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Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

timetoplayfair.com

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Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#51

Post by alibarber »

numair wrote: post #43
alibarber wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Making life difficult for Spotify could be seen as a way to carry on Steve’s legacy" - how does this benefit me as an Apple customer?

You might have forgotten this because the market has copied almost everything they’ve done, all of their aesthetic choices, etc — Apple creates products that are highly, highly opinionated. The Apple consumer isn’t buying access to a generic computing device, they are buying a point of view. Sometimes that point of view is compatible with what you, personally, want. Sometimes it’s clearly obnoxious and Apple needs to…

I agree with this for the most part - it is just that time has shown that that POV has changed (such as allowing native apps and the app store ecosystem for one). I just don't think that carrying on a grudge against a product that is hugely popular with users (but of course is not without its own downsides) based on a point of view that was held nearly 10 years ago is a particularly sensible way to go about things.

For the most part I'd definitely agree, Apple has done some great things that went away from the established norms - but in this case, given that the song I listen to on Spotify will sound identical to listening to it on Apple music, the whole thing does stink of Apple giving itself the upper hand.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#52

Post by nerdwaller »

I’ve been waiting to see Spotify follow Netflix and create their own label, instead of just curated playlists. They’ll otherwise always be at the whim of renegotiations. (Not entirely relevant to the post, but seems like it’s an avenue for them to go to break a little from other players).

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#53

Post by maaaats »

numair wrote: post #17

Considering all of the dirty tricks and favoritism between Spotify and Facebook, I’m not sure they are the right messengers for this. Oh, and one of the early execs involved with Spotify told me, point blank, “that man needs to die already” in reference to Steve Jobs before his passing. Yeah, I was just as shocked as you might be in reading that. I doubt I was the only one aware of such dark sentiments. The executive…

What are the dirty tricks you're mentioning?

And I'm not shocked about your comment, as I don't really believe it. I don't think HN should be a place to spread gossip and possibly lies like this.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#54

Post by g105b »

saagarjha wrote: post #33
digianarchist wrote: post #10

Pretty annoying as an Apple Watch user to find out only Apple Music is allowed to store music on the device itself.

I don't see why other watchOS apps cannot store music on the watch itself. Don't apps get some local storage space? Why can't they use that?

Downloading and Streaming are two different royalty models.

Legally, you have to pay more expensive royalties if you download music (referred to as "right to reproduce") rather than stream (right to transmit), so a special type of downloaded file must be used that can't be exported in any way. This is what Apple are prohibiting.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#55

Post by VBprogrammer »

fmo91 wrote: post #39
judah wrote: post #29

This exemplifies some of the reasons proprietary app store lock-in is bad for consumers. Progressive Web Apps -- web apps that are installable and available offline without any app store -- are a viable alternative, and ultimately a threat to Apple's app store racket. It's likely why iOS Safari continues to drag it's feet on PWA support.

I agree with that. However, what worries me about PWAs is discoverability. How can I find a catalog of available PWAs to download? Is there a way?

Counter point: the discoverability on all of the app stores I've tried has been pretty terrible. Unless I know the name of an app that I'm trying to install I almost never find what I'm looking for. Most often I search for 'the best app to do X' on Google and then put a name from that into the app store.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#56

Post by simongr3dal »

tomphoolery wrote: post #31
dmitriid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify not playing fair with artists Spotify is paying as much as music industry extorts from it. Where does the money go? Ask the big labels that are the ones paying artists.

The big labels aren't important, they're going to get their money anyway. This hurts the smaller labels, like my label, and countless others who never see a god damn dime from Spotify streaming. Meanwhile, Bandcamp streams the songs for free but they allow you to pay what you want. I've made at least 10x the profit from selling tracks on Bandcamp than I ever did in the streaming world. If Spotify wants to play fair,…

I agree with you, but maybe bandcamp is just that much more lucrative because people pay more money for each song/play?

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#57

Post by novaRom »

kalleboo wrote: post #21
yaseer wrote: post #2

Seeing this makes me want to get even further away from Apple's ecosystem. 4 years ago, I was all in- Mac, iPad, iPhone. In the last 4 years, I've been driven away by Apple seeming contempt for professional users. Their contempt for other competition is even graver cause for concern.

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.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#58

Post by pedroaraujo »

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…

A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribes to Spotify through Apple devices. This cost doesn't doesn't exist for PC users, for example.

They probably could live with it but I can understand why it feels like an artificial cost that Apple came up with. It would be an understandable cost if they were selling the Spotify App through the App Store and using the actual store infrastructure for supporting Spotify... but they are not.

The app is nothing more than a portal to the entire Spotify infrastructure, it doesn't weight anything to Apple.

And then we have the subject of the direct competition, Apple Music doesn't need to have their profits cut in 30% because they are owned by Apple itself.

And it's even worse if they are using Siri, Homepad and Apple Watch to make Apple Music more appealing in comparison to Spotify.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#59

Post by snaily »

numair wrote: post #17

Considering all of the dirty tricks and favoritism between Spotify and Facebook, I’m not sure they are the right messengers for this. Oh, and one of the early execs involved with Spotify told me, point blank, “that man needs to die already” in reference to Steve Jobs before his passing. Yeah, I was just as shocked as you might be in reading that. I doubt I was the only one aware of such dark sentiments. The executive…

This does not ring true to my experience.

I was at the Spotify office the day the news of Steve's untimely death broke. It was a solemn day, and the the one senior executive I spoke to expressed true sorrow, as if a longtime friend had passed. Jobs was incredibly respected by the Spotify crew, as far as I'm concerned.

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