Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

Post by Mindwipe » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

Blackbeard_ wrote: post #62

georgespencer wrote: post #44

Can 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…

RE: Football Monopolies can have negative effects without trying to extract monopoly rents. The competition between BT and Sky massively increased the TV rights price for e.g. the premier league , so the clubs got much more money. In theory, they used this to buy better players etc and increase the quality of the league. Although you now have to pay twice, the quality of the product has gone up. So it's not a zero-su…

Post by AimForTheBushes » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

novaRom wrote: post #57

kalleboo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think so too. And then I look at the alternative ecosystems. Google? Amazon? Microsoft? Not even tempted...

Why do you need ecosystem own by one company? You can have Ubuntu laptop, Android phone, WebOS TV. They all support Spotify and Netflix, you can cast videos from Android phone to your LG TV.

Post by GeekyBear » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #266

bunderbunder wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting philosophical question there. Can a vendor who has 15% marketshare really be called a monopoly? Sure, they have complete control over who publishes on their own platform, but that sort of thing happens all the time without anyone batting an eyelash at it: The major console vendors do this, as did all cell phone vendors in the pre-smartphone era. My digital camera does this. That leaves me think…

> There's an interesting philosophical question there. Can a vendor who has 15% marketshare really be called a monopoly? Philosophically interesting perhaps, but legally irrelevant. EU competition law is primarily concerned with dominant market positions and the abuse of that dominance. As the junior partner in a duopoly, Apple are inarguably powerful enough to substantially manipulate the market. https://en.wikipedi…

Post by fnordsensei » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #175

fnordsensei wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is for the lawyers to make sense of, but in electing to be a platform provider, they should be held to higher standards in my opinion. They did indeed have "the service" in question, it was just limited to Apple's own offering. It's a scenario not unlike net neutrality: an infrastructure provider that is also a content provider can put themselves or select customers in a position where free market forces are hin…

> They did indeed have "the service" in question, it was just limited to Apple's own offering. Again, there's a difference between "Siri can talk to our music service" and "We have a stable public API that 3rd party vendors can hook into to connect up to a music service". They're not the same thing, and one is a lot easier than the other.

Post by grotsnot » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

ric2b wrote: post #345

krait wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does pay artists a much larger cut than Spotify. At e.g. 5000 streams Apple pays the artist ca 37 USD vs the 22 USD that Spotify pays out.

$22*1.30 = $35.1 Interesting, so Spotify could pay nearly the same simply by paying the 30% to artists instead of Apple. And of course, those 37 might already be partly paid by Spotify anyway.