get.

But with increased transaction prices, the only way I can think of is by legislation, but we know that legislation is typically reactive and not proactive. So if the CC companies go slow enough, it's like boiling a frog. And no, cryptocurrency isn't a solution to this as (the vast majority of) transactions aren't private nor anonymous.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#300

Post by godelski »

applecrazy wrote: post #96
endgame wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Since we are heading to a world with no cash, what's stopping the card companies from doing that after there's no way back? This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that day.

> This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that day. A big thing discouraging me from using cash is how suspicious people are of you when you pay in cash. I've definitely gotten weird looks from cashiers when doing so, especially when you pay in larger bills (like $100).

I've never gotten weird looks when paying with cash except during the beginning of the pandemic. But I think that's a special case where we can have exceptions.
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