Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Addressing Spotify’s Claims

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 688 posts

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#541

Post by VectorLock »

simonh wrote: post #389
revel wrote: post #361

I love how brazen this letter is. > Apple’s approach has always been to grow the pie. Apple's approach has always been to grow it's own pie. They have never been even remotely interested in playing nicely with other companies. I don't fault them for it, but let's not kid ourselves here; the app store is largely an extremely profitable exercise in rent seeking. It's not like this is new for Apple; they've had propriet…

There’s a thread of truth in what you’re saying, but it unravels on close inspection. Proprietary cables are hardly new, and to be fair those cables and connectors are usually way better than the standard stuff. Firewire and thunderbolt were actually released as open standards and saw decent adoption. Lightning is far superior to Micro-USB. Just listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Macbook owners having to…

>Just listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Macbook owners having to give up proprietary MagSafe for USB-C charging on their laptops.

For me personally and I think for a lot of people that is less about a love for MagSafe than it is an aversion to USB-C.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#542

Post by Steltek »

briandear wrote: post #406
henriquelimao wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a reference for that?

https://mixmag.net/read/new-data-reveals-which-streaming-pla...

Thanks for that link. It took a second to dig through the layers of news posts to find the original story/data:

https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/spotify-ap...

It looks like Google Play (Google Music?) still wins for compensating artists the most so it's nice to see my choice still holds up over time.

To save people the click:

* Google Play $0.0068 * iTunes $0.0060 * Spotify $0.0044

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#543

Post by vesrah »

VectorLock wrote: post #541
simonh wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a thread of truth in what you’re saying, but it unravels on close inspection. Proprietary cables are hardly new, and to be fair those cables and connectors are usually way better than the standard stuff. Firewire and thunderbolt were actually released as open standards and saw decent adoption. Lightning is far superior to Micro-USB. Just listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Macbook owners having to…

>Just listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Macbook owners having to give up proprietary MagSafe for USB-C charging on their laptops. For me personally and I think for a lot of people that is less about a love for MagSafe than it is an aversion to USB-C.

The difference in the way the USB-C cable and Magsafe handle an off angle tug seals the debate for me.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#544

Post by abalone »

ninkendo wrote: post #454
abalone wrote: post #74

Apple’s essential claims: 1. 15-30% is a fair “contribution to maintaining the App Store ecosystem” which has led to Spotify’s “dramatic growth.” 2. Spotify is greedy and bad, just look at how they squeeze artists, unlike us. The second point is really weak considering that paying such a high fee to Apple, which Apple Music itself doesn’t have to pay, might force Spotify to take it out of the artists’ end to stay afl…

> paying such a high fee to Apple, which Apple Music itself doesn’t have to pay, might force Spotify to take it out of the artists’ end to stay afloat. bunnycom's reply to you is flagged dead, but there's an important rebuke to that claim: Spotify doesn't use iAP for subscriptions any more, and Apple gets no money off of Spotify today except for pre-existing subscriptions from before Spotify disabled iAP: https://sup…

> I wouldn't say it's worth a 30% (or even 15%) cut, but it's not worthless.

Sure. By that logic Apple also “helps the growth” of Uber by offering the same convenient payment method in the form of Apple Pay. Their fee for that: 0.15%.

Charging 15-30% is clearly about more than “helping growth”.

And Apple isn’t just charging for the convenience of IAP. They’re also frustrating Spotify from collecting payment any other way. The specious argument here is saying that strangling premium subscription growth doesn’t hurt a company’s finances.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#545

Post by larkost »

Phillips126 wrote: post #514
dev_north_east wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there is the Apple dev annual subscription. Only if you're publishing.

We had to pay $299 for the enterprise license to distribute iOS applications internally to just our staff[1]. This circumvented the App Store entirely and we used MDM tools (AirWatch) to distribute. Was this avoidable? I'm genuinely curious as I am not specifically an iOS/Mac dev. [1] https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/

No. In order to publish (even just within your organization) you need to establish a trusted relationship, and Apple charges for that. There is plenty of room for argument about how much Apple should be charging for this, but the process does have some costs to Apple, so it is only right that they charge something.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#546

Post by vinceguidry »

graeme wrote: post #540
vinceguidry wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes they want their cut from Spotify. I don’t understand the Apple exceptionalism about this though. No Spotify's letter put it very clearly, they want to take their 30% cut from Spotify while putting their own music service on the market undercutting their prices. This is blatantly anticompetitive and is rightly being slammed by Congress. Apple's response to this has been shrug . I don't think Apple shouldn't be a…

Did apple music price below spotify/ not familiar with the pricing history.

They used shady tactics to force them to bill through the Apple's marketplace so they could get the 30% cut, forcing Spotify to raise prices by 30% so they could maintain their revenue position. Then they released Apple Music at the $9.99 price point that Spotify was at previously.

The shady tactics resumed when Spotify stopped using the App Store to bill and reduced the price to compete with Apple Music. Apple isn't interested in competing with Spotify, only with freezing them out of the market.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#547

Post by sbuk »

weavejester wrote: post #479
supernova87a wrote: post #438

As with so many matters that involve money, arguments fly around left and right that claim to be on principle, but really aren't. When you see ESPN and Comcast argue over showing the World Series, don't buy the argument that one of them is "trying to prevent loyal customers from being able to see their favorite game", or when your local hospital group withdraws from your employer health plan that "the other side is t…

" There's no public right to have a music app be charged a certain amount that's called "fair". Spotify could charge nothing to consumers, and be charged nothing by Apple. It's their choice. It's Apple's choice." Competition laws place limitations on what a business can do. They're not free to sell or price entirely as they please. In this case Spotify are arguing that Apple is using its dominance of the smartphone m…

> "In this case Spotify are arguing that Apple is using its dominance of the smartphone market to give an unfair advantage to its own music store." You forgot to add context; by charging 30% on IAPs. The fact is Spotify don't need to use IAPs for subscriptions. Apple even mentioned this in TFA.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#548

Post by [deleted] »

coryfklein wrote: post #537
hellisothers wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a disingenuous argument, you have to buy a PC to develop Windows. And you have to pay $100-300 for windows, AND you have to play $600-$2500 _per year_ for Visual Studio

Your personal accusation of disingenuousness distracts from what would otherwise have been a good point. Let's see what a barebones setup costs for developing with a solid IDE on each platform: macOS: $800 Mac Mini (Apple's most affordable offering that runs macOS) $90 Acer SB220Q Monitor $FREE Xcode Total: $890 Windows: $200 Dell Inspiron 11 3000 (Most affordable Dell PC I could find being sold new) $1200 One time p…

[deleted]

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#549

Post by larkost »

School-Cotton wrote: post #530
simonh wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a thread of truth in what you’re saying, but it unravels on close inspection. Proprietary cables are hardly new, and to be fair those cables and connectors are usually way better than the standard stuff. Firewire and thunderbolt were actually released as open standards and saw decent adoption. Lightning is far superior to Micro-USB. Just listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Macbook owners having to…

Apple publishes an iOS simulator, not an emulator, which is a totally different thing.

Yes, it is different. But how is that important in this conversation. Here the important bit is: have a tool that enables you to test your iOS code on your development machine. Emulation vs. simulation is not generally important in that.

Side note undercutting my point: there are places, like OpenGL where the underlying hardware is significantly better/different and the iOS simulation is not representative of the real environment. Mostly these only matter to high-end games, and there you better be checking regularly on a list of hardware.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#550

Post by aqme28 »

throwawaymath wrote: post #484
aqme28 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify wants a lower $ charge. Apple owns the platform and controls that access and $ charge. That's it. I think that's an oversimplification. When you control the platform and then use that control to favor your own products on that platform, that's anti-competitive.

It's anticompetitive, but is it illegal? Is it unethical? Does Apple's favoritism of its own products on its platform mean competing products cannot exist on the platform, or that they're less capable/visible? There are many platforms which rigidly control what's allowed on it. For example, is Netflix comparable? Netflix can control which providers are represented on its platform.

> Does Apple's favoritism of its own products on its platform mean competing products cannot exist on the platform, or that they're less capable/visible?

That is what Spotify is alleging, yes.

Post reply on HN