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Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

appfairness.org

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Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#81

Post by ticmasta »

acruns wrote: post #42
jeremiahlee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70% of Spotify's revenue goes to rights holders. That's not ripping off artists. Streaming royalties have been the largest segment of music rights holder revenue for several years. The record labels negotiated these deals and had all of the power. Also, all music streaming services have effectively the same deals. Spotify does not have preferential treatment. Artists can distribute their music without Spotify. Spotif…

Wouldn't that be the record companies though? I have heard Kanye is trying to get more money for artists but not really sure. I am puzzled why blockchain+streaming for music hasn't taken off. Artists would maintain rights and profits from what I can tell

Traditionally payment & accounting has never been a problem in the music business, so I think blockchain would not really help. The underlying economics is what has changed dramatically. Distribution is close to free, but unlike the ~ $1 an artist might have seen out of a CD sale (before discounting for costs & advances) they now see sub-cents on a single track. You used to pay $15-20 for an entire album to get 2 or 3 good songs; now you only stream everybody's top tracks and pay less than that a month. So the artist gets a couple of pennies for the period when they are hot, then nothing.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#82

Post by danShumway »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #14
mFixman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a monopoly, and it's illegal.

Calling a company that has ~13% of the market share in mobile devices is quite the take. It will never hold up in court.

Apple holds ~40% of the US smartphone market[0], and >50% of mobile revenue from app store purchases[1]. Apple is one half of a duopoly.

The citations of global mobile device market share are deceptive. It is not necessary for US regulators to prove that Apple has a monopoly in India to prove that they are engaged in anticompetitive behaviors in the US. If you want to make money as a mobile app developer, deciding not to support iOS can be a crippling decision. You don't really have a choice[2].

----

[0]: https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

[1]: https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/10/11/as-usual-apples-ap...

[2]: That ends up being the much more interesting argument anyway, because Apple advocates mostly want Apple to be able to force developers to jump through hoops. I've seen a lot of arguments on this topic that say that 3rd-party app stores would be a disaster because companies wouldn't be de-facto forced to distribute through the primary app store.

For those people, the duopoly and monopolistic power structures are the point -- they're not debating whether or not Apple is so powerful that it's taking away developer choice. They want Apple to take away developer choice.

I disagree with those people, but I find their position to be much more compelling than, "India uses Android, so the US can't regulate its own market."

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#83

Post by criddell »

jeremiahlee wrote: post #4
doublerabbit wrote: post #2

"The Coalition for App Fairness", I cannot not laugh. On the stage you have: Epic - Trying to be the next Valve/Steam. Happy to rip off their customers via in-game transactions. Spotify - Who rip off artists by either failing or paying very little in royalties. Tinder - Sells sex. None of these companies have any care for the actual developer; who are the folk trying to make a living from their creations.

70% of Spotify's revenue goes to rights holders. That's not ripping off artists. Streaming royalties have been the largest segment of music rights holder revenue for several years. The record labels negotiated these deals and had all of the power. Also, all music streaming services have effectively the same deals. Spotify does not have preferential treatment. Artists can distribute their music without Spotify. Spotif…

Spotify is complicated because the big record companies are also big shareholders. They have a conflict of interest.

Also 70% doesn't mean anything without actual numbers. If they lowered their subscription to $1 / month and gave 80% to rights holders it wouldn't be an improvement.

I'd be more interested if they reported how many plays per month it takes to earn as much as you would in a minimum wage job.

Edit: I was curious about the minimum wage question so I looked it up.

Assuming $15 / hour for minimum wage it would take 750,000 streams on Spotify and 430,000 streams on Apple Music to earn the same in a month as you would working a minimum wage job.

https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#84

Post by rblatz »

acruns wrote: post #42
jeremiahlee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70% of Spotify's revenue goes to rights holders. That's not ripping off artists. Streaming royalties have been the largest segment of music rights holder revenue for several years. The record labels negotiated these deals and had all of the power. Also, all music streaming services have effectively the same deals. Spotify does not have preferential treatment. Artists can distribute their music without Spotify. Spotif…

Wouldn't that be the record companies though? I have heard Kanye is trying to get more money for artists but not really sure. I am puzzled why blockchain+streaming for music hasn't taken off. Artists would maintain rights and profits from what I can tell

Why would you put blockchain in this?

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#85

Post by damnyou »

asou wrote: post #18
doublerabbit wrote: post #2

"The Coalition for App Fairness", I cannot not laugh. On the stage you have: Epic - Trying to be the next Valve/Steam. Happy to rip off their customers via in-game transactions. Spotify - Who rip off artists by either failing or paying very little in royalties. Tinder - Sells sex. None of these companies have any care for the actual developer; who are the folk trying to make a living from their creations.

Considering Tinder's parent ( The Match Group ) got sued by the FTC for fraud, not very smart to include them. Intentionally making subscriptions hard to cancel is one of the behaviors Apple's payment system seeks to prevent. As much as I like Tim Sweeney's arguments for lower royalties, he doesn't have half a toe to stand on. Don't want to pay the Apple tax, make your own phone. This fairness coalition is free to ma…

In the world I inhabit, Apple is the one that intentionally makes it really hard to cancel subscriptions. You literally cannot cancel a subscription to an iOS app from an Android phone or Linux PC.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#86

Post by AlexandrB »

From https://appfairness.org/our-vision/

> No app store owner should prohibit third parties from offering competing app stores on the app store owner’s platform, or discourage developers or consumers from using them.

I don't disagree but does this mean Sony should allow, for example, Steam to be installed on the PS5? Or is the definition of "App Store" used here narrow and arbitrary?

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#87

Post by 0xDEEPFAC »

ijidak wrote: post #59
mFixman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a monopoly, and it's illegal.

I don't believe monopolies are illegal. It's using an advantage in one area to force concessions in an unrelated area that I believe is illegal. For example, Microsoft had an effective monopoly over PC operating systems. That was unfortunate, but not illegal. It was when they used that monopoly to disadvantage a rival browser maker --- Netscape -- that they broke anti-trust law. I'm most interested in seeing what hap…

We are at a state where these tech companies have the same value as countries and entire stock indexes. It is obscene, and yet they make their devices more locked down, harder/ILLEGAL! to fix by paying off politicians both to not enforce laws and to write them in their favor at the expense of smaller competition.

The merger of state and corporate powers is complete. We live in a fascist world with surveillance that Stalin could only dream of.

So yea, a bit "unfortunate"

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#88

Post by shadowgovt »

zepto wrote: post #74
onion2k wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic has a share of the PC games software market.

Yes - and they control their own platform. Therefore they are a monopolist. /s I clearly don’t actually believe this, but the point is that if Apple is a Monopolist, then so is Epic.

Apple is a vertical monopolist across a large-market-share hardware platform it manufactures and an exclusive system for putting software onto that platform.

Epic has a store, but doesn't have a large-market-share hardware platform they control exclusively to go with it. Any machine I can install the Epic app store on, I can also install Steam on.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#89

Post by roblabla »

singularity2001 wrote: post #60
izacus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attacking a companny/person behind an argument for unrelated issues is a definition of "ad hominem".

[deleted]

They're the messenger. The idea behind an ad hominem is to attack the messenger instead of the message - whether the messenger is a human or corporation doesn't really matter. Who's behind the argument doesn't matter, if the argument is solid.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#90

Post by krelian »

shadowgovt wrote: post #50

Ah, okay. Now I begin to see their goals. I've been trying to wrap my head around why Epic would shoulder-tackle Apple in the space of app stores, when they have their own app store. Naively, I've been thinking that any ruling adverse to Apple here also impacts Epic's business model---if the government caps app store revenue cuts at, say, 10%, that's a slice off the top of what Epic can charge developers going throug…

Epic scored a lucky (?) hit with fortnite that brought them a lot of cash but I believe their bread and butter is their game engine where do they charge a percentage of the profits. Their store is more of a long-term investment, it might not bring a lot of revenue at the moment but if things go well for them it can easily convert to the top dog.
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