Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#541

Post by m-p-3 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

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…

Apple does provide the infrastructure to distribute the app to customers and does deserve some compensation for it.

But on the other hand, Apple is stepping into a market (music streaming) from which they control top to bottom and has a advantage no one has (no IAP transactions fee, they basically pay themselves for it), which in a way is unfair.

If they want to remain fair to competition, they should waive IAPs costs or reduce them significantly in market they engage themselves in which they are direct competitors.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#542

Post by PunksATawnyFill » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #429

volandovengo wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time I've been confused about the rules of monopolies. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE into Windows so much so that the US threatened heavily to break up the company. Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...

They bundled _while_ having a monopoly. They could have bundled or they could have had a monopoly, but doing both is where it crosses the anti-trust line since your customers are effectively captive. What does Apple have a monopoly on? What does Amazon have a monopoly on? Google arguably has a monopoly on search which could put them in an unfavorable position should an antitrust case be brought against them (maybe wh…

Microsoft never had a monopoly. Apple existed at the time, as did Unix variants.

The attack on Microsoft was grandstanding BS, while the government has allowed the REAL customer-harming monopoly of Ticketmaster to not only continue but grow with its acquisitions of LiveNation and StubHub.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#543

Post by giovannibajo1 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

colde wrote: post #153

tumetab1 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue of the 30% cut alone is enough for further investigation, Not really, it's 30% for everyone, not just Spotify.

> Not really, it's 30% for everyone, not just Spotify. As they mention on the website. That's not true. It's not 30% for Uber or Deliveroo. And most importantly, it's not 30% for Apple Music.

It's 30% for "in-app purchases" which is a specific API which allows one-click payment for one-time purchases or subscriptions ONLY FOR digital goods, and the payment goes through the iTunes account (eg: credit card).

If you buy a real world product or service, you need to use a third party payment service like Stripe (or Apple Pay, if you want), there is a 0% commission fee from Apple. This is why Amazon can distribute an app on iOS that allows to buy whatever you want without Apple getting a cut; well, anything but digital goods, like Kindle books, which in fact can't be bought from Amazon iOS app.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#544

Post by sinnoh » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #281

gurpreet- wrote: post #126

Personally, as an app developer, I think Spotify is taking the right stance here. I believe that Apple should take some cuts but not as high as 30%. I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%. Plus, I think that if Apple has a competing service, then it should waive the tax altogether. It's only fair. If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide ho…

What is "should"? Who determines should, aside from what the law currently says? Maybe I'm uninformed, but it doesn't appear to me that access to an app store and the terms of such access (which by the way didn't even exist almost 10 years ago) is a public utility or good with an expectation of equal access or certain fair pricing. Then, under what right does anyone claim that Apple (or any ecosystem platform) has to…

the fact that I, a software developer by trade, can't install or run any code on an ios device without running something by apple first.

that's like tesla releasing a car saying if you are a lawyer who wants to drive it you have to pay them 100k a year plus 30% of what you earn, or are "free" to drive another car (even if theirs is the fastest/safest/best-for-price in the market.)

or, now, can obtain a "provisional" license to drive it that expires weekly, with the same option to pay yearly for an annual license - these are all artificial barriers. installing software has up till now always been as simple as owning the device you're running it on and running the appropriate commands, these artificual barriers introduced by apple ensure anyone wanting to do so has to check in to see if it's okay with them.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#545

Post by qwerty456127 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

When I've first read about the 30% apps tax I couldn't believe my eyes. That's insane. It would be Ok if the actual devices were at least 10 times more cheap and Apple was making the actual profits relying on apps taxation only but given how much iPhones cost it's ridiculous.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#546

Post by ethbro » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #499

nikofeyn wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does Apple have a monopoly on? i feel this is dangerous thinking. maybe apple doesn't have a monopoly on a particular market in terms of market share, but their influence on businesses, markets, policies, etc. is massive and is basically indistinguishable from a market monopoly. with their amount of money and position in the market, they have near limitless influence on other companies and ways of abusing this…

> but their influence on businesses, markets, policies, etc. is massive and is basically indistinguishable from a market monopoly... That won't hold up well in a court of law. That's the problem, we need to change the law. Because the law as it is currently written, just doesn't see something like Apple as anything close to a monopoly.

Imho, the modern monopoly phrasing should be "a substantial market share" (where substantial is defined both in absolute terms AND as a userbase large enough to be self-sufficient and fund best-of-breed category development).

Iff that is true, you should be prohibited from preinstalling, offering, or endorsing any marketplace... without a customer being able to substitute another at their discretion.

Thereby requiring that you make any and all technical considerations necessary for an alternate marketplace to interface with the end user in exactly the same way your marketplace does. (Aka a public, dogfooded API, and no secret internal API shenanigans).

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#547

Post by PunksATawnyFill » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #525

sinnoh wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"their" platform. nominally you can install whatever you want using profiles, but effectively having to do so is an artificially high barrier to entry for competing app stores (not to mention you have to pay apple $100/year for the 'privilege' of installing whatever you want on your own device for a year. no way to do so permanently.) the degree to which apple has singlemindedly anticompetitively abused their vertica…

The law will not see a company as having a monopoly just because they have a monopoly on their product. (Especially when that product has a minority market position.) Now there is a completely separate question of unfair competition, but this has to be answered on an App by App basis. Does Apple have an app that provides the service in question? Does Apple disallow competing apps which provide that same service? Is t…

I don't even see why Apple needs a reason. As has been noted, they don't have a monopoly, and it IS their app store. I don't see why they can't just openly reject competing apps. If I'm running a doughnut shop where I sell my own doughnuts, I can let another vendor come in and sell coffee but turn away a competing doughnut maker.

Now... that doesn't mean that Apple aren't jagoffs in this matter. I'm sure they have bullet-proof fine-print, but the best attack one can make on them is that they're stealing from vendors by letting them waste development resources and then changing the rules when the development's done.

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#548

Post by rifung » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

volandovengo wrote: post #370

headmelted wrote: post #339

Utterly disagree. The problem isn't the amount of the Apple tax, and it buries the lead to make it about that. The contention here is that applying rules like this arbitrarily in a way that at least appears to favour your own products over your rivals is an abuse of your position. If the commission rules in Spotify's favour (which I would think is likely, given the dim view they've taken of such matters previously),…

For a long time I've been confused about the rules of monopolies. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE into Windows so much so that the US threatened heavily to break up the company. Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...

I work for Google, opinions are my own.

I believe this is because previously antitrust law was used when things were bad for competition but nowadays the thinking is more that antitrust laws should be used when things cause higher prices.

https://qz.com/work/1460402/google-facebook-and-amazon-benef... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/lina-kh...

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#549

Post by Someone » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

aclimatt wrote: post #210

ppeetteerr wrote: post #165

I agree that Spotify is taking the right stance. In their position, working on whatever team is responsible for fighting Apple, I would also do anything in my power to fight. Having said this, Apple can do as they please. They control the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the user accounts. The same was true of Twitter who effectively squeezed access to their API until one or two desktop clients remained. The only…

Well, that's not entirely true, Apple can't exactly do what it wants. As other comments point out regarding Microsoft, Microsoft were forced to allow IE to be debundled and other competing browsers installed, because having a monopoly on a platform and using that platform to enforce anti-competitive practices is illegal under anti-trust law. So given Apple's marketshare (not a monopoly per se though pretty substantia…

”because having a monopoly on a platform and using that platform to enforce anti-competitive practices is illegal under anti-trust law.”

I don’t think that’s what the US law says. Most platforms are proprietary, and their makers have a monopoly on them (you don’t see people complain that Tom-Tom, Volkswagen, Miele, Boeing, etc. shield of their platforms for third-party software)

What is illegal under anti-trust law is having a monopoly in a market and using that monopoly to hurt consumers.

If you want to use anti-trust law in this case, you’ll have to convince the judge that “iPhone applications” is a market, and not “smartphone applications”. Doable? Maybe.

I think (but am not sure) you will also have to show that Apple’s behviour hurts consumers (as opposed to just other companies)

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#550

Post by bilbo0s » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #546

bilbo0s wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but their influence on businesses, markets, policies, etc. is massive and is basically indistinguishable from a market monopoly... That won't hold up well in a court of law. That's the problem, we need to change the law. Because the law as it is currently written, just doesn't see something like Apple as anything close to a monopoly.

Imho, the modern monopoly phrasing should be "a substantial market share" (where substantial is defined both in absolute terms AND as a userbase large enough to be self-sufficient and fund best-of-breed category development). Iff that is true, you should be prohibited from preinstalling, offering, or endorsing any marketplace... without a customer being able to substitute another at their discretion. Thereby requirin…

That wouldn't fly. A small company could release a best of breed product, and everyone could say it meets the definition of a monopoly. Unless you mean that the company would have to have a certain minimum marketshare AND ALSO would have to have best of breed product. (But even that would be problematic. We could likely get courts to go for something like 60%+, or even 50%+ with effort. But the courts are just gonna have a big problem with anything less than 50%.)