[HN Gopher] Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
___________________________________________________________________
Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
Author : laminarflow
Score : 210 points
Date : 2022-03-23 20:11 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.spotify.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.spotify.com)
| gumby wrote:
| I do see one potential customer benefit: rather than increasing
| your attack surface by giving _two_ companies your CC info you
| just give one (google). In theory Google is going to have more
| security than a bunch of smaller companies.
|
| I use Apple Pay whenever possible for this precise reason. I
| don't want to trust Target with my CC info.
|
| Of course since under this scheme the company I'd be sharing my
| card info with is the largest dossier assembling company in the
| world, so I wouldn't be comfortable with it. But presumably they
| will collect the info anyway (even though they aren't subject to
| the same regulation as the credit bureaux or credit card
| networks), so perhaps going directly through them doesn't make
| things worse and at least eliminates one risk (spotify
| themselves).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| obert wrote:
| Imagine if AWS, Azure, Gcloud were charging for your VMs a % of
| your business revenue... AppStores are services, they should have
| a fixed price like any other service, and that can cover also
| variable costs like cents per download, cents per review, etc
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Why do/should I, as a Spotify subscriber, care about this at all?
| I don't understand why there's so much fanfare around this. I
| feel like I'm missing something basic here...
| drbacon wrote:
| I actually don't think of this as a consumer issue at all. You
| probably shouldn't care, but I can see why some consumers might
| care (e.g. how many entities have their credit card on file,
| concerns about privacy, a desire to allocate as much money as
| possible to artists...).
|
| I think of this as a developer issue. There's good money being
| the middle man for transactions. Did consumers really care
| about the Epic/Apple IAP issue? Were there iOS users clamoring
| to use Epic's payment platform? I never really heard the
| consumer voice in that discussion. I did hear a lot of
| developer voices that cared about their right to charge
| consumers without Apple's 30% transaction cut.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I don't think there is much fanfare. Obviously Google and
| Spotify want to make a big deal out of this for when regulators
| come knocking, but as a Spotify user who pays directly to
| Spotify outside of Play Store, this news is nothing more at a
| mild irritation at them both patting each other's backs over
| nothing.
| hughrr wrote:
| If this was Spotify vs Google I'd take Spotify.
|
| If this was anything vs Apple I'd take Apple.
|
| That's the ranking of trust I have as far as customer support
| goes. It'll be a crap fest when match.com or some other atomic
| level shyster markets their way into sounding more reputable than
| they are.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I dislike Apple, and right now I wouldn't consider buying an
| Apple product again (I had an iPhone 1 ahead of most people in
| the UK). I spent the first ~5 years of my career developing on
| Android and I still use Android.
|
| I agree with your payment hierarchy 100%.
| [deleted]
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| It has always seemed weird that if I use my Spotify account on my
| Android phone, iPad, and desktop, who gets a cut of my money
| depends on which one I use to set up billing.
| conductr wrote:
| I feel like only the one processing the transaction should be
| paid to process the transaction. The usage part is no different
| than if you used a free app on every device, they make nothing.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Agreed. I mostly use Spotify on a Raspberry Pi using Spotifyd
| and a display driver I wrote myself, on Linux. Now who should
| get a cut of my subscription? Do I get any of it?
|
| For services which exist and function perfectly well outside of
| the Google/Apple binary, why should they get any more than a
| nominal fee for hosting the app download?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I was hoping this would mean I get to decide how much I pay
| pishpash wrote:
| That would be too much user choice.
| cletus wrote:
| This is smart and what Apple should've done. Apple is clearly
| beholden to the massive cash cow that the App Store has become.
| Apple's attempts at complying with various orders are that their
| cut should be 27% and the payment processor can have 3%. That's
| ridiculous and is going to get them into trouble.
|
| You see this pattern repeatedly and people will bring up things
| like the Pareto Principle or argue it's better to squeeze the
| profits for as long as you can but ultimately some government or
| court will take away your monopoly.
|
| As someone in possession of such a monopoly it is always better
| for you to control how that happens. Having it decided for you
| could be truly disastrous. Any government investigation could
| widen in scope to areas it otherwise wouldn't.
|
| I predict App Store cuts will ultimately drop to a far more
| reasonable 10-15% including payment processing or 5-10% without.
| threeseed wrote:
| App Store is 15% for developers making up $1 million a year.
|
| And I know you think this is somehow unique to Apple but it
| isn't. Channel costs have existed probably for centuries and
| are present in every industry.
| 10u152 wrote:
| Yep.
|
| Traditionally printers/publishers took 85-95% of revenue from
| authors. Now perhaps you can argue that there's more costs
| involved in printing that running an app store, but an app
| store taking 30% sounds like a great deal in that context.
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| I have paid spotify but I can't remember how I got the all or
| paid for it, other than there is not way it involved google
| because I wouldn't do that.
|
| Is this a compromise that gives google some in-app purchases that
| used to go to spotify, or is it the opposite?
|
| And I wonder if it means some kind of data sharing with google?
| One whiff of google involvement in the actual experience or data
| use would be the end of my spotify subscription. If it's just a
| settlement about app store rules then I don't care.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| You may want to analyze connections made by the Spotify
| client...
| olliej wrote:
| Does this actually reduce the fees, or simply let Spotify make it
| harder to cancel you subscription? I know on Mac+ios it's
| controlled through centralized UI (which let me catch paramount
| charging two subscription when they renamed some service).
| lbotos wrote:
| Is this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" play where Google
| makes Apple look bad in an effort to avoid some of the
| regulations that might catch Apple?
|
| I cant figure out why Google would want this otherwise?
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| Spotify is a BIG Google Cloud customer with a $450 million
| commit back in 2018 [0, 1, 2]. Companies want to keep these
| types of customers obviously and will leverage other teams
| internally to get a value add to get that renewal. This is
| likely just another integration as they look to leverage the
| relationship across bizdev, partner marketing, and sales teams,
| internal engineering dogfood projects, discounts, etc. Lots of
| this type of stuff isn't even targeted at competition just an
| evolution of the relationship.
|
| Normally how this type of stuff happens, is you'll have some
| internal team working on a new initiative and looking for
| headline customers, they will reach out to the sales teams, and
| say, "hey, you are working with XYZ customer, want to float
| this idea with them". It's a win-win.
|
| So, having said all they. Google vs Apple, etc, and other large
| competition politics almost never are on the radar of these
| teams. They just want to help the customer win, get the sales
| commissions, and make their internal product successful. It's
| easy to look at this stuff from the outside and think there is
| some big plan but the motivation down at the teams level has
| nothing to do with that since they want mostly to look good on
| perf reviews.
|
| I have no knowledge of the internals here just talking from
| experience from what I've seen.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/spotify-will-spend-
| nearly-45...
|
| [1] https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/spotify-google-cloud-
| pla...
|
| [2] https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify
|
| Note: I originally had Shopify here. The same strategy/tactics
| apply.
| kartayyar wrote:
| The post is about Spotify, not Shopify.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| I think you may have gotten mixed up between Shopify and
| Spotify - this is an announcement by the latter, not the
| former. They're spelled so similarly so it's an easy mistake
| to make.
| bberenberg wrote:
| FYI it's still accurate:
| https://cloud.google.com/customers/featured/spotify
| awa wrote:
| FYI The announcement is from *spotify not shopify
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| Yeah, you're right. Same logic applied. Updated links to
| the correct company.
| Medowar wrote:
| You seem to mix up Spotify and Shopify. The Announcement is
| made by Spotify, you talk about Shopify. But interestingly,
| your point still stands, as Spotify is also a big Google
| Cloud customer.
| joatmon-snoo wrote:
| s/shopify/spotify/
|
| https://cloud.google.com/customers/featured/spotify
| dannyw wrote:
| The EU has been looking into this for months now, and
| statements made by the Commission have not been kind to Google.
|
| I suspect Google expects an incoming loss.
| lalos wrote:
| Retaliation from all the iPhone privacy ads, modern
| capitalistic warfare.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Google made the same decision as Apple when they removed
| Fortnite in response to Epic Games completely bypassing the
| store's in-app purchasing flow, thus losing their 30% revenue
| cut, so the motivation is likely not 'to make Apple look bad'.
|
| This is probably just a good show of faith to regulators while
| Google still collects their percentage of subscription revenue
| from Spotify on the backend.
| phamilton wrote:
| > percentage of subscription revenue from Spotify on the
| backend
|
| This is an advantage of Google vs Apple. Google has multiple
| business relationships with Spotify. An increase in
| advertising dollars, infrastructure spend on GCP, etc could
| all offset the lost revenue for Google here.
| smm11 wrote:
| I thought at first it was "pay what you want," which I'd prefer
| with Spotify.
|
| I keep getting near-free SiriusXM deals, and with the integration
| in my car, why not. Then I start Spotify after two weeks, and it
| takes five minutes to load.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Spotify doesn't disclose their pay cut so I have to assume Google
| is still getting their cut of revenue, maybe 25% with payment
| processor fees taken into account instead of 30%, since they
| surely wouldn't want to set a precedent of any digital content
| app being able to not pay for the OS/platform by simply adding
| their own payment method (otherwise Epic wouldn't have needed
| their lawsuit).
| fitzroy wrote:
| The "Chief Freemium Business Officer" seems an odd choice for a
| quote about consumer billing.
| version_five wrote:
| Doesn't freemium mean in-app purchases which would be subject
| of a deal with the google app store?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I wonder how much work someone with that title has on a day-to-
| day basis.
| [deleted]
| nostromo wrote:
| Is the price the same for both?
|
| It seems odd not to include this information.
| paxys wrote:
| Crazy that this new revolutionary "first of its kind" feature is
| - letting the user pick between two payment processors.
| chews wrote:
| Basic choice for payments became a discount offering for Google
| cloud use.... Total monopolistic behavior
| judge2020 wrote:
| While that's alluded to in some other comments there is 0
| proof of this - it'd be a huge issue if the price for
| choosing another payment processor (while still likely paying
| Google their Store % cut on the backend) is being an
| enterprise customer of a completely separate business unit.
| drusepth wrote:
| I don't understand how this is a "feature". Is the price
| different, or the features gained different, or does it just
| determine who ends up getting what % cut? I can't imagine most
| people actually care whether Google or Spotify is getting a
| bigger piece of the same price they're paying either way.
| laurent92 wrote:
| The conditions and trust are different. I personally believe
| that letting Google have my credit card is allowing a kid
| with no supervision to play with my life savings; While some
| others will believe Google provides better guarantees than
| Spotify when you want to unsubscribe. At least competition
| will allow us to see "who's better" and what T&C customers
| care about, and that's the important point.
| maratc wrote:
| It's not a choice of who's better; it's a choice of who's
| not worse.
|
| Given a choice of Apple vs. anything, I can't see myself
| choosing anything over Apple.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Everybody says this then outraged users who hate choice appear.
| [deleted]
| simow wrote:
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > "Android has always been about openness and user choice," said
| Sameer Samat, Vice President, Product Management at Google.
|
| Oh **** off. Publish the Android MADA to the public, lol. Also,
| reinstate Fortnite then?
|
| Great, you cut a deal, can we not pretend that it's an openness
| thing though? We know it's not.
| jmacd wrote:
| "Over the coming months, Spotify will work with Google's product
| and engineering teams to build this new experience"
|
| It's so absolutely bizarre to announce something at this stage. I
| wonder what is prompting it.
| nawgz wrote:
| I don't know much about things, but I was immediately left with
| the feeling that this was a Google action performed vis a vis
| antitrust. Whether to strengthen a case against Apple or weaken
| one against them or some other ball game entirely, I have no
| clue.
| extheat wrote:
| It is a big and notable event in the middle of antitrust
| investigations into Apple/Google by the US and the EU.
| kenhwang wrote:
| Pretty standard Google playbook these days.
|
| Instead of building something and then cancelling it later when
| it doesn't gain traction to get their PR win, they decide to
| cash in on the PR win upfront with a big partnership
| announcement, then cancel the product before building it if it
| doesn't gain sufficient traction, thus saving on engineering
| costs and streamlining the typical Google technical offering
| lifecycle.
|
| Behind the scenes, Google usually gives the partnering company
| some pretty nice discounts. Usually no one does any engineering
| until someone else sees the PR and also wants in on this
| "exciting new feature" and they're the one actually beta
| testing the product that they thought the announced companies
| already used.
| mnholt wrote:
| To maximize the amount of media coverage this receives. In a
| number of months they will announce that it's done.
| [deleted]
| javert wrote:
| > Spotify has been publicly advocating for platform fairness
|
| Big companies arguing for "fairness" is absurd and in the long
| run it will blow up in their faces.
|
| In a society that prioritizes "fairness" over capitalism, Spotify
| and Google are not allowed to exist.
| ggoo wrote:
| Seems like a step towards non-vendor locked payments _if you're
| big enough_. This future does not look so bright.
| simow wrote:
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| > represents a first-of-its-kind option in payment choice and
| offers opportunities for both consumers and developers
|
| What is the opportunity here? For consumers is it that you can
| pick who you pay? That doesn't sound like much of an opportunity
| to me.
|
| What is the opportunity for developers?
| librish wrote:
| Presumably that they'll see the difference in price.
| syspec wrote:
| Hah! As if... If there is a reduction in price, it will be
| temporary so they can get users to switch.
|
| After a year or two there will be a PR announcement:
|
| Congratulations to us! Today we're announcing going forward
| all plans will be priced exactly the same. This means whether
| you pay via Google or Spotify, you no longer need to worry
| about confusing pricing options because all plans will have
| one single price.
|
| As an additional benefit users who pay via Spotify will get a
| limited edition Snoop Dogg / Jaden Smith / Billy Ray Cyrus
| NFT usable in Fortnite while logged into Spotify Pro Max
| onelovetwo wrote:
| So there is no user choice, technically just a lesser
| commission. Nothing stopping Google from upping this 5% "fee"
| to 10% when they feel like it.
|
| This is still a loss for devs, I was hoping we can just rip of
| Google garbage payment system and use something like Stripe, or
| whatever new companies that would've emerged to fill our needs.
|
| Obviously they'll give a sweet deal to massive companies but
| not the small devs.
| kyrra wrote:
| Googler, opinions are my own.
|
| What issues do you have with the Google payments system? With
| the stripe bring that Google does not already have? (Outside
| the fee issue most people raise)
| judge2020 wrote:
| The opportunity for developers (read: the investors and C-level
| management at companies) being able to save marginally on their
| cut to Google by allowing the user to select non-Google Play
| billing. However, I wholly imagine Google agreed to this
| because they'll still get their cut of subscription revenue on
| the backend, so Google might only take 25% instead of 30% when
| the app doesn't use Play Store billing.
| orangepanda wrote:
| > What is the opportunity for developers?
|
| An opportunity to make unsubscribing a more engaging activity
| echelon wrote:
| It's the opportunity to take more of your revenue as margin,
| plain and simple.
|
| Contrary to your suggestion, I would argue that most
| businesses do not want to predatorily extract money from
| unwilling customers. It's typically the old, calcified
| businesses that do not innovate (gyms, cable companies, etc.)
| that engage in this behavior.
|
| I want more margin so I can hire more engineers and change
| the world faster.
|
| Google probably sees regulatory pressure writing on the wall,
| and by doing this they're building evidence that they haven't
| built a mobile computing monopoly or are backing away from it
| (insofar as running executions on your customer's devices
| used to be free in the desktop computing world where two
| corporations didn't tax all of innovation).
|
| Also, it's a shot against Apple, who is definitely the more
| egregious of the two.
|
| This is all around good. There might be a company or two that
| abuse the system, but that's easily dealt with. In an open
| app ecosystem, you still have measures in place to correct
| the bad actors.
| threeseed wrote:
| > I would argue that most businesses do not want to
| predatorily extract money from unwilling customers
|
| Doesn't matter. There are enough of them to cause headaches
| for many people on a regular basis.
| usrusr wrote:
| > I would argue that most businesses do not want to
| predatorily extract money from unwilling customers
|
| They'd all rather receive the money from happy customers
| enthusiastically paying because they love the service so
| much, but if the third option is no money they all know
| what their second choice would be.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| _I would argue that most businesses do not want to
| predatorily extract money from unwilling customers_
|
| I find it difficult to agree with this - and I'm not just
| being scattergun cynical. I quite literally think that the
| vast majority of consumer-facing businesses work as hard as
| they can to juice more money out of their customers through
| obfuscation.
|
| It's easy to argue that this is a benefit for developers,
| or open ecosystems, or just plain principles or whatever,
| because that's all almost certainly true. But it's also
| probably virtually certainly no better for users.
| aketchum wrote:
| I just want to point out that Spotify as a position with the
| title 'Chief Freemium Business Officer'. Is there also a 'Chief
| Subscription Business Officer'?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I wonder how much Google sweetened the deal. I can't imagine
| Spotify accepted a standard 15% cut.
| civilized wrote:
| This is one of the most boring and insignificant things I've ever
| seen on HN. The amount of intense discussion it's getting is very
| funny.
|
| I would consider it a _much_ bigger event if Costco announced
| they 'd take American Express.
|
| (No judgment against anyone who finds this event fascinating! You
| all clearly know more than me...)
| bogwog wrote:
| Google sees the writing on the wall. Their billing monopoly is
| under threat, and is probably not going to last forever.
|
| This situation looks like Google allowed Spotify to add their own
| payment system with some terms. The obvious one is that they need
| to keep Google's payment system alongside their own. A less
| obvious (but IMO likely) requirement may be that Spotify cannot
| offer a much lower price through their billing system to
| incentivize users to switch (100% assumption here).
|
| From the outside, this looks like a pro-consumer move: consumers
| get more choices (even if the prices are the same). But the
| reality is (probably; I'm just assuming here) that Google still
| has the power to shove their billing system down developers'
| throats, since there aren't yet any laws or rulings to prevent
| it.
|
| So even though the writing in this press release makes it seem
| like a pro-consumer move, I hope it doesn't take any momentum
| away from all of the antitrust lawsuits. Google's (and Apple's)
| monopolies need to end. In an ideal world, Spotify would add
| Google billing (and others) as options to attract more customers,
| not because Google is forcing them to.
| darkwater wrote:
| And Spotify will probably also get less discounts in GCP to
| compensate part of that. I'm totally speculating, just to be
| clear.
| Traster wrote:
| Why on earth would Spotify be getting a discount on GCP?
| bowmessage wrote:
| Bulk/multi-year commitments to a single cloud provider
| often come with steep discounts.
| nerdjon wrote:
| As a user, why would I choose this?
|
| I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user
| prospective going with another system is a downgrade.
|
| Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong),
| disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central
| location with a click or 2.
|
| If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do
| they now have my credit card information, but I have to go
| through them to cancel. Meaning they can send me through screen
| after screen trying to convince me to stay (dark pattern) or even
| worse forcing me to call to cancel.
|
| As a user, if you want to offer this fine. But as long as the
| ability to subscribe through Google or Apple is not removed I
| will be fine. But if this starts a trend of more and more apps
| having their own billing that then uses dark patterns to keep me
| subscribed... I will just end up spending less money on
| subscriptions than I currently do, and I have quite a few
| subscriptions.
| olau wrote:
| I know that a consumptionist attitude is popular these days,
| but as a user of something like Spotify I would surely prefer
| as much as possible of my monetary contribution ending up with
| Spotify and the musicians instead of in the hands of a company
| controlling the market place.
|
| To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a
| world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they
| want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be
| reasonable?
|
| The only reason the phone OS companies get away with it is lack
| of real competition. The regulatory environment is very slow in
| catching up - it's not more than a few years ago that the EU
| finally hit the payment card companies.
|
| And yes, the EU also has something to say when it comes to dark
| subscription cancelling patterns.
| endgame wrote:
| > To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay:
| Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies
| decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that
| would be reasonable?
|
| Since we are heading to a world with no cash, what's stopping
| the card companies from doing that after there's no way back?
| This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that
| day.
| applecrazy wrote:
| > This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay
| that day.
|
| A big thing discouraging me from using cash is how
| suspicious people are of you when you pay in cash. I've
| definitely gotten weird looks from cashiers when doing so,
| especially when you pay in larger bills (like $100).
| Audiophilip wrote:
| Why would I care what a cashier _thinks_ of me when I pay
| for products with common legal tender? It's a completely
| normal means of transaction in exchange for products and
| services.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| EU capped the rate to 0.3% for credit cards. That's also
| why there are no US cashback style deals or those weird
| point programs.
| altairprime wrote:
| I would trust Spotify but not NYTimes, in this model, so
| perhaps consider a more hostile example than Spotify as well.
| Shank wrote:
| > To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay:
| Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies
| decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that
| would be reasonable?
|
| Just so that we're talking on equal terms here, card
| processors and networks solve a massive amount of problems
| that existed with cash. Pre-card, many stores setup credit
| accounts with individuals, had book keeping practices to deal
| with, and had to chase down credit lines they themselves
| offered. Even with debit cards, card networks facilitate the
| ability to automatically move money between parties and give
| customers the ability to dispute/chargeback fraudulent
| transactions easily. If you physically hand a merchant cash,
| you can't claw that back without a legal process, whereas
| you're afforded protections by the card network.
|
| But the 30% cut is completely different from card processors.
| Of the 30% to Google Play or to Apple, a small fraction
| (2.9%ish) is actually the card overhead. The rest is split
| between pure profit, infrastructure, and whatever else gets
| tacked on.
|
| Cards definitely offer important things to facilitate
| transactions that are objectively better than a pure cash
| world for most people. But it's important to call out crazy
| cash grabs like 30%, which is unheard of even in the payment
| network world.
| bmhin wrote:
| Choice is the real thing though more than actual value add.
| I feel like I see it less now, but recall seeing how
| vendors would only accept certain cards and not others
| (frequently, not American Express) which was as far as I
| know stemming mostly from higher fees they didn't want to
| pay. Similarly, places would not accept credit cards at all
| if they had razor margins and didn't want to eat the fee. I
| still know of a few places like that, often with an ATM
| near by so the customer can pay a fee if they are caught
| unaware.
|
| That was the thing though, a business could decline to
| accept particular cards or cards at all and still perform
| transactions. That "opportunity" has generally not extended
| to the app store world in a practical way. If you want to
| play, they had their cut and customers and vendors didn't
| have a whole lot of say in what was reasonable. There is no
| simple default transaction (like cash) that they were
| trying to out compete.
| Sesse__ wrote:
| Even your 2.9% number is probably too high. Perhaps for
| AmEx or in super-high-risk situations you need to pay that
| kind of fees, but for regular MC/VISA in developed
| countries, even a medium-sized business can get below 1%.
| Large companies, like Apple, can almost certainly get it
| lower than that.
|
| Source: Involved in multiple such deals over the years.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I think you're mistaken - why would Google have agreed to
| this if they gave up their cut of the subscription revenue?
| They're surely making some money on the backed still,
| possibly just 3% less than they were (to account for
| Spotify's processor fees).
| alkonaut wrote:
| Absolutely. I want 100% of the money to go to Spotify _and_ I
| want a centralized one-click cancel, that looks the same for
| all subscriptions.
|
| That's an unlikely combination. So the viable alternative is
| a middle ground. A central app store and subscription
| management takes a cut/adds a tax. I'm ready to pay say 1% or
| 2% for that service.
| alanchen wrote:
| I think https://privacy.com is close to that. You get a
| virtual credit card number for every single service that
| you sign up for, and you can simply disable them in a
| centralized place.
|
| It works on the web but it is still a hassle to use on
| mobile. I imagine Apple can potentially do this using Apple
| Card, but I don't think this is going to happen any time
| soon.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally.
| It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or
| Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify
| cuts as deeply as Apple (google, steam, microsoft, sony,
| etc) does.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists,
| personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with
| Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their
| cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply
|
| Never ever in all these accusations do people mention The
| Big Four [1]. It's always Apple to blame. And Spotify.
| And Deezer. And Pandora. And...
|
| Even though music distributors control all f the market,
| collect all the royalties, and pay artists peanuts. Does
| Spotify pay artists directly? No, it can't do that. It
| pays the license holders which are, in 99% of the cases
| [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolid
| ation
|
| _Edit:_ it 's worse now, it's Big Three. They control
| 88.5% of the market, but by popularity of music that is
| listened to on streaming platforms, it's likely closer to
| 100%.
| [deleted]
| falcolas wrote:
| This is where I shrug my shoulders and say "Why not
| [blame] both?"
|
| It can be that Apple, Spotify, and Google can all be
| screwing over creators in conjunction with their
| publishers.
|
| That said, not all musicians on Spotify go through
| publishers.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > This is where I shrug my shoulders and say "Why not
| [blame] both?"
|
| I've yet to see any of these discussions to blame both.
| And your own comment literally never mentions the Big
| Three.
|
| > can all be screwing over creators in conjunction with
| their publishers.
|
| I prefer not to wade in to conspiracy territory. Apple
| may have power over the industry, but they are an
| outlier. The rest do whatever the industry tels them to.
|
| Quote, [1]. Emphasis mine
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| Spotify primarily makes money for music from two sources
| -- from Spotify Premium subscribers as well as from
| advertisers on Spotify's free tier. _Roughly 2/3 of
| this money is paid out to music rights holders._
|
| --- end quote ---
|
| Guess who are the rights holders. They get 60-65% percent
| of Spotify's _revenue_ (not profit). Care to ask _them_
| where this money goes? No one ever dares to.
|
| > That said, not all musicians on Spotify go through
| publishers.
|
| It's either publishers or indie aggregators (two or three
| of them). Spotify doesn't pay artists directly. If it
| tried to do that, the big publishers would immediately
| pull their catalogs. And the vast majority of popular
| music on the platform is likely to come from big
| publishers, not from indie aggregators.
|
| [1] https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/?question=how-do-
| artists-...
| falcolas wrote:
| > I've yet to see any of these discussions to blame both.
|
| Perhaps because they are outside the context of this
| discussion? For the purposes of this discussion, they are
| a constant, no matter what Spotify or Google does.
|
| > And your own comment literally never mentions the Big
| Three.
|
| I added a caveat to my "buying from the musicians
| directly" exactly because of publishers.
|
| > Apple may have power over the industry, but they are an
| outlier.
|
| Not exactly - they charge the same percentage as the
| other players in this space that I mentioned. No
| conspiracy theories required to point this out.
|
| > Care to ask them where this money goes? No one ever
| dares to.
|
| Sure, in articles about music producers (I recall more
| than a few hitting HN over the years, especially when
| Taylor Swift was raising a ruckus about them and
| Spotify).
|
| > And the vast majority of popular music on the platform
| is likely to come from big publishers, not from indie
| aggregators.
|
| I don't believe anybody is disputing that.
| brimble wrote:
| I think the norm that everyone seems to slowly be settling
| on, of 15% for: 1) hosting the program itself, 2)
| displaying in the store, 3) payments and subscriptions
| including figuring out local taxes and CC fees and such, 4)
| various other services (push messages, for example), is
| pretty damn reasonable. 30% is clearly too high, but
| somewhere around 20% it actually starts to look like not-a-
| rip-off.
| verisimi wrote:
| > Imagine a world with no cash.
|
| I'm in :)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I don't think Spotify is the best example here, since I'm not
| particularly convinced that more cash going to them would end
| up in the hands of musicians.
|
| But certainly, if I subscribe to The Economist I want as much
| of my money as possible to go to the journalists who actually
| write the content.
| Erwin wrote:
| Spotify is public and you can see most of their numbers --
| the Cost of Revenue for 2021 was 7 billion EUR on 9.6 in
| revenue. The cost is said to be mostly the royalties though
| it would include paying the many millions to some
| podcasters.
|
| The ad-supported users outnumbers premium users (236
| million to 180 million) but bring in only 1/6th the
| revenue. So that's a factor depressing the payout per
| stream.
|
| https://investors.spotify.com/financials/press-release-
| detai...
| falcolas wrote:
| Or phrased slightly differently, Spotify takes 30% of
| revenue generated by selling access to artists' songs.
| [deleted]
| stormbrew wrote:
| It's probably not really possible to even estimate how
| much of actual cashflow is attributable to user income
| vs. artist payout from GAAP-based financial statements.
| And their cashflow statements are not particularly useful
| either. I'm sure a lot of nice things are "said to be,"
| but if spotify were particularly proud of how much money
| they let through to artists I think they'd be touting it
| in more concrete ways.
|
| Anyways, this is a bit like looking at Walmart's COGS and
| declaring that they've never screwed over a supplier by
| forcing them to cut prices to the bone.
| taf2 wrote:
| Pretty confident in the US since at least 2002 - after aol,
| sprint and others got in big trouble it's been super illegal
| to not allow people to cancel
| nerdjon wrote:
| Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making
| the situation worse for consumers.
|
| However to be clear, that percent is in the same area that
| game consoles and I believe Steam (someone correct me?)
| charge. And we accept that. When the 30% rule for the App
| Store came down, our smart phones were basically the same as
| a game console. Most people did not expect these devices to
| become the central part of all of our lives. At least not in
| this way.
|
| Now that it has, than sure the percent needs to be lowered
| and I am not arguing that (I said in another comment the 30%
| is worth it for me personally but doesn't mean I am ok with
| it).
| rusk wrote:
| > let's focus on lowering that percent
|
| A noble position but it seems to have been going other way
| unfortunately. Not sure how you would do that ... further
| regulation or introducing artificial competition in the
| market. I think the most pro-business approach is to quash
| the monopoly and open up the market.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Going the other way? The fee started at 30% and has only
| gone down from there (ex. 15% for subs active > 1 yr). I
| believe the fees will fragment further and give
| developers the option of paying less but receiving less
| too. For example: You can pay 5% less but you will only
| show up in app store search results. Or something to this
| effect. We will never get blanket 30% take rates again.
| It was a simplification when the market was early
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > than sure the percent needs to be lowered and I am not
| arguing that
|
| Yes to 0% and any percentage of revenue should be made
| illegal. Google and Apple can charge whatever fixed values
| they want or even charge based on a wide variety of vectors
| but a % of revenue should be explicitly illegal that kind
| of blatant rent seeking is a quintessential example of
| something the government needs to stamp out.
| olliej wrote:
| Apple provides software updates for devices for years
| after they been paid for. Apple and google both
| providedthe CDN bandwidth for incredibly popular "free"
| software for which they do not receive a penny.
|
| The revenue from paid services covers that support.
|
| Would I prefer the cut was lower, but at the same time
| the 15% (for most)-30% cut seems to match every other
| platform
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Apple and Google are providing a service, so why exactly
| should they not get a cut of revenue?
|
| To be clear, 30% is too much, but aside from payment
| handling and taking on fraud risk as a result of that
| (3-4% is generally the industry standard for card not
| present transactions), they provide a subscription
| management/payment API for IAPs, as well as app packaging
| and distribution, reviews, etc.
|
| That certainly is worth more than 0%.
| munk-a wrote:
| Isn't the fraud risk still generally born by credit card
| companies at the end of the day?
|
| I think we can legitimately talk about the costs of
| maintaining the app-store as a marketplace, and we can
| talk about the future costs of providing updates free of
| charge in perpetuity and orchestrating the infrastructure
| to host those various downloads... but that's about where
| their service offering ends. App review is a joke, the
| rating systems on both platforms as absolute trash and
| often gamed by publishers (remember Uber's in app prompt
| about how many stars you'd give them that forwarded you
| to the app-store if you gave them 5 and otherwise just
| offered you an internal complaint form if you gave them
| anything else? Everyone does that).
|
| I'd question whether Apple and Google are really
| providing a service or just exploiting a captive market.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Isn't the fraud risk still generally born by credit
| card companies at the end of the day?
|
| No - for online/e-commerce payments, the liability is
| generally with the merchant, not the card issuing bank.
|
| If it was about risk/fraud, debit cards would be an
| economic non-starter, as their interchange is capped to
| 0.05% + 0.24$ for almost all issuers.
|
| EU issuers also get by (probably not too comfortably so,
| but still) with the recently introduced interchange cap
| of 0.3%/0.2%.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Isn't the fraud risk still generally born by credit
| card companies at the end of the day?
|
| Absolutely not, the bank initiates a chargeback, which
| the payment processing network directs back to the one
| who handled the payments. They generally are then tasked
| with "proving" the purchase is authorized. Enough
| chargebacks, even fraudulent ones, and the payment
| provider cuts ties with you (although, at Google scale, I
| don't see this happening) as you're too great a risk.
|
| > App review is a joke, the rating systems on both
| platforms as absolute trash and often gamed by publishers
| (remember Uber's in app prompt about how many stars you'd
| give them that forwarded you to the app-store if you gave
| them 5 and otherwise just offered you an internal
| complaint form if you gave them anything else? Everyone
| does that).
|
| The implementation being a joke doesn't mean it's not a
| service with COGS that need to be accounted for.
| desiarnezjr wrote:
| Nope. All fraud and chargebacks go back to the
| merchant/seller. The processor will immediately hold
| those funds in question pending a dispute or resolution
| around the fraud or chargeback.
|
| On top of that there's a hefty fee for any fraud or
| chargeback that's not refundable even if it's resolved in
| your favor. Usually in the range of $40 per instance.
| morepork wrote:
| Apple and Google (and others) also allow loading credit
| using physical cards that you purchase at retail stores.
| I believe the stores get around a 5-10% margin on these,
| i.e. you buy a $100 gift card, and the store only pays
| Apple/Google $90-95.
|
| There is a definite cost to all these so 0% is
| unreasonable. Epic is trying to be the "good" games
| distribution store and they reportedly take a 12% cut.
| Something around there, maybe down to 10% would be a
| reasonable place for Apple/Google to be.
| munk-a wrote:
| Unfortunately Epic can't honestly comment on what cut
| they're taking while their storefront loses immense
| amounts of money[1] - I agree that a lower percentage is
| probably a lot more reasonable but I don't think EGS can
| serve as that example.
|
| 1. https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-has-sunk-dollar500m-into-
| the-ep...
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Doesn't this ignore the reality that a service with many
| of subscribers puts dramatically more strain on
| marketplace systems than a service with only a few
| subscribers?
|
| For example, a smalltime dev isn't going to see hardly
| any refunds, but a dev on the scale of Epic Games is
| going to be seeing something on the order of tens or
| hundreds per minute. Should that not be accounted for?
|
| That said, this could be accomplished with tiered fixed
| fees. An indie dev would probably land in a low rung
| where costs are tiny, where a triple-A game studio would
| get charged substantially more.
| nightski wrote:
| Steam lets developers sell keys without the tax using their
| own systems. In addition to this you are allowed to list
| your games on other storefronts for PC.
| lxgr wrote:
| Do you know if there is any revenue sharing happening in
| the background in that model?
| lxgr wrote:
| > Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of
| making the situation worse for consumers.
|
| The only viable path towards finding a fair price for this
| service (apparently deemed essential and basically a steal
| by Apple and Google, but worth less than nothing by many
| app developers) would seem to be competition.
|
| Why not offer both, explicitly allowing for different
| prices, special deals only for non-store subscriptions
| etc.?
| falcolas wrote:
| So, Spotify also reportedly takes 30% of the revenue before
| paying the creators.
|
| This isn't an Apple/Google/Spotify thing, it's a service
| thing.
| mr_aks wrote:
| I don't understand this argument. Spotify is a service
| connecting listeners to the artists and infrastructure
| and development of said service has its cost whereas
| Google/Apple charge fees for the app store which Spotify
| subscription does not require.
| falcolas wrote:
| So, Spotify is allowed to charge 30% for access to the
| market it has created, but Google and Apple are not?
|
| An app store costs money too - the creation and
| maintenance of the billing platform/API, bandwidth, human
| curation, cross-device storage of saved configurations,
| user acquisition, etc.
|
| What makes musicians so different from software
| developers that it's perfectly acceptable for Spotify to
| take such a large share of the revenue their music has
| earned?
|
| (To make my own position clear, I don't think any of them
| deserve 30%)
| thow-58d4e8b wrote:
| The problem with this line of argumentation is - why
| single out phone OS providers as the only link in the
| very long supply chain that deserves a cut?
|
| Why not internet provider? Verizon's infrastructure costs
| money, too - should they also be eligible for a 30% tax?
|
| The data will be transmitted through Cisco routers or
| Nokia's BTS - it costs a lot of R&D to develop those
|
| What about the phone manufacturer - Xiaomi or Samsung
| would definitely not reject their fair share
|
| None of this would happen without electricity - power
| transmission companies deserve a portion
|
| There really isn't a coherent moral argument in favor of
| the current status quo - it's simply about market power,
| nothing else
| FredPret wrote:
| Apple/Google app stores are a service connecting users to
| app creators, and all the points about Spotify also apply
| to Apple and Google. In the case of Apple, they literally
| created the entire market, from the CPUs all the way up.
|
| If 30% is too much, publish your content as a web app. If
| you want to play in the walled garden, pay the cover
| charge.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think the biggest difference is that Spotify isn't a
| monopoly at the end of the day - it's a popular service.
| A lot of people still use different methods to listen to
| music like YouTube, iTunes, bandcamp and a plethora of
| others. If you, as a band, want to make money on your
| music you aren't required to do business through spotify,
| it's a choice that most people make because it's free
| money.
|
| On the other hand if you want to write an app for a
| mobile device you're, realistically, either going to
| write it for Android or iOS. On the Android side you can
| distribute it as an apk assuming you can handle the cost
| of writing self-updating code - but on the iOS side
| you're hooped. Mobile devices are a part of modern life,
| the fact that one company dominates the market (and
| another company takes the remainder) leaves the market
| extremely unhealthy.
| falcolas wrote:
| Google Play, which charges 30%, is not a monopoly either.
| Nor is Steam. The Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo scene is a bit
| less clear, but they charge 30% too.
|
| Musicians have about the same freedom in this respect as
| any application developer, practically speaking. AKA,
| they're just as exploited (if not moreso, see other
| comments about how musicians are also being screwed over
| by studios).
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You can only lower the percent with at least the credible
| threat of competition. Would you pay $13 for a $10 service
| for the privilege of doing it through the play store?
|
| Likewise would you be equally OK if the dollar figures
| involved were much larger for example your cable
| subscription?
| xmprt wrote:
| If we want to make the situation better for customers then
| companies like Apple and Google should provide subscription
| management/payment API for IAPs for free to developers so
| developers are incentivized to use the centralized
| platform. Customers can manage and cancel payments through
| that centralized platform. The only reason developers come
| up with these roundabout methods for payment is because of
| the massive fees that Google and Apple have.
|
| Steam isn't a monopoly like Apple and Google are with their
| respective marketplaces so it doesn't make sense to compare
| the two. If I want to publish or play a game there are a
| lot of different ways to do so that don't involve Steam.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Perhaps you might want your spotify account be able to operate
| independantly from google? I see similarities to google SSO.
| For some people, being able not remember more credentials is
| worth giving google more power over your life, for others
| google SSO is a non-starter and the would much rather make a
| seperate account with different credentials.
|
| Some people would rather use single use virtual credut card
| numbers than rely on google to let them cancel when and how
| they want.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Or monthly SEPA transfers. That I can set and revoke at will.
| I wish that there was an error-proof (on my side) way to set
| the exact amount though. And a range acceptable for the
| company for what day of the month to do the transfer.
|
| I don't understand why I would need to go through _anyone_
| else for this than my bank(s) ?
| rkk3 wrote:
| Maybe costing 30% more isn't worth centralizing the
| subscriptions
| fragmede wrote:
| Maybe it's worth it for no-hassle cancelling though. While
| 30% is steep, and you should check website pricing vs Apple
| in-app pricing for something you end up keeping, being able
| to cancel from a predictable UI is worth something compared
| to phone, mail in or in-person-only cancellation policies.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I fully understand that I am... maybe closer to people here
| but in the grand scheme of things financially I am in a
| better state than most people.
|
| But so I was curious, I have $762 worth of subscriptions a
| year through Apple. So I could save $228.60 if they were all
| 30% less.
|
| To me that is worth it. But I would also like to point out,
| that many of the apps I am subscribed too. I am only
| subscribed too because it was easy through Apple and I knew
| that I could cancel. I have a number of expired ones that I
| used for 6 months or a year but I didn't need anymore. A few
| that I have right now fit this but I am still actively using
| them.
|
| If it wasn't for this central subscription, they would have
| never gotten my money to begin with.
| OmahaBoy69 wrote:
| How the hell did you manage to rack up $762 in yearly
| subscription fees...?
| forty wrote:
| What if there was another payment system available on
| iphone with similar subscription centralisation service,
| with only 10% fee? Would you use that instead?
|
| IMO the main problem is the lack of competition. If Apple
| were forced to accept other payment platforms, you'd soon
| find the same service for cheaper.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I don't necessarily care that its Apple.
|
| But the only reason that this works the way it does, is
| because a developer has to use it. If there really was a
| third party offering that was just as easy to use sure,
| why not. But I just don't see companies willingly making
| it easy to cancel a service without trying to send the
| customer through some retention workflow.
| adewinter wrote:
| It would only make sense if the company was able to offer a
| discount/different price when you use their billing system vs
| google/apple.
|
| Edit: though it's not clear if Google would even allow that in
| this case.
| nerdjon wrote:
| That is the only use case I could think of, but I would have
| expected if that was the case it would have been communicated
| in this release.
|
| It looks like on iOS Spotify is $13 a month vs $10 a month on
| their website. I don't see anywhere https://play.google.com/s
| tore/apps/details?id=com.spotify.mu... that specifies in app
| purchases but I assume it is the same.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Tinder offers a discount if you subscribe through the web.
|
| I got upsold into their 6 month package. You were supposed to
| get 5 super likes per day (which shows your profile to someone
| and tells them you like them; otherwise, you wait to maybe
| sometime show up in their feed and hope they pay attention).
| After I paid, they changed it to 5 per MONTH. It effectively
| made my subscription worthless, but unless I go through the
| hassle of contesting it on my CC, I have no recourse.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > As a user, why would I choose this?
|
| On iOS you do not have that choice with many apps because they
| (fairly) do not wish to fork over 30% of revenue.
|
| So if this was introduced to iOS, the choice would be "Sign up
| for Netflix in the app" or "Not at all". You just do not have
| the option to use centralized billing on iOS with Netflix. "You
| download the app and it doesn't work".
| yreg wrote:
| >"You download the app and it doesn't work"
|
| Steve wouldn't be happy about this.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| It's very easy to stop your Spotify subscription, on their
| website. There isn't any trick.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong),
| disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a
| central location with a click or 2.
|
| As a user I might go with Spotify exactly for that reason.
|
| My Google account is personal and already attached to a lot of
| services, while the Spotify one is dedicated and shared. I'd
| hate to go hunt for the right Google account that has the
| subscription.
|
| Also, Apple subscriptions have several issues like the service
| provider can't cancel your subscription. Given that Apple will
| not let you cancel the current running month, even if the
| provider agrees with your case, it leads to fucked up
| situations that only emerge because there's a middleman.
| nvahalik wrote:
| > Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong)
|
| While subscription cancellations work similarly, Apple holds
| your hand (from a dev perspective) than Google does. Apple's
| overall approach seems to just make sense. For instance: if you
| stop offering a particular plan because you don't want to offer
| it anymore (e.g. no more yearly plans, only monthly and
| quarterly). With Apple, you get a notification that you need to
| change your plan, but if the change happens w/in 7 days of your
| renewal, you'll be grand-fathered in.
|
| With Google... well... you cannot stop offering it. You have to
| communicate (manually) a cutoff date, (via their API) cancel
| people's subscriptions, and then deal with the fallout.
| forty wrote:
| Last time I checked (admittedly a long time on Apple, as a
| developer, I couldn't refund and cancel a subscription for my
| customers. They have to go through Apple to do that. Not a
| great experience.
| nvahalik wrote:
| It's usually fairly simple though. You (as a dev) don't
| have to front the cost for support folks to handle it.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| You still have to answer the emails and say "Sorry no I
| cannot refund you, go ask Apple" and have the customer
| not believe you.
| lxgr wrote:
| It's not a pleasant process for consumers at all, in my
| experience. I'm not a big fan of hanging around in
| awkward support chats or calls for things that can
| usually be resolved with an email.
| nerdjon wrote:
| How much does Google communicate to the user with this?
|
| One big benefit I didn't mention, is any yearly membership I
| get a communication from Apple that it is about to renew.
| Reminding me to cancel if I no longer want to use it.
|
| I don't know of a single service I have subscribed too
| directly that does this.
|
| Edit: I remembered one. FFXIV oddly enough reminds me every
| month that they are about to bill.
| usr1106 wrote:
| > As a user, why would I choose this
|
| Because I don't even have Google in my phone?
|
| (No idea whether Spotify will support that, but if they wanted
| they could.)
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a
| central location with a click or 2._
|
| Paypal
| nerdjon wrote:
| Any optional third party option is not a solution.
|
| As long as it is a choice for the developer, it doesn't fix
| the issue. The only reason Apple (and I assume Google) are
| able to make it this easy is because the app developers are
| forced to allow it.
|
| But if they are no longer forced, why would an app developer
| choose make it easy to cancel?
| babypuncher wrote:
| Apple could make easy in-app service cancellation a
| requirement for store approval.
|
| This does not solve the problem of users needing to provide
| their CC info to additional payment providers, but it at
| least solves the problem of dark patterns being used to
| keep users from unsubscribing.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Maybe I am just jaded, but after the fighting and the
| shady practices done by Facebook to try to get around the
| app tracking.
|
| I don't really see that going over too well, and a court
| case being brought up about control or whatever.
|
| I mean I agree, that would be a fantastic rule and if it
| was enforced and allowed. Then sure, that fixes at least
| the dark pattern cancelation issue.
| alimov wrote:
| Ok, what if you don't use paypal. Or if one app uses pay pal,
| but another wants you to use some other payment solution.
| You're still stuck registering to new services and sharing
| your CC info. So now you also have to remember what service
| is used by whatever app you are trying to cancel billing for.
| usrusr wrote:
| You might just as well insist on never linking up your
| Google account with payment. This might not apply to a
| random pay to win candycrush clone, but Spotify is enough
| of an outlier they they likely have quite a few subscribers
| (or would be subscribers) who never accepted their phone as
| an app store payment mechanism. I know quite a few people
| who I'd suspect to be far more willing to hand over they CC
| data to Spotify than to Apple/Google.
| lxgr wrote:
| I believe that we'll see a centralized subscription
| cancellation service for credit and debit cards before too
| long.
| prophesi wrote:
| Could also use privacy.com though iirc it only works at
| masking debit cards.
|
| But yeah, this burden shouldn't be offloaded to users to make
| sure they're using a different centralized service to
| actually cancel subscriptions.
| divbzero wrote:
| I suspect you're right about this. I would love to see the data
| on how many users end up choosing Spotify's payment system over
| Google Play Billing.
| goldenManatee wrote:
| This does not warrant PR excitement getting built up. It's just
| another payment option, not a discount package deal for
| consumers, so ... who cares enough to make a press release about
| a feature this boring.
| [deleted]
| robbiet480 wrote:
| Google's post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782640
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I was under the impression that they were combining the libraries
| or you'd get to pick which provider you wanted to stream music
| from but use the same app. If all this does is give you the
| option to pay for Spotify using Spotify app or a Google Pay
| subscription, then it only matters if Google is giving this
| option to all developers for any app.
| swarnie wrote:
| I don't understand what i'm getting here?
|
| I downloaded Spotify on to my android phone, it takes my payment
| and it works.
|
| For a tech non-Silibro, what does this blog post mean?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Spotify keeps more of the money when you use their payment
| system instead of Google's. Presumably they'll give you a
| discount for not using google pay.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Or use the extra money to improve their product and pay the
| musicians more - in a perfect world.
| ars wrote:
| Or more realistically they'll lower prices.
| syspec wrote:
| Temporarily to get users to switch, or permanently if
| they can determine how to monetize the user's information
| (what you didn't read the whole EULA?)
| u2077 wrote:
| This is great, I guess? Is Google just caving in at a smaller
| scale before they get _forced_ to do this at a larger scale? I
| feel like by doing this now, they are trying to dodge something
| that's very likely to come down the road. (antitrust regulations)
|
| Then again, partnering with only the big names will create a new
| wave of complaints.
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