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Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

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Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#41

Post by whywhywhywhy »

vineyardmike wrote: post #34
ecshafer wrote: post #11

If I write an app for the app store and sell it for $10, apple gets $3. If I sell it for $5, apple gets $1.5. If I sell a subscription for $10/month they get $3 a month. Apple's work is the same for all of these. Their monopolistic position is how they can demand a pretty exorbitant 30% cut. Walmart, Costco, et al wish they had a 30% profit on everything the sold. For the record I don't even really like Spotify that…

> Walmart, Costco, et al wish they had a 30% profit on everything the sold. Is the work the same for them too? They all charge a percentage of sticker price. Oh and none of those stickers say free. The tension I see is that Apple’s work is correlated with number of developers and number of users. They very much have a long tail of developers and apps with effectively no users or income, but who still cost Apple money…

This would all make sense but why doesn’t Apple get 30% of software subscriptions on MacOS or subscriptions initiated through the Safari browser.

The dev work is the same for building those thing as iOS and Apple fields support questions about those things from naive users like the Snapchat users you described.

If the iOS 30% cut is justified then it makes no sense not to charge say Notion or OpenAI for subscriptions transacted from Safari. If that seems ridiculous then maybe it’s time to question the iOS cut because it’s inconsistent.

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#43

Post by yardie »

ecshafer wrote: post #11

If I write an app for the app store and sell it for $10, apple gets $3. If I sell it for $5, apple gets $1.5. If I sell a subscription for $10/month they get $3 a month. Apple's work is the same for all of these. Their monopolistic position is how they can demand a pretty exorbitant 30% cut. Walmart, Costco, et al wish they had a 30% profit on everything the sold. For the record I don't even really like Spotify that…

> Walmart, Costco, et al wish they had a 30% profit on everything the sold.

You should see the markup these retailers charge on accessories. If 30% revenue upsets you then 300% on HDMI cables, USB cables, game accessories is going to blow your mind.

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#44

Post by flanked-evergl »

sleepybrett wrote: post #20

Wait is this seriously spotify complaining? Spotify who is fucked every band and musical act on the planet. They can fuck, and I mean this, all the way off.

> Spotify who is fucked every band and musical act on the planet.

I have not really thought about this much until you brought it up, could you share some data in this regard? How much has the revenue of record labels declined since Spotify became prominent? I can't find good stats about that, I can just see the recorded music industry revenue has grown quite substantially and consistently since they came on the market, and was in decline before they came on the market [1].

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272305/global-revenue-of...

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#45

Post by kepler1 »

ecshafer wrote: post #11

If I write an app for the app store and sell it for $10, apple gets $3. If I sell it for $5, apple gets $1.5. If I sell a subscription for $10/month they get $3 a month. Apple's work is the same for all of these. Their monopolistic position is how they can demand a pretty exorbitant 30% cut. Walmart, Costco, et al wish they had a 30% profit on everything the sold. For the record I don't even really like Spotify that…

What's the principle you're advocating? That the number of 30% is too high, but 20% would be ok? How are we to decide what number is right? Isn't the principle that parties entering into an agreement voluntarily and with competition get to set their own prices?

Do you follow the same rule you're advocating for? When your app some day makes more than 30% margin on customers revenue, you're going to lower your prices, right?

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#46

Post by goosedragons »

supportengineer wrote: post #13
ecshafer wrote: post #11

If I write an app for the app store and sell it for $10, apple gets $3. If I sell it for $5, apple gets $1.5. If I sell a subscription for $10/month they get $3 a month. Apple's work is the same for all of these. Their monopolistic position is how they can demand a pretty exorbitant 30% cut. Walmart, Costco, et al wish they had a 30% profit on everything the sold. For the record I don't even really like Spotify that…

Aren't you free to use Android instead?

Just potentially throw away hundreds or thousands of dollars in purchases for apps/IAPs and related things! FFS there isn't even a way to watch videos purchased on iTunes on Android so if I want to watch my copy of Futurama on a phone, it has to be an iPhone ( and for those in the U.S, "Movies Anywhere" doesn't exist outside it and I have no idea if that even applies to TV).

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#47

Post by blibble »

Veuxdo wrote: post #4
whiddershins wrote: post #2

I don’t see Spotify making any suggestion of a solution that addresses their concerns without boxing Apple out of the payment process entirely. I get why what Apple has in place is onerous. I also see that Apple needs to get paid somehow. So what’s the third option? Edit: My vote for the third option has always been, and remains, allowing of side loading apps. And this can be only for users who enable it. But it seem…

> I also see that Apple needs to get paid somehow. What makes Apple entitled to a cut of Spotify's revenue?

don't really see how spotify are different to apple

it's another middleman taking a cut

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#48

Post by whywhywhywhy »

etchalon wrote: post #25
ecshafer wrote: post #11

If I write an app for the app store and sell it for $10, apple gets $3. If I sell it for $5, apple gets $1.5. If I sell a subscription for $10/month they get $3 a month. Apple's work is the same for all of these. Their monopolistic position is how they can demand a pretty exorbitant 30% cut. Walmart, Costco, et al wish they had a 30% profit on everything the sold. For the record I don't even really like Spotify that…

30% is not exorbitant when comparing to say, Walmart, who purchase products wholesale for up to 50% less then retail pricing (depending on the product category). In fact, when 30% was announced, it was considered generous compared to what developers were paying Best Buy, CompUSA, mobile carriers, etc before that.

Physical store comparison makes no sense. To stock your product it actually takes up physical space in a store that is limited and could be used to sell something else, if it doesn’t sell they have to pay to destroy it or send it back to you.

I understand storing/downloading binaries isn’t free. But it’s nowhere near the same logistically.

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#49

Post by rstupek »

menus wrote: post #23
zshrc wrote: post #3

Sounds like a lot of complaining. For the record, Apple Music pays artist more.

https://www.macworld.com/article/225763/how-taylor-swift-con...

I think you missed where her albums weren't on Spotify either?

Re: Holding Apple Accountable: The Future of the Internet Economy Depends on It

#50

Post by fipar »

Veuxdo wrote: post #4
whiddershins wrote: post #2

I don’t see Spotify making any suggestion of a solution that addresses their concerns without boxing Apple out of the payment process entirely. I get why what Apple has in place is onerous. I also see that Apple needs to get paid somehow. So what’s the third option? Edit: My vote for the third option has always been, and remains, allowing of side loading apps. And this can be only for users who enable it. But it seem…

> I also see that Apple needs to get paid somehow. What makes Apple entitled to a cut of Spotify's revenue?

They're not entitled, and neither is Spotify entitled to sell on the app store on terms they want. It's just a business transaction. It either works for both sides, or it doesn't.

It's understandable that Spotify doesn't want to pay that cut, and they can try what they're trying, or also just leave the app store.

Speaking of entitlements, they're also not entitled to influence on small countries law makers, but they can try what they're trying with that too: https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/spotify-threatens-to-...

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