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Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

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Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#371

Post by boogies »

ehsankia wrote: post #309
boogies wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic. What % of payments come through payment card companies vs. cash/crypto/checks/etc. ?

What does that have to do with what I said? I'm not talking about payment companies at all. 30% is for platforms, not payment companies.

It sounded like you were saying those platforms were justified in taking a 10× higher cut than payment companies because they provide services that developers would make fewer sales without and would have much more difficulty implementing and hosting themselves. But what makes payment companies not platforms? They seem similarly difficult to sell without, similarly difficult to reimplemement and host yourself, and just as valuable as store platforms for the same reasons you gave.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#372

Post by cush »

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…

The prices can be different. The customer may choose the cheaper, less convenient option.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#373

Post by lxgr »

rswail wrote: post #334
lxgr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making the situation worse for consumers. The only viable path towards finding a fair price for this service (apparently deemed essential and basically a steal by Apple and Google, but worth less than nothing by many app developers) would seem to be competition. Why not offer both, explicitly allowing for different prices, special deals only for non-store subscri…

Or regulation. In Australia, the Reserve Bank regulates interchange fees and requires the end user to be made aware of card processing fees which can't exceed a percentage/value of the transaction. Similar regulation applies in the EU. There's no reason why Google/Apple/etc stores can't be similarly regulated.

That's possible too, but I believe there's much more uncertainty about the fair market value of app store compared to out-of-band subscriptions.

Of course it would also be possible to do both, i.e. to mandate either a fixed rate or alternatively allowing out-of-band payments.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#374

Post by lxgr »

gumby wrote: post #314
mustyoshi wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more credit card companies could offer virtual cards, that way you can even tell which service leaked your card. Capital One offers them for free.

citi used to but it was so clumsy to use I didn't bother. You'd think it would be in their interest to do so.

Issuing banks are generally not liable for card-not-present fraud, so it's essentially just extra work with little benfit to them.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#375

Post by Ntrails »

Coolerbythelake wrote: post #352
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Spotify is the best example here, since I'm not particularly convinced that more cash going to them would end up in the hands of musicians. But certainly, if I subscribe to The Economist I want as much of my money as possible to go to the journalists who actually write the content.

Let me tell you, as a musician and artist, the miniscule portion provided to the artists who supply the content is a travesty and a crime. This new partnership only serves to add more hands in the pie and squeeze out any hope of increases for the content creators. Every time you click on Spotify you are fueling the beast. I make more money selling one vinyl record at one live gig than I will make on Spotify for month…

Spotify seems designed to over-reward the high volume artists at the expense of the little guy assuming I understand their model correctly.

Current:

     totalMoney x (totalListenTimeForArtist/totalListenTime)
imo the sensible system looks like:

     PerUserMoney x (PerUserListenTimeForArtist/TotalUserListenTime)
ie distribute each users subscription (minus fees) across the artists they list to so they don't just get dominated by big/popular music on repeat

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#376

Post by munk-a »

skinnymuch wrote: post #216
munk-a wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Epic can't honestly comment on what cut they're taking while their storefront loses immense amounts of money[1] - I agree that a lower percentage is probably a lot more reasonable but I don't think EGS can serve as that example. 1. https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-has-sunk-dollar500m-into-the-ep...

Losing money at first is how almost everything works.

I know that Silicon Valley is a hell of a drug but starting a business by burning two hundred million dollars a year that you haven't yet earned is not how nearly anything works. It only works for tech startups and it's bizarre since tech doesn't actually cost that much money.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#377

Post by Melatonic »

Coolerbythelake wrote: post #352
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Spotify is the best example here, since I'm not particularly convinced that more cash going to them would end up in the hands of musicians. But certainly, if I subscribe to The Economist I want as much of my money as possible to go to the journalists who actually write the content.

Let me tell you, as a musician and artist, the miniscule portion provided to the artists who supply the content is a travesty and a crime. This new partnership only serves to add more hands in the pie and squeeze out any hope of increases for the content creators. Every time you click on Spotify you are fueling the beast. I make more money selling one vinyl record at one live gig than I will make on Spotify for month…

I subscribe to Spotify and I agree it is a travesty - hopefully some day we get a platform that is as easy to use and is not so unfriendly to artists.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#378

Post by ehsankia »

obert wrote: post #341
ehsankia wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

as per my previous comment, they could charge a fixed price per view/download and any other functionality of the app store. It would be the same price for everyone, regardless of revenue, and for most apps, it would be less, fairer, and more transparent

It could be an option, but there is also value for everyone, poor or rich, no matter in what country, being able to host an app, no matter no popular, without going bankrupt. It's the same with Youtube; the ad-model is not ideal, but there is also value to being able to, with the click of a button, host a video that can be watched by millions of people without you paying a penny. Two decades ago that would've been very hard for an average person to do.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#379

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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…

Lol. You can't play the "I want my money to go to the people that deserve it" card, in the very same sentence as "I want the convenience of using Spotify". Spotify pays artists less than Tidal, Apple and Amazon. And if you're using any of those services, you've already decided that convenience is more important than paying the artists. I use Tidal because it pays artists the most. I also buy music that I listen to a lot on CD or, previously Bandcamp - but Bandcamp just got bought by Epic, so no more purchases from them.

Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

#380

Post by ehsankia »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #323
ehsankia wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course there is. There are multiple other ways that Apple and Google could decide to charge application providers, but they've decided this one makes them the most money. They could have a standing charge for each app, with charges per thousand downloads, for instance, which would more closely follow their actual costs, and charge 5% for payments. That would have a different set of positives and negatives, but the…

So if a large non-profit wants to create an app, let's say Wikipedia, they would have to potentially pay millions? What about people in third world countries where value of their money is worth a fraction, how will they compete?
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