[HN Gopher] A secret deal let Spotify bypass Android's app store...
___________________________________________________________________
A secret deal let Spotify bypass Android's app store fees
Author : mertbio
Score : 242 points
Date : 2023-11-20 21:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| Justin_K wrote:
| Nothing says Anti-Trust like secret deals that violate their
| published TOS.
| vGPU wrote:
| This will hurt Google and may destroy Spotify. If they're the
| only ones that get the 0/4% deal and the other services like
| tidal are paying full price that's a blatant anti-competitive
| agreement.
| htrp wrote:
| >This will hurt Google and may destroy Spotify.
|
| How does this destroy Spotify?
| oliwarner wrote:
| They could be fined and then forced to pay full whack.
|
| But I'm not sure they meet the threshold for anti-
| competative practice. You'd need to show some sort of paid
| exclusivity (eg a bribe so only Spotify could get a better
| rate).
|
| 30% for market access is a bigger net evil that anything
| Spotify might be doing IMO.
| vGPU wrote:
| They run very slim profit margins, regulators could fine
| them more than they could afford to pay.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Agreed and this news comes just 6 months after Spotify hiked
| their subscription price. Which at the time was well received
| by the stock market.
|
| How profitable would Spotify be if they were paying full
| price?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > How profitable would Spotify be if they were paying full
| price?
|
| They're not profitable now so very not.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Last quarter they posted 1.94% profit margin.
| carstenhag wrote:
| Netflix went a different route. After being offered to only
| pay a 10% cut, they made calculations and decided to not
| offer in-app-subscriptions at all. This article has
| details: https://www.theverge.com/23954852/google-netflix-
| app-store-d...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Don't tell anyone. But Netflix doesn't pay retail for AWS and
| Spotify doesn't pay retail for GCP. Heck Epic has special deals
| with console makers
| gmerc wrote:
| That's what nailed FB into the FTC settlement - platform
| discrimination. A lot of people will have a lot of work with this
| one very soon.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Damn, that's not playing very fair, now, is it, Ek?
| acheong08 wrote:
| I'm betting some people will argue that "It's their store, they
| can do what they want with it"
| apwell23 wrote:
| yes same as apple app store.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| It is pretty hard to argue against that.
|
| For me, I think the open question is can they deny 3rd party
| app stores or side-loading apps. Then, we get into the
| "Microsoft installing IE by default" fight. How can a 3rd party
| app store compete? (I don't have an answer)
| euazOn wrote:
| > It is pretty hard to argue against that.
|
| The European Union's Digital Markets Act finds that pretty
| easy.
| everforward wrote:
| The DMA is about whether they can be the _only_ store, not
| whether they can do whatever they want with their store.
|
| The DMA will let them charge 100% fees if they want, it
| just won't allow them to be the only store on the platform
| to force people to pay that fee.
| packetlost wrote:
| Because they are over 1/2 of a duopoly? It's pretty darn easy
| to argue against it and it has been done successfully.
| flutas wrote:
| > the open question is can they deny 3rd party app stores or
| side-loading apps
|
| This is somewhat the basis of the lawsuit that actually
| brought this out.
|
| The accusation is (iirc): Google has backroom deals with OEMs
| to prevent them from having any market installed by default
| except for Google Play. This is what stopped Epic from
| continuing with their own mobile market idea, as no OEMs
| would agree due to this.
| xcv123 wrote:
| > It is pretty hard to argue against that.
|
| If they are a monopoly or duopoly or cartel it is very easy
| to argue against that.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/antitrust.asp
| qwertox wrote:
| I was about to write that maybe a discount could be OK, due to
| some kind of high volume income generation for Google, but then
| again, wouldn't that mean that they should have to create some
| kind of discount tiers which apply to all depending on a
| certain criteria?
| mattnewton wrote:
| Typically I see people arguing that when it's apple. Usually
| complete with a "think of the children / the grandmas" when
| arguing against side-loading.
|
| I'm still scratching my head trying to understand why this is
| okay but Microsoft bundling internet explorer wasn't.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I'm betting some people will argue that "It's their store,
| they can do what they want with it"
|
| Behaving as though predicting a response is a counter to it is
| bad faith.
| K0nserv wrote:
| I guess I'm usually in this camp with regards to Apple and I
| suppose it's strictly okay for Google to do this.
|
| However, since these markets are so dominant, I'd like any
| discounts to be transparent and offered to everyone at the same
| terms. Apple's public discount program works like this,
| although who knows what secret deals they have.
|
| Related: are utility companies in various jurisdictions allowed
| to strike deals like this?
| hospitalJail wrote:
| The double standard is revealed.
|
| Apple is the Nintendo of gaming. Through advanced psychology
| tricks, they aren't held to the same standards.
| K0nserv wrote:
| My standard is consistent. Apple and Google control their
| respective OSes. They are not general purpose OSes and
| there's nothing wrong with locking down the software users
| can run. Having a store and charging a commission is also
| fine, however it makes sense that all developers should be
| on equal footing with respect to the store and their app
| size(in terms of download) i.e. no sweetheart deals.
|
| I do think there's a strong argument to be made about
| forcing Apple and Google to facilitate the ability to
| install a different OS if the user wishes.
| astrange wrote:
| > Apple's public discount program works like this, although
| who knows what secret deals they have.
|
| They don't have any, we know because of Epic testimony.
| paxys wrote:
| People only use that argument for the Apple ecosystem. Any
| other company following their example is evil and should be
| regulated out of existence.
| asylteltine wrote:
| That doesn't work when you have a monopoly though. This isn't a
| bakery or "totally legitimate internet website making business
| that absolutely is real and wasn't invented specifically to
| bring a case to the Supreme Court"
| astrange wrote:
| An app store isn't a monopoly, it's a two-sided marketplace.
| If you claim it's a monopoly then it should also be a
| monopsony, which would cancel out most of it.
| muzani wrote:
| That argument works when they don't own 70% or so of the apps
| in the world. At some point, they should be held accountable
| for what they do on their store, just like countries would be
| held accountable to what happens to their citizens.
|
| If Play Store decided to ban or restrict, say, Uber or Netflix,
| that's just billions of dollars of economic damage on a flick
| of a finger.
|
| They hold more power than banks. It's surprising they aren't
| tightly regulated like banks would be.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > They hold more power than banks. It's surprising they
| aren't tightly regulated like banks would be.
|
| No. Stop doing this.
|
| When someone has a monopoly, the solution is not to keep the
| monopoly and try to regulate it. It's to break the monopoly.
| muzani wrote:
| Banks aren't a monopoly and are still dangerous. Also the
| apple app store is a "hard" monopoly, while Google's is a
| soft one, but Google still holds a bulk of the power
| despite major competitors.
|
| Also not all monopolies are dangerous or evil, e.g. Steam.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Banks aren't a monopoly and are still dangerous.
|
| Banks aren't dangerous because they're a monopoly,
| they're dangerous because you're entrusting them with
| your money.
|
| Platform app stores are dangerous because they're a
| monopoly.
|
| > Also not all monopolies are dangerous or evil, e.g.
| Steam.
|
| Steam is still taking a 30% cut. Only monopolists can get
| away with that, and they should _all_ be smashed.
| astrange wrote:
| This is how to ensure your economy isn't competitive with
| other countries. Large companies with export businesses are
| more competent and successful than small companies without
| them. It's good for Korea that they have Samsung.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I think that ("It's their store, they can do what they want
| with it") would only work if using alternative stores was
| practical.
|
| I once tried installing the Amazon app store to see if I could
| get a version of Kindle that allowed in-app purchases. It
| didn't exist.
| aftbit wrote:
| So much for net neutrality. We were arguing about the wrong thing
| all along.
|
| At least on Android, normal users can sideload your app, so you
| can bypass all of these store policies if you are big enough. For
| example, see Termux, PornHub, or Fortnite. On Apple, you're just
| out of luck if you don't want to pay 30% or comply with every
| technical policy. Want to try out media over QUIC? Too bad, you
| need to use HLS and only HLS for streaming, or your app will be
| removed.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I don't think it makes net neutrality the wrong fight.
| Capitalism can afford to fight on many fronts.
|
| That being said, rumor has it Apple is going to soon allow
| sideloading of apps in some places due to regulatory pressure.
| (I assume they're hoping to find a balance where it's too hard
| for the average person, but possible enough to avoid legal
| woes)
|
| https://www.androidauthority.com/iphone-sideloading-misunder...
| freedomben wrote:
| You think they'll allow it in the US? Europe they don't seem
| to have a choice, but US at least for now...
| gkoberger wrote:
| Not right away, but it's clearly trending that direction
| and hopefully the US pushes for it as well.
| freedomben wrote:
| This would be great for consumers and app makers, but do
| you think this will ultimately help Apple? (honest
| question)
| _jal wrote:
| My guess is that sideloading on IOS will be region-locked to
| be available only where legally required.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| We lost the fight for net neutrality. It took a while but more
| and more stories are coming out about companies punishing users
| who dont do xyz and that is perfectly legal for them to do. I'm
| sure eventually there will be lawsuits, or the current ones
| will resolve one way or another, about this.
|
| By the way, altstore exists on iOS. Although it is very
| limited.
| astrange wrote:
| We never lost net neutrality, it was mandated in California
| as soon as it was deregulated federally and that was good
| enough to stop anyone from trying.
| bogwog wrote:
| Sideloading isn't a solution to this. The average user isn't
| going to figure out how to do that on their own (and if you
| disagree, then you're living in a bubble surrounded by tech
| nerds). There's a reason Google Play is the dominant store on
| Android even though sideloading has been possible since the
| first Android devices came out, and it has been a piece of crap
| through all of that time.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >Sideloading isn't a solution to this. The average user isn't
| going to figure out how to do that on their own (and if you
| disagree, then you're living in a bubble surrounded by tech
| nerds).
|
| Disagree. I seen literal children figure out how to torrent
| stuff.
| bad_user wrote:
| Torrenting apps are allowed on Google Play. Search for
| LibreTorrent.
|
| But yes, if you have a look at Fortnite, the 2 methods they
| provide are (1) downloading the APK, or (2) Samsung's
| Galaxy Store:
|
| https://www.fortnite.com/mobile/android
|
| Even though they probably lose installs this way, I'm
| pretty sure that many kids manage to install Fortnite just
| fine.
| skydhash wrote:
| Also disagree. When Whatsapp was paid, everyone used to
| sideload it (Telecom services are bad that whatsapp was a
| very good option, but no payment option in my country).
| Some people wanted to sideload it because of internet
| issue, cheaper to got someone else to share the apk file.
| Sideloading was very easy.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Again, bubble surrounded by tech nerds.
|
| Children can be tech nerds too.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Tech nerds? My aunt figured out how to use torrents 15
| years ago.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >There's a reason Google Play is the dominant store on
| Android
|
| Maybe because it fully covers the needs for >99.9% of Android
| users. Sometimes the answer is the obvious one.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It's because there is no store or browser ballet on first
| use. And because Play Store had special privileges making
| auto updates silent.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yes because that worked so well in the EU...
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Sideloading isn't a solution to this.
|
| It won't hurt either.
| zirgs wrote:
| I know how to sideload apps, but still install apps through
| Play Store. Why would I bother sideloading something if it's
| on the store already?
| ragebol wrote:
| Sideloading is not about things already in the app store,
| but for the things not in it.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Why on earth would Google even suggest such a deal? To get the 4%
| on the payments made via the Play Store? That seems rather
| desperate.
|
| 4% isn't an amazing deal on payments from Spotifys point of view,
| and 10% for Netflix seems like in insult for processing payments.
| Normal payment processors are closer to 1.5 - 2%.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| the closed gardens of mobile app stores don't have the regular
| healthy market competition that normal payment processors do.
| it's one of my least favourite parts of building for mobile
| mrweasel wrote:
| I'm just questioning the point in offering a "deal" like this
| to Spotify, when Spotify can just handle their own payments
| for less. Is those 4% really worth that much to Google that
| it's outways the risk of others being made aware of how
| little payments actually cost Google to run.
|
| Now that Netflix knows that Spotify pay 4%, why would they
| ever agree to anything more?
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| I don't think you understand that over at Apple, not paying
| the 30% is not being on iPhone..period. Not being on the
| play store is not being on Android for 90% of customers.
| This is why both are facing major antitrust cases.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Aaah, okay, I was under the impression that you could
| actually be present on the Play Store as a subscription
| service and just handle your own payments and that would
| be perfectly acceptable.
|
| But that makes the deal even weirder, Spotify doesn't
| have a choice, yet they have a completely insane deal.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| No Spotify = No Pixel Sales.
| ogreswamp wrote:
| That is simply not true. You can easily set account
| creation and payment on your website for "reader apps" if
| you're not willing to share 30/15% with Apple. (and
| Spotify & Netflix qualify as reader apps). Apple even
| allows you to put a link to your website for account
| creation right in the app (they didn't allow that in the
| past).
|
| https://developer.apple.com/support/reader-apps
|
| Many companies (like Google) move Apple's subscription
| fee to end users, so don't feel too pity about them. Just
| compare YouTube premium cost as an in-app purchase and on
| the website. EUR15.99 vs EUR11.99 here in Ireland.
|
| Google had a choice not to offer the YouTube subscription
| as IAP and just link people to the website. But the
| conversion rate for IAP is way higher compared to the
| website link, so they just punish their users, who pay
| EUR4 extra every month.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Most apps aren't reader apps, that's a very special (and
| relatively new) rule
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Reader apps are an extremely specific clause, mostly
| related to their Ebook price fixing lawsuit. Zero of the
| apps in discussion here are reader apps.
|
| I should also note, that up until recently, Apple
| specifically had clauses that you couldn't have the link
| to the website bit AND they had a 'you can't pass the
| price onto customers' rule.
| freedomben wrote:
| This clearly wasn't intended to get out, and predicting
| that Epic would file suit and then it would leak out of the
| court would be a hard reason to argue against trying to
| negotiate business in the moment.
| jsnell wrote:
| Netflix currently pay 0%, getting them to agree to 4%
| sounds like a pretty good deal.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Now that Netflix knows that Spotify pay 4%, why would they
| ever agree to anything more? "
|
| I would suspect, they have a special deal as well.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Normal payment processors don't need to maintain the os
| ecosystem. Arguably Google needs to do the same work as a
| traditional payment processor AND much more.
| bogwog wrote:
| > Arguably Google needs to do the same work as a
| traditional payment processor
|
| Unarguably, they don't need to do that. They want to,
| because a monopoly on payment processing makes a lot of
| money.
|
| If 4%/15%/30%/whatever is what Google needs to charge to
| run their payment processing business, that shows that
| they're extremely inefficient/incompetent, and the market
| would be more efficient if other companies were able to
| offer that service instead. Last I checked, Stripe charges
| 2.9%, which is even less than what Google charges Spotify
| in this unicorn deal.
|
| EDIT: the same goes for "store infrastructure" or whatever.
| If Google offered publishers the option to run their own
| infrastructure for distributing apps/updates/whatever,
| everyone would take that deal rather than pay Google's
| nonsense fees.
| freedomben wrote:
| Even 2.9% (which is what card payment processors charge
| as well) is ludicrously high. They make a very, very
| healthy profit margin with that. One of my greatest
| disappointments about cryptocurrencies is that they
| didn't destroy that ridiculousness.
| thallium205 wrote:
| The money largely funds consumer protection products such
| as when chargebacks have to be executed on fraudulent or
| other disputed transactions on your card. Zero liability
| guarantees that the card network infrastructure offers
| consumers come at a cost which is found here. Think of it
| as an insurance policy paid on every transaction which
| explains why it has to be a %.
|
| Crypto offers no protections so no fees need to be taken.
| brookst wrote:
| Characterizing app store fees as purely for payment
| processing is so disingenuous it's hard to even engage.
|
| The reality is these fees are for access to an audience.
| Google spends a lot of money developing Android and
| creating a storefront that huge numbers of people see
| every day.
|
| Casting that as "payment processing fees" is like
| complaining it's outrageous for a farmer's market to
| charge $200/day for a 10x10 booth because 100sf of
| parking lot can be had for $10/day somewhere else: you
| have to willfully misunderstand the business for the
| argument to make any sense.
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm not GP, but that's a really good point and one to
| keep in mind.
|
| I suppose the question is, did the farmers market
| threaten all the other land owners if they allowed a
| competing farmers market to open up? Or throw
| metaphorical wrenches in the way to a competitor?
|
| Google's exclusivity agreement makes it much harder for
| alternatives to emerge. Even with this though, I get that
| they are funding open source development and need to
| protect it _somehow_ lest it be stolen (cough by Amazon
| cough) and made a competing platform. I 'm quite unsure
| where the balance should be.
| vkou wrote:
| Your analogy is poor.
|
| App store monopolies aren't built on threats. A mall
| giving an anchor retailer a sweetheart deal isn't
| threatening nearby malls.
|
| They are, however, built on economies of scale.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| They're built on excluding competition.
|
| App stores, like payment processors, have economies of
| scale in the sense that you need a critical mass of users
| to sign up for them and trust them with their payment
| info, so you're not going to have a thousand of them, but
| you could certainly have a dozen. At which point they
| would have to compete on things like fees and keep each
| other in check.
|
| But not if each platform has only a single dominant
| payment processor.
| freedomben wrote:
| I don't agree the analogy is poor.
|
| Unless I'm mistaken, Google _has_ made threats, such as
| "if you include a competing app store, then you don't get
| _any_ of the google apps, google play services, etc, and
| you can 't use the Android trademark.
|
| We saw in the early 00s a proliferation of "Android"
| devices that didn't have the Play store, and they were
| mostly DOA
| vkou wrote:
| An unwillingness to co-operate is not generally
| considered a threat.
|
| > and they were mostly DOA
|
| Maybe those stores should have invested a few dozen
| billion dollars in building up a comprehensive first-
| party app ecosystem that made them attractive to users.
|
| Economies of scale, and all. Nobody's going to your
| farmer's market, because everyone's going to the mall
| that has a Walmart.
| bogwog wrote:
| I wasn't trying to say that those fees are only for
| payment processing.
|
| Anyways, to your point about audience: That's BS. The
| reason Google Play is the dominant store definitely has a
| lot to do with that, because nobody is going to publish
| on "My Awesome Android Store" if it doesn't have users.
| However, the reason they have that audience is because of
| their anticompetitive tactics. It's all a cycle that
| feeds into itself, and it's how they're able to become
| the only game in town and charge literally whatever they
| want.
|
| Epic has the ability and resources to potentially build a
| store with enough of an audience to attract more
| developers and compete with Google Play, but it won't
| happen as long as Google is allowed to continue acting
| anti-competitively.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The reality is these fees are for access to an
| audience.
|
| This is called a monopoly rent and is the sort of thing
| antitrust law is intended to prevent, when it's working
| properly.
|
| > Google spends a lot of money developing Android and
| creating a storefront that huge numbers of people see
| every day.
|
| Google gives Android away for free. They choose to do
| that, and if they didn't then it would lose to a
| competitor that did, because operating systems are a
| classic example of somewhere that free software works in
| the absence of anti-competitive behavior. If Google
| didn't develop Android then Samsung and Amazon and
| Canonical and Mozilla would do it, and parts of it would
| be more like Debian, which would be _better_.
|
| > Casting that as "payment processing fees" is like
| complaining it's outrageous for a farmer's market to
| charge $200/day for a 10x10 booth because 100sf of
| parking lot can be had for $10/day somewhere else: you
| have to willfully misunderstand the business for the
| argument to make any sense.
|
| Does the farmer's market also take actions to interfere
| with you being able to build your own storefront?
| freedomben wrote:
| Your comment doesn't deserve the downvotes (which are
| supposed to be about whether a comment is good/substantive,
| not the reactionary "I disagree with this" that it's
| become) so I upvoted it to balance.
|
| You are of course right that there is more work involved
| beyond a traditional payment processor. However, 30% of
| everything?? Even the standard 3% that payment processors
| take is ridiclously high. It's rent-seeking all around.
| aalimov_ wrote:
| While you may have a point about competition, comparing
| credit card processors and app stores solely on fee structure
| doesn't make for an honest comparison because you get to
| ignore all the other things they do.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| So, uh... I hate to break it to you, but payment processing
| is almost as monopolized as mobile app stores are. The fees
| are not as egregiously high as 30%, but they are still
| supracompetitive and eat up retailer margins. Payment
| processing even has similar censorship problems, as evidenced
| by the campaigns to defund porn companies by cutting them off
| of payment networks.
| abxytg wrote:
| Are you serious? The app store standard cut is like 30%.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Processing credit/debit- cards isn't that expensive, 30% is a
| joke, even if you try to justify it with by saying that it
| helps pay for the store infrastructure.
|
| Spotify pays no feed to Google when they handle the payment
| processing themself, via some credit card processor and
| honestly why the hell should they. So Google decide that in
| an attempt to get even the tiniest amount of payments to go
| through them, they'd drop the price to 4%... Why is that so
| important to them?
| alwa wrote:
| I believe the article cited 15% rather than 30% for
| subscriptions, or 11% if you process your own payments. So
| [.15, .11] --> [.04, .00], or an overall discount of 11%
| off subscription revenue they take through the platform.
|
| It sounded to me that, in exchange for that favorable per-
| subscription rate, Spotify paid $50,000,000 into a "success
| fund," whatever that means. $50mm / .11 = $454mm... sounds
| like they're basically paying the equivalent of Play Store
| commission on half a billion's worth of revenue, without
| any guarantee that they'll actually be able to sell that
| much new growth through Play Store. That feels like sharing
| the risk in a way that isn't too out of the domain of
| reason.
|
| From [0], they added about $2bn in revenue year-on-year in
| 2022. Although we don't know the term of this Play Store
| agreement (or what a "success fund" is), paying an amount
| equivalent to the normal commission on 1/5 of that total
| annual growth figure seems like a pretty nontrivial amount
| to commit.
|
| [0] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/
| Spivak wrote:
| They aren't charging the fee for payment processing,
| they're collecting the fee via payment processing. I don't
| understand why people keep making this mistake. Hell even
| Epic made it and lost horribly when they made it. The fee
| is a sales commission, you pay it because you want access
| to the customer base. They are allowed to deliver you
| literally nothing at all in additional services and still
| charge you a fee.
|
| The other stuff they provide exists to sweeten the deal.
| conductr wrote:
| 30% is because most transactions, early on, were around $1.
| And processing fees are usually $0.25 + ~3% = so 28% of the
| average transaction.
|
| When you start applying that 30% to $15 spotify subs, $50
| uber rides, $60 video game, then a bunch of in-app
| purchases ranging in value; the math falls apart and if you
| have scale to do it, the negotiated rate makes more sense
| for those businesses given the average transaction amount.
| astrange wrote:
| It's 15% now. 30% is only for especially large apps.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Because the deal usually is 30%. Negotiating a good rate won't
| happen when one side says "Make a deal or we keep you out".
| Google's rate is a 'slice of a watermelon vs all of a grape'
| angle. Both parties probably worked over the advantages that
| all your Google payment customers would have one-click
| subscribe. Google knew they held some of the cards and Spotify
| knew that going off-play store would harm subs while also
| harming Google.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Spotify's size and consequences of not being on the Play
| Store are exactly why Google would do this.
|
| Google gives no shits if random app developer isn't on Play.
| And so holds firm on their cut.
|
| Play without Spotify makes a lot of users ask "Why isn't
| Spotify on Play?" And probably follow-up with "How do I get
| Spotify? Download another app store? Okay, I'll do that."
|
| So essentially, the money that Google ceded to Spotify was
| approximately what they thought discouraging users from
| installing alternate app stores was worth.
| kleton wrote:
| Shopify signed a very large and long term GCP contract a while
| back.
| eitally wrote:
| Spotify is a long time Google Cloud customer, from the days
| when Google was essentially buying logos, so it would not at
| all surprise me to find out that the Play Store deal was tied
| to a massive GCP commit from Spotify (much like Niantic from
| the same era). In fact, i wouldn't be surprised if some of the
| more recent gaming signs from the Cloud business don't also
| have discount deals with Play.
|
| It's a pretty impressive list of publishers, actually (scroll
| to bottom): https://cloud.google.com/solutions/games
| chatmasta wrote:
| I'm not an anti-trust lawyer (or any kind of lawyer), but
| this _feels_ illegal. It would be one thing if big GCP
| customers were getting discounts on GCP services in exchange
| for large commitments. But the Play Store is - at least
| ostensibly - a separate business from GCP. Receiving
| discounts in one should not require spending in the other...
| ehsankia wrote:
| app stores do a lot more than payment processors though. Maybe
| not 30% worth, but definitely mote than 1-2%.
|
| The real issue though is that there isn't a good way to handle
| every app. In a normal world, every app would cost money to
| buy, and they would only be charged on the purchase prize. But
| in a world where most apps are free and then there are in-app
| purchases, there isn't really any other way for those to be
| monetized but to take a cut of transactions. But obviously
| these things don't scale the same.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| > Why on earth would Google even suggest such a deal?
|
| To prevent Spotify from filing more EU antitrust complaints as
| they did for the Apple Appstore? [0].
|
| Plus, 4% sounds low, but _nominally_ 4% from all Spotify
| subscriptions on Android with their imense user base is a very
| large sum compared to any minor 2-3 person App studio that is
| charged 20-30%.
|
| [0]: https://www.fastcompany.com/90836299/spotify-vs-apple-eu-
| app...
| swingingFlyFish wrote:
| When AT&T got fragmented we got C. I think It's time Apple,
| Google, Amazon and maybe even Microsoft got restructured.
| aalimov_ wrote:
| I think we've got enough programming languages..
| HaZeust wrote:
| We didn't, back then. C changed the game for low-level
| machine coding - what other games would be changed by
| fragmenting FAANG?
| stuff4ben wrote:
| I'd like to see something around operating systems (mobile
| and desktop) and personal assistants/AI. But that may be
| too high-level.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Honestly, just getting back to the point that you can
| write your own app and easily install it on your friends'
| phones would change the world. The amount of interesting
| stuff we lose to the inability of hobbyists to tinker
| with their technology is incalculable.
| HaZeust wrote:
| Write a mobile responsive website in HTML/CSS/JS and port
| it to hybrid mobile with Capacitor.JS?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That doesn't allow you to do a large number of things
| that ordinary apps can do -- or that "approved" apps
| _also_ can 't do, e.g. by modifying parts of the system
| in advantageous ways.
|
| You can also obviously just buy a PC and run whatever you
| want, but the entire point is the barrier to entry. If
| it's easy, more people do it, and that's good. If they
| have to contend with a convoluted mess, people give up,
| and you lose whatever they might have created.
| turminal wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know about this correlation, where can I read
| more about that?
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| We actually got a lot more. For example, we got modems and
| without modems it is likely we would not have Internet, at
| least not free version of it.
| LegibleCrimson wrote:
| That doesn't make much sense to me. Modems existed before
| the AT&T breakup. You can't encode a digital signal for
| transmission ever an analogue medium without a modem, and a
| modem seems entirely beside any point of a free internet to
| me.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| >Apple, Google, Amazon and maybe even Microsoft
|
| What would be the economic and geopolitical consequences of the
| US breaking up the only US companies that are globally
| competitive? Chinese giants will outcompete the smaller less
| competitive remnants after these kind of corporate breakups.
| nashashmi wrote:
| evaluation of Chinese companies will be more stringent than
| local companies against the rules of monopolies.
| mmaunder wrote:
| That's a strong argument for nationalization of large
| businesses. Competition fosters innovation, and monopoly
| kills it. Competition with larger companies gave birth to
| Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Neither Apple, Google, Amazon, nor Microsoft have a
| systemic monopoly.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| That's why there are no innovations from Apple, Google,
| Amazon and Microsoft, certainly not compared to companies
| in a truly competitive business like android and windows
| OEMs.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| That must be why you can get Windows laptops that run
| fast, silent, cool with great battery life and integrates
| well with their phones, watches and tablets.
|
| And let's not talk about those great fast Android phones
| that are still getting security updates a decade later...
| astrange wrote:
| Apple, Google and Microsoft were all in new early markets
| when they started up. They weren't really competing with
| giant successful companies.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Your comment presupposes that bigger = better.
|
| This may or may not be true, but size is not necessarily a
| predictor of victory, especially in warfare.
|
| History is rife with smaller belligerents defeating larger
| ones through innovation/force multiplication/asymmetrical
| warfare.
|
| I think it's fair to say that an oligopoly stifles
| innovation; you can see it in how expensive and slow
| companies like Lockheed, Boeing, or BAE are when it comes to
| providing materiel needed by actual warfighters.
|
| I don't think this is an either-or scenario - you need both -
| but saying that we can _only_ be globally competitive on the
| backs of megacorporations is incorrect.
| bogwog wrote:
| TikTok is an example of a successful Chinese company that is
| out-competing US social media giants. If they were a US
| company, Facebook or Google would've bought and killed them
| when they were an early startup.
|
| American big tech companies aren't competitive in anything.
| They're _entrenched monopolies_. Google, Apple, Microsoft,
| Meta, and Amazon products are all shit, but users don 't
| really have any other choice. If we break them up, it will
| create market opportunity for actual innovation in the US.
|
| The question is whether we actually have the talent and
| expertise to innovate once you remove all of the current
| artificial barriers (big tech monopolies, walled gardens,
| etc).
|
| I think we do. At least more than China, where most of their
| big tech companies seem to be built on stolen and cloned
| tech.
| freedomben wrote:
| > They're entrenched monopolies. Google, Apple, Microsoft,
| Meta, and Amazon products are all shit, but users don't
| really have any other choice.
|
| If their products are all shit, how are they able to
| maintain their monopolies? Why hasn't a competitor started
| up that offered a better product?
| bogwog wrote:
| Is this question meant to be rhetorical, or are you
| genuinely asking? Because the answer is simple: that's
| how monopolies work. Monopolies don't need to compete to
| succeed, they just need some way to exclude competitors.
| All of those companies have multiple ways to do that for
| most/all of their products.
| freedomben wrote:
| > Is this question meant to be rhetorical, or are you
| genuinely asking?
|
| It's a little of both to be honest. I disagree that their
| products are shit (in fact some of their products I think
| are really damn good), and I don't see how short of
| coercion with government or a private army or something
| that you could maintain a monopoly with products that
| suck.
|
| But I genuinely think I might be missing something here.
| Maybe a better question is, how are they able to maintain
| their monopolies with shit products? Huge barriers to
| entry combined with quick acquisition of competitors?
| That's mostly how Rockefeller did it in the 19th century,
| but that's not a good parallel either because he didn't
| have a shit product.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| TikTok is based on a US company - musical.ly - which was
| not bought by any US social media giant, maybe due to anti-
| trust concerns.
| bogwog wrote:
| Wasn't Musical.ly a Chinese company too? Wikipedia says
| they were headquartered in Shanghai with an office in
| California.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| You're right, I misremembered that.
| leejoramo wrote:
| As I recall, we got C and UNIX because the conditions of AT&T's
| telecommunications monopoly prevented them from competing in
| software. So they gave away the source code to academic
| institutions for a comparatively small fee and weak licensing
|
| Tried to find a references for this and found a blog post and
| comments
|
| https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/11/16/why-att-licensed-u...
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > When AT&T got fragmented
|
| We temporarily had like 20 phone services, and we ended up back
| with (barely) 3.
| kibwen wrote:
| This is normal. Markets tend towards consolidation because of
| the beneficial effects of economies of scale. Absent outside
| intervention, monopoly is the natural end state of a market.
| Sometimes this intervention comes naturally (tech changes,
| consumer tastes change, companies randomly implode), but
| where it doesn't, it's the government's role to periodically
| reset the market to a competitive state. This is necessary to
| have efficient markets.
| ragebol wrote:
| Network effect is another cause for consolidation in the
| case of the current tech giants.
| LegibleCrimson wrote:
| Maybe that "tree of liberty" quote accurately applies to
| corporate hegemony as well.
|
| The tree of the free market must be refreshed from time to
| time with the blood of corporate tyrants.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| You seem to be adapting the common butchering of the quote,
| which omits an important part:
|
| "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
| with the blood of _patriots and_ tyrants." (emphasis added)
|
| https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-
| jeffers...
| LegibleCrimson wrote:
| Technically, that one also omits the rest of the letter,
| which is more measured and less punchy anyway, pointing
| out that many rebellions themselves are founded in
| ignorance.
| dehrmann wrote:
| They were all regional, and local got unbundled from long-
| distance. Was that really a win for the consumer?
| mikestew wrote:
| Pardon? C was developed in the 70s[0], and AT&T wasn't broken
| up until 1982[1]. Or am I misinterpreting "fragmented"?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
| babypuncher wrote:
| C and UNIX were proprietary Bell Labs technologies until Ma
| Bell was broken up and told they couldn't compete in
| software.
| mikestew wrote:
| Ah, clears it up for me now, thanks.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Are you arguing for or against?
|
| More seriously, each of those companies could be split without
| too much trouble and no loss of shareholder value. Microsoft in
| particular seems to be made up of components that work against
| each other.
| whoevercares wrote:
| Spotify use GCP as well, and probably one of the biggest
| customers. No surprise. Source:
| https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify
| freedomben wrote:
| You think this secret deal is "no surprise" just because
| Spotify uses GCP? That seems a little conspiracy-theory-ish to
| me.
|
| This to me is still quite shocking, especially since those are
| completely separate departments and such behavior would so
| clearly scream anti-trust
| hoffs wrote:
| It can very much be part of the deal that stand their gcp
| commitment and play store fees.
| freedomben wrote:
| Why wouldn't every big company stand up their infra on GCP
| then? Especially games and things that don't have huge
| backend requirements, this would be a no-brainer.
|
| It would scream anti-trust though, and would surely attract
| the attention of regulators (which are already circling in
| the skies)
| kredd wrote:
| I would say because Spotify has moat? Wouldn't even be
| surprised if it is in top 5 apps in the world "running in
| the background". Both Google and Spotify kinda win with
| this agreement. Plus having "Spotify runs on GCP" is a
| huge advertisement for other enterprise customers.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| What moat? The music industry is willing to make the same
| deal to everyone. If Spotify had any type of moat, they
| would be profitable by now.
| eitally wrote:
| Take a look at my post further up. I think something
| similar was done for Niantic, and I wouldn't be surprised
| if some of these publishers also have sweetheart Play
| deals: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/games
| sa-code wrote:
| Because not every company that uses GCP gets offered this
| discount
| matwood wrote:
| > Why wouldn't every big company stand up their infra on
| GCP then?
|
| Because Amazon is likely already giving big companies
| discounts. There is a huge amount of competition between
| the big 3 cloud providers who work whatever deals they
| can to get big customers.
| cathalc wrote:
| This. Most companies running on AWS/GCP/Azure are paying
| nowhere near the advertised costs.
|
| B2B deals are not like consumer ones. Often times
| companies will "trade" their own business' service in
| place of cash.
| matwood wrote:
| Yup. In B2B in particular, _everything_ is negotiable.
| The sums of money are large so there 's a lot of wiggle
| room. There's also a lot more strategy involved. It could
| be the end of the quarter and the someone needs sale or
| they just want to improve the relationship for the next
| deal. It can also be as simple as the competition is
| against companies that hate each other and they'll
| happily eat a worse deal to get it done to spite the
| other. One of the fun parts of the business side is
| coming up with creative ways to get a deal done. Not
| dissimilar from coming up with creative ways to solve
| engineering problems.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Most companies running on AWS/GCP/Azure are paying
| nowhere near the advertised costs
|
| This is true, but it misses a big motivation behind it.
| It costs more to have enough capacity to support on-
| demand use since it has to sit idle, waiting for a
| customer. Part of the discount you get is you give AGA
| certainty in demand. They don't need to hold as many
| machines in the on-demand pool, and it makes long-term
| planning easier. You'll also find that those on-demand
| prices don't actually scale. At some point, you'll have
| to talk to a rep and commit to more hardware and a
| discount because you're just too big.
| eitally wrote:
| Different departments but still Google (rather than different
| Alphabet entities, which is much less trivial). Cross-PA GTM
| collaboration has been a priority for years now, and the two
| places they've made serious inroads have been Ads + Cloud and
| Geo/Maps + Cloud. I wouldn't be surprised if Play + Cloud was
| emergent, too.
| matwood wrote:
| > That seems a little conspiracy-theory-ish to me.
|
| The word you're looking for is business. This is literally
| how big business to business is done. It also doesn't
| automatically mean anti-trust.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Precisely. Back scratching to sweeten the deal for mutual
| benefit.
| dehrmann wrote:
| "I'm buying a lot of X from you. I notice you sell Y. Can I
| get a discount on Y?" Quite standard. People do it at the
| farmers' market. And it's almost definitely not anti-trust
| because selling cloud compute is unrelated to running an
| app store.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Spotify is very good at negotiating sweetheart deals. I am
| convinced that they negotiated something similar with Sony,
| because on the PS4, Spotify is the _only_ app I have found that
| can play overlay audio while you 're playing a game to replace
| the background music.
| barbazoo wrote:
| This made me think of GTA Vice City I think (someone correct me
| if I'm wrong) where one of the radio stations played local
| audio files, loved that.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| I have a feeling the original '97 GTA could kinda do that. Or
| maybe GTA2. You could find the directories on disk where the
| radio music was stored and just copy in your own stuff.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I recall TrackMania Sunrise was like this. That game was
| made to be modded, so it kinda made sense they made
| replacing audio easy.
|
| Side note: After watching The Stig's laps while listening
| to dull audio on Top Gear, I tried replacing TrackMania's
| music with very soothing music. My times got better.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Original GTA they were CD tracks on the disk unless this
| changed in a later release.
| uhoh-itsmaciek wrote:
| I vaguely recall that '97 GTA allowed you to eject the disc
| after the game started and load an audio CD that would play
| when you selected the custom radio station.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| This feature is in euro truck simulator.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Depends on which version of Vice City you played. The
| original PS2 version would not have had access to a hard
| drive.
|
| GTA: San Andreas on the XBOX _did_ allow you to use such a
| feature, provided that you had used the XBOX 's disc drive to
| rip the audio CDs yourself. I recall letting the XBOX rip all
| of my System of a Down CDs circa 2005 for expressly this
| purpose.
|
| PC ports, IDK. Probably.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Oh yeah I distinctly remember playing Deftones over and
| over and over from local files on the PC version, to the
| point that all I can think about when I see GTA or hear
| Minerva is the other one.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Fun fact: Vib-Ribbon (for the PS1) allowed you to swap out
| the game disc for a music CD to play to your favorite
| songs.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| So did Ridge Racer.
|
| After loading, the entire game (from opening screen to
| ending scene) fit completely into the PSX's tiny RAM.
|
| And the in-game background music was just regular CD
| audio tracks on the game disk, which was easy since the
| drive wasn't used for anything else anyway.
|
| Open the drive, swap disks for your choice of audio CD,
| and it was happy to play those tracks instead.
|
| (Or, alternatively: Put the Ridge Racer game disk into a
| regular CD player and enjoy the synthwave soundtrack all
| on its own.)
| IntelMiner wrote:
| A lot of original Xbox games had that feature. It was super
| unique at the time
|
| They later extended it on the Xbox 360 to allow you to link
| in your Windows Vista machine to _stream_ your MP3 's
| straight to it
|
| Playing Halo 3's campaign to Queen was a great experience
| back in 2007
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > They later extended it on the Xbox 360 to allow you to
| link in your Windows Vista machine to stream your MP3's
| straight to it
|
| The Xbox 360 expanded on the feature in some neat ways --
| if you had an iPod or other portable player, you could
| plug that in via USB, it supported generic DLNA shares
| (so you could play music from Kodi/XBMC running on a PC),
| and some (most?) games would flag cutscene audio vs. in-
| game audio, which would allow the system to pause the
| user-provided audio and fall back to the game's
| soundtrack for cutscenes.
| crtasm wrote:
| That's fantastic, I'll have to try it out next time I get
| my 360 plugged in.
|
| It also had global settings for controller vibration,
| inverted camera.. perhaps some others? I really miss
| those in future generations and on PC.
| andrybak wrote:
| > PC ports, IDK. Probably
|
| Yes. Source:
|
| https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Custom_Radio_Stations
| cal85 wrote:
| I remember this on GTA III, played on Windows XP. I think
| the radio station was called "MP3 Player", and there was an
| empty folder in the game's application folder to which you
| could add MP3s.
| petercooper wrote:
| GTA 3 certainly did. I remember because I basically spent a
| few weeks listening to Weezer's _Green_ album (that came out
| a few months prior) over and over while playing the game.
| weberer wrote:
| Excite Truck on the Wii also had that feature. You could load
| mp3s onto the SD card. It was a launch title, so I was
| expecting most Wii games to support that feature, but I think
| only a couple ended up with it.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| True, but in case of Sony, Spotify replaced "PlayStation
| Music", a competing service of Sony which simply didn't scale,
| and the only service able to overlay music over any game
| tantalor wrote:
| > the only service able to overlay music over any game
|
| Able to? Or allowed to?
| notnmeyer wrote:
| those are the same thing in this context. obviously it's
| not that spotify is the only company capable of figuring it
| out. what's left? sony blessing spotify.
| manwe150 wrote:
| It could also be there is only enough profit for one, so
| the game theory equilibrium is zero. So Spotify could be
| the only player large enough for Sony to profitably
| encourage. Although that theory doesn't account for them
| not giving the option of free music players written by
| hobbyists who don't care about profit or labels but only
| serve indy content
| rickdeckard wrote:
| PlayStation Music (or actually "Music unlimited" as it
| was called) was the only music application able/allowed
| to run in background while a game was running. Other
| (hobbyist) music players are not allowed, likely because
| it would make the available resources to a game less
| predictable, so harder to optimizer for the console...
|
| As many others, Sony found later that it's not worth it
| to operate a own streaming service, and probably made a
| deal with Spotify where Sony provided the initial
| application, Spotify provided the service and potentially
| pays some additional revenue share to Sony.
|
| It's a story from a moment in time where every
| distributor/company thought they could do a better/more
| profitable music streaming service than Spotify...
| Ayesh wrote:
| Spotify is also the only app apart from YouTube Music that
| works in Google Home devices (at least in my region).
| cobertos wrote:
| Does anyone know the social mechanisms behind the scenes that
| allow them to negotiate such effective deals?
|
| Spotify is deeply in bed with the traditional labels/music
| industry and that industry seems to be able to "move" stuff
| easily from what I've seen. I always have a hard time
| visualizing all the components at play here though.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I think it is because spotify's biggest competitor is Apple.
| And both Google and Sony really doesn't want Apple to control
| the music streaming industry as it could affect their device
| sales.
| panopticon wrote:
| It's interesting because Google has their own competing
| music streaming platform, but they _still_ seem to give
| preferential treatment to Spotify. For example Spotify was
| the only service that worked with the Android clock app
| when they added the ability to use music with alarms.
| YouTube Music support didn 't land until a year later.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Because they know that their service sucks and will
| probably get shut down. I'm speaking as a customer of
| both
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _And both Google and Sony really doesn 't want Apple to
| control the music streaming industry as it could affect
| their device sales._
|
| Is that true? My Alexa and Sonos devices work great with
| Apple Music.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Becuase there is competetion now so Apple has to play
| well. In cases where Apple doesn't have any competetion
| or is significantly ahead like iMessage or FaceTime or
| satellite message, Apple has a history of creating
| ecosystem.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| when a company that produces hardware that plays music
| has control over the industry that delivers music to that
| hardware they might be tempted to make their hardware
| handle that music better.
|
| Apple might not even do that, but given Google's
| documented behaviors about making their sites work better
| with Chrome they might expect that Apple would if they
| could.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _when a company that produces hardware that plays music
| has control over the industry that delivers music to that
| hardware..._
|
| FWIW, Apple doesn't control the music industry. Spotify
| has more than twice the marketshare of Apple Music, so
| I'd imagine that (for now) Spotify has commensurate
| influence over the music industry.
|
| > ... _they might be tempted to make their hardware
| handle that music better._
|
| Maybe Google would, but (to my original point) Apple
| doesn't tie their media services to their devices.1 I
| think it's worth keeping in mind that you really can't
| equate Google's evil tendencies to Apple's (and vice-
| versa) because their business models are completely
| different.
|
| 1 https://www.apple.com/ae/apple-tv-app/devices/
| ketzo wrote:
| The music industry is, indeed, notoriously litigious /
| negotiation-heavy.
|
| Pure speculation: by necessity, Spotify has probably gotten
| pretty good at those things too. I would bet they've got some
| pretty heavy hitters in the dealmaking department.
| personjerry wrote:
| A big portion of Spotify's ownership is held by the big music
| companies, including Sony. I learned this from watching The
| Playlist on Netflix. (It's way over-dramatized but you can
| learn a thing or two)
| stefan_ wrote:
| Spotify started the EU antitrust case on Apple:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/28/23618264/eu-antitrust-
| cas...
|
| Also of course, Spotify is somewhat of a monopoly of its own,
| or a chosen 'winner' by the music industry at large
| colluding.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Also of course, Spotify is somewhat of a monopoly of its
| own, or a chosen 'winner' by the music industry at large
| colluding.
|
| Spotify has ~30% of the market, Apple Music, Tencent, and
| Amazon have each ~13%, YouTube Music another ~9%.
|
| That's far from a monopoly...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would guess Google needed Spotify to prioritize the Android
| App.
|
| And as far as I can tell, the music labels
| (Warner/Sony/Universal) need Spotify to be able to negotiate
| with Apple/Google/Amazon.
| hexedpackets wrote:
| Sony was a major investor in Spotify, reportedly worth $1.5B at
| IPO[1]. I'm not sure how much stock they've held since then.
|
| [1] https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/sonys-stake-in-
| spotif...
| sadjad wrote:
| Apple Music can do the same on PS5.
| deelowe wrote:
| Related question. Why don't any games allow you to replace the
| in game music with something else? Is this patent encumbered or
| something? I figured by now, I'd be able to simply go into
| settings, choose an audio provider (e.g. YT Music, spotify,
| local, etc) and have a custom BGM soundtrack play.
| filoleg wrote:
| It's not necessarily that game devs"don't allow it," and more
| like "didn't bother to implement that feature and integrate
| with those services."
|
| Which is a really fair point. Because why waste time on this,
| when a user who cares about playing their own music can just
| open a browser tab or spotify/apple music/local/etc. app, and
| it will work literally in any game anywhere. And Playstation
| supports Spotify/Apple Music/local music playback during
| games natively, without any hacks or workarounds (like using
| the built-in web browser) as well. I assume Xbox has similar
| functionality, but I don't have much experience with it.
|
| The only games i've seen that allow (limited) in-game audio
| provider choice are those that have an in-game radio feature
| (older GTA games, Forza, etc.), so that the custom user music
| kinda works "in-universe" in those games.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Smiling thinking back to Quake 1, which only took up a small
| fraction of the CD for the installer and would play any audio
| CD that was in your drive for you :D
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Lots of discussion in the replies to this comment about games
| which do permit that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38366126
| taway1237 wrote:
| On PC you can just mute the music and play anything you want
| in the background. So there's no need for a special support.
| vel0city wrote:
| The OG Xbox used to allow you to rip music locally to the
| device and then playback the music in games which supported
| it. It was a pretty nice feature for its day.
| filoleg wrote:
| Correction, it works with Apple Music as well[0], and with
| local music files[1].
|
| As for why, it seems like those were just the only two that
| bothered to integrate their apps with Playstation. Which kind
| of makes sense, as Spotify and Apple Music are the two largest
| streaming services currently (by user numbers[2]). Youtube
| could arguably claim to be more popular, but their YT music app
| feels half-baked even on the primary platforms (iOS and
| Android). And the other ones right behind are Tencent Music and
| Amazon Music, which are rather unpopular, at least in the US.
|
| 0. https://www.playstation.com/en-
| us/support/subscriptions/how-...
|
| 1. https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/play-
| vide...
|
| 2. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/music-streaming-stats
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Weird framing of those linked numbers: Spotify (30%) is way
| out in front and Apple (13.7%), Tencent (13.4%), and Amazon
| (13.3%) all have similar market share.
| seatac76 wrote:
| It helps that Sony is also a big player in the music rights
| business so it was probably in Sony's interest to make it easy.
| plz-remove-card wrote:
| > Spotify is very good at negotiating sweetheart deals.
|
| Indeed, and that skillset has given them an advantage in the
| market. Things working as expected. Does it suck for their
| competitors? Absolutely. Is it illegal? I don't think so.
|
| Anyone is free to fork android and make their own app store. A
| luxury thanks to open source. The network effect is real but
| the market isn't intended to be "fair", it's brutal.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Also many cellular providers (esp developing countries) have
| sweetheart deals for serving Spotify data without it counting
| towards your data limits.
|
| Facebook has/had that too in many markets.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| If they were "very good at it", why haven't they turned a
| profit...ever?
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is the real problem with the Apple/Google 30% tax: it's not
| that the App/Play Store costs 30% to run. It's that they want to
| give sweetheart deals like this to very large customers.
|
| You're paying for that slush fund.
| bad_user wrote:
| The real problem with the 30% is that it's far too high. It
| could have been 0%. Why do you care about what deals with
| Spotify they have? Is this resentment?
|
| > _You 're paying for that slush fund._
|
| Google is probably getting the difference from Spotify in some
| other way. Google/Apple also have a lot of profit with their
| app stores because 30% is too damn much.
|
| If Google wouldn't have a deal with Spotify, you'd still be
| paying 30%.
| hackernewds wrote:
| creating winners and losers while owning a majority chunk of
| any consumer market segment is considered a monopoly
| bad_user wrote:
| Monopolies aren't illegal.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Is this resentment?_
|
| No, it's unfair market conditions which are illegal in most
| developed countries.
|
| How can small companies expect to compete with the big
| established ones if those players enjoy deals way way better
| than what the new players have?
|
| It's basically hardcoded inequality creating winners and
| losers from the start and goes against the free market
| principles.
| bad_user wrote:
| That's not true. Most contracts are negotiable, and this is
| legal. Of course, this may change in the EU due to the
| "Digital Markets Act", but this is new.
|
| Bigger companies getting better deals has always been the
| reality, due to volume discounts.
|
| We have a different idea about what the free market is.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Of course, this may change in the EU due to the
| "Digital Markets Act", but this is new._
|
| That's exactly why it should change and why Apple(and
| Google) knows the winds are changing sooner or later.
|
| _> Bigger companies getting better deals has always been
| the reality, due to volume discounts._
|
| That works in retail where I can get a volume discount
| for buying 2 million tonnes of bannanas, but this logic
| doesn't apply to digital markets which scale much more
| effortlessly and cheaply regardless of scale meaning
| steep discounts for big players are somewhat counter
| intuitive.
|
| _> We have a different idea about what the free market
| is._
|
| The free market means that if I want x tonnes of bannanas
| to buy or sell, I can choose which supplier or to whom,
| and at what price to buy/sell them.
|
| In the mobile digital markets you have no such freedom of
| choice. It's either Apple on the iOS market or Google
| (minus sideloading) on the Playstore, that's it. They're
| two monopolies with no competition, not a free market.
| gregoriol wrote:
| This kind of deal is just unfair to any other business: if
| they are a marketplace, they have to have the same rules for
| everyone. It shouldn't matter how big you are, how you went
| to college with their CEO, or if your wife drinks tee with
| their wife: as soon as you provide a service that anyone can
| get, rules should be the same for everyone.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| A marketplace has never in history given everyone the same
| deal.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| Every single firm will give sweetheart deals to large
| customers.
|
| The marginal unit cost of serving a large customer is always
| lower than serving a smaller one. Why shouldn't I pass the
| savings to that large customer?
|
| The risk premium for serving a large established firm is lower
| than serving a smaller one (including payment failure risk).
| Why shouldn't I pass the savings to that large customers?
|
| Large customers also give you predictive revenue and gives
| sufficient room in purchasing decisions. Why shouldn't I pass
| the savings to the large customers?
|
| Large customers may also bring in other customers and open up
| new revenue channels for me. Why shouldn't I pass the benefit
| to them?
|
| Economies of scale is a thing and that's how consumers get to
| enjoy low prices and high quality.
|
| It's incredibly sub-optimal to punish economies of scale
| astrange wrote:
| Apple doesn't give deals to any App Store developer, as we
| learned from the Epic trial.
|
| And you're not paying 30% either place, you're paying 15%.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| It just remains hilarious to see Google under fire for
| negotiating secret deals to keep companies on the play store.
| Apple got this right the first time.
| paxys wrote:
| There is zero chance that Apple isn't doing the same. All their
| deals with Google are the prime example of anticompetitve
| behavior in the industry.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| My point is that Apple doesn't need to do the same, because
| there's no alternative to the App Store. And that's what's
| funny. If you don't allow competition in the first place, you
| don't get bothered for "unfair competition" by antitrust
| regulators.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If you don't allow competition in the first place, you
| don't get bothered for "unfair competition" by antitrust
| regulators.
|
| This seems like an obvious defect in antitrust regulators.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Whether they need to or not, they do the same.
| https://nitter.net/TechEmails/status/1444367219509637123
| Supersaiyan_IV wrote:
| Not sure companies having deals and negotiations is newsworthy.
| How about that deal where Qualcomm didn't pay to use ARM patents?
| At least that one's actually interesting.
| carstenhag wrote:
| This is newsworthy because Google and Apple are facing lawsuits
| regarding their forced 30% price cut for years now.
|
| Also, imagine you are an indie Android Developer/small company
| and want to sell an app. Nowadays for the first $1M in revenue
| it's a 15% cut, above that (and it used to be since the first
| $) 30%. But hooray, the big company Spotify pays 0% to 4%.
|
| And then the Google guy says, quote from the article: "These
| key investment partnerships allow us to bring more users to
| Android and Play by continuously improving the experience for
| all users and create new opportunities for all developers."
|
| So yeah indie dev or small company, Google says you should be
| glad they only take 0-4% from Spotify, that way all Android
| users have an improved experience!
|
| Not only is this shameful from a morale perspective, but also
| lawsuits & the EU will have even more arguments against Google
| now. Bonus: In the last paragraph Spotify is also shown as
| hypocrite - taking advantage of a 0-4% deal with Google, but at
| the same time joining a "Coalition for App Fairness" to reduce
| fees.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| At the onset of the Epic lawsuits, I thought the Apple lawsuit
| would have some merit, because they tie users' hands behind their
| backs, but that the Google lawsuit was a baseless attempt to
| fragment the Play Store with Epic microtransaction nonsense. All
| the things coming out of the Google case have shifted my opinion
| significantly. Google wasn't actually playing fair while Apple
| was cheating; they both were cheating. Google was just hiding it
| under a veneer of "open source" and "open platform".
|
| The Apple lawsuit failed primarily because, well, it's not
| illegal to use a legal monopoly (copyright) in the intended
| manner. Nor is it illegal to merely be big[0]. Epic's lawsuit
| against Google may succeed purely on the basis of "well, Google
| opted _in_ to competing app stores and payment methods, Apple
| didn 't", which is not at all the outcome I wanted or expected.
|
| [0] Or at least, it stopped being illegal after the neoliberals
| rewrote history with the "consumer welfare" argument.
| amelius wrote:
| If you hate government regulation, then wait until you see a
| market regulated by a company ...
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| ancap freedom sounding more like serfdom for us peasantry
| appplication wrote:
| Corporate regulation looks a lot like an LLM refusing prompts.
| markwkw wrote:
| I don't know. Look at hundreds of thousands of pages of
| regulations, many layered regions and municipalities, meddling
| politicians; agencies and bureaus involved in US market (or EU
| market).
|
| If you wrote down all the rules of Google app store, including
| all their sweetheart deals (I'm sure there are many), and
| accounted for all departments within Google that influence
| AppStore, it would be massively smaller and way simpler
| conceptually. The scale of bureaucracy, inconsistency, bad
| incentives and accumulated cruft is just not comparable.
| amelius wrote:
| Try finding justice on a company-owned platform like
| Android's app store, or YouTube. I see a lot of stories
| titled "YouTube shut down my account for no reason", and I
| never see stories titled "The government shut down my
| business for no reason".
|
| At least with the government you are backed by the rule of
| law. With companies it's always "tough luck, you agreed to
| the EULA".
|
| PS: and never forget that government agencies gave us the
| Internet, so all those layers and layers of bureaucracy did
| give us something great and it isn't all bad even if you want
| to see it that way.
| meltyness wrote:
| I guess if I were a shareholder I'd be pleased since they
| seamlessly filled the gap left by GPMAA, spawned a lower
| maintenance subproduct in YTM, and cashed in on the collusion,
| but as someone screwed over by a product that Google "just gave
| up on" everything Google makes is like a hamburger full of sand,
| and I strive to avoid eating it, to this day.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| Sitting here deeply regretting my home full of Google home
| devices. Sand tastes bad man.
| Reubachi wrote:
| Can you share your gripes with YTM? I've been using GPM and
| thus YTM since....a long long time.
|
| When GPM died, I was very anti "switch" to YTM. But now I can't
| even recall the issues in my head that I suspected/feared with
| the change. In fact, Youtube Premium and YTM are the only
| subscription I would recommend to friends and family."
|
| To remind me of my hatred for google, can you describe what you
| dislike? I realize there's the whole monopoly and walled garden
| thing.
| meltyness wrote:
| Lots of things,
|
| - playlist decayed and dropped songs, YouTube is even worse
| about this
|
| - Play Music had a new releases browser highlighting new
| album releases by genre, you could "walk" into them in AA,
| then they bled that off
|
| - as it stands "Play" doesnt have music anymore, and so the
| only discovery is YouTube's recommendations
|
| - YouTube's recommendations are somehow difficult to control,
| overly gamed, repetitive, coarse, and generic -- some of
| which are contradictory. Google wasn't even able to protect
| Gboard from exploits like this with their unsated thirst for
| big data automation dominance
|
| - they haven't begun to cooperate with other vendors to
| operate with assistant, instead picking winners, again
|
| - for a span battery was concerning, it's not right now
|
| - for a span Google's failed record of protecting user
| privacy, even now Google+ echo's when the Photos flow Share
| workflow walks me into privacy violating features
|
| - i have qualms about providing an ad personalization
| business real-time granular data about my mood (though it's
| unlikely since my tastes are too obscure, anyway)
|
| - i have qualms about subjecting myself to the opinions of a
| business with large enough reach to be an effective political
| entity and lever of corporate activism against my neighbors
| in society (particularly for an inferior product)
|
| Hope this helps.
|
| Edit: also the playback history was pretty bad IIRC, I assume
| it lumps audio playback with shorts, and shorts can't be
| organized into playlist despite their efforts. I need music
| to be a commodity, not a gift/promise.
| Reubachi wrote:
| Interesting, that's what I was wondering exactly, thanks
| for the context.
|
| I think the main difference between our experiences is
| stemming from the "Play" garden.
|
| when I was on android, I didn't care that the Play
| experience was being "deprecated" because all I would use
| it (and YTM) for was music. And now with Apple, I just
| think it as my "music" app. And regardless of platform, I
| find it absolutely demolishes Spotify top to bottom in
| UI/UX, audio options, discovery, app health, etc.)
|
| I've never had AA/Carplay, so not surprised this has never
| bothered me. Makes me realize i'm missing an entire feature
| suite.
|
| Have you tried it recently? I'm interested if you'd find it
| to be more "normie polished" than it used to be.
|
| Edit: not sure why I'm defending an evil mega-corp, trying
| to justify my years of purchases I guess :)
| meltyness wrote:
| I've fooled with it, but didn't see any draw. I removed
| it from my initial bloatware purge of my Pixel, including
| Google's launcher.
|
| At a glance,
|
| Things that leave a bad taste in my mouth:
|
| - Genres > Metal > "Numb" by Linkin Park
|
| - New Releases isn't organized by genre, which means you
| breathe through a straw, and hope Google brings a release
| to your attention.
|
| - The "feed" New Releases which is apparently robo-
| tailored includes a Slowdive album from 1996, and a bunch
| of corporate stuff I'll likely never be in the mood for.
|
| - no acknowledgement of labels, collectives, or studios.
| all very real constructs in current music.
|
| - presumably live music recs are out even though those
| were never accurate to begin with
|
| - there wasn't any on boarding, i guess im just to assume
| google knows who i am. went through onboarding, it's just
| there to slurp up artist relations and obtain feedback on
| recent trends it's inefficient and irritating out of
| touch
|
| I like epitaph.
| happytiger wrote:
| Imagine being a competitor and then finding out the company that
| is crushing you had a secret deal to pay nothing while you
| struggled every month to pay royalties and were told over and
| over by the parent company that "it was the best they could do."
|
| Imagine not being able to figure out how they were so successful
| while you are struggling to turn profit and make payroll.
|
| These kinds of walled garden ecosystems seem to be very bad for
| creating _healthy_ competition, and this news is just adds to the
| *massive* mountain of evidence of shady behavior by every company
| that controls one.
| hedgehog wrote:
| That assumes Google would bother picking up the phone to say
| anything at all.
| happytiger wrote:
| Touche and a deeply important point.
|
| There really is no "account manager" for the vast majority of
| play publishers, is there?
| hedgehog wrote:
| I'm sure the people doing devrel over there do their best
| but have to work under a communications policy that
| prohibits discussing things like negotiable royalties
| specifically to avoid situations like the current
| litigation.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I mean, that's public cloud in a nutshell too. And before that
| enterprise software / database vendor.
|
| Scale has always conferred substantial pricing advantages.
|
| The difference nowadays is that more of a company's business is
| covered by SaaS, and so more is subject to these taxes.
|
| If 15% of your business had wildly variable scale costs vs your
| competitor... okay. But if 50% does... as you say, hard to
| compete even with a better product.
| jannes wrote:
| It's already kind of unfair that these services don't pay fees:
|
| - YouTube Music doesn't pay fees on the Google Play Store
|
| - Apple Music doesn't pay fees on the Apple App Store
| judge2020 wrote:
| Internally they might very well be paying fees to the other
| business unit; It's just not something that actually hurts
| the company's bottom line.
| andsoitis wrote:
| That would be silly. If both entities (e.g. YouTube Music and
| Google Search) are owned by the same company, to whom would
| you pay a fee? It doesn't make sense.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| In big corpos such departments usually have their very own
| budget, and operate as a quasi-separate entity from the
| others. Paying fees inter-departments is a very common
| thing.
| andsoitis wrote:
| In which case the post I responded to is a red herring
| because they claim (without evidence) that the transfer
| pricing is happening in the case of YouTube Music and
| Apple Music.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Still applies. Apple Music and YouTube Music may show
| losses because of the transfer fees they pay. But Apple &
| Google can then decide to keep them around even with
| their paper losses because they make other divisions more
| profitable.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Hm yes but in general if this happens too much it's
| frowned upon. Because all the bookkeeping to shift money
| within the same company actually costs money for no real
| reason.
|
| If this happens a lot the department bearing the cost is
| usually compensated with a bigger budget.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I took an entire course on this in graduate school -
| Management Accounting. Every large company does it.
|
| My department at AWS "billed" by AWS when any of us set
| up our own internal AWS accounts.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Why would it be silly? One division paying another division
| for resources. That happens a lot and it makes sense in
| that it helps to figure out just how much resources are
| needed.
| groestl wrote:
| > It doesn't make sense.
|
| Tell that to antitrust lawers.
| jsight wrote:
| Easy, have a law that makes them pay the fee directly to
| their competitors. It'd only be fair.
| mynegation wrote:
| Not only it is not silly, it is widely practiced. Search
| for "transfer pricing".
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| it absolutely makes sense.
|
| The company I work for owns several hotels, which are
| managed by another company entirely owned by the parent
| company.
|
| When I stay at the company's hotel for a business trip,
| they pay the same fee everybody else pay.
|
| It would be both unfair competition and tax fraud to do
| otherwise.
| kshacker wrote:
| This is a solved problem. Google may not care but in
| general companies want to know if one of their businesses
| is actually making money or just a perceived success
| because of the conglomerate. Of course a company may fudge
| the figures to lean the calculations one way or the other
| but enough theoretical and practical data exists for
| accounting costs.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_accounting
| lavezzi wrote:
| transfer pricing
| echelon wrote:
| These companies need to be broken up.
|
| Your cellphone maker shouldn't be eating into Hollywood's
| business.
|
| Your online Walmart is making Lord of the Rings.
|
| And you pay a 30% fee just to deploy your software into their
| walled gardens, which they monitor, remove the customer
| relationship, and make you jump through hurdles. If you are
| successful, someone can pay to place ads in front of
| legitimate searches for your brand.
|
| Edit: Can't respond to comments anymore after being
| downvoted, so my response:
|
| > Where and how is the line drawn? Should a cellphone maker
| be eating into map maker's business? Laptop maker's business?
| Camera maker's business? A secretary's business?
|
| Perhaps when there are more than two vendors for one of the
| most critical pieces of technology for modern civilization.
|
| Perhaps when you can deploy apps without taxation, control
| over distribution, unfair competition, scare tactics, or
| adversarial ad placement.
|
| Right now the two vendors wield absolute control over one of
| the most essential societal functions. It's almost as bad as
| if they controlled the internet itself.
| codedokode wrote:
| Apps in app stores are mainly supposed to sell air which
| costs nothing (for example, game items) so paying 30% might
| be reasonable.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Your cellphone maker shouldn't be eating into Hollywood's
| business.
|
| Where and how is the line drawn? Should a cellphone maker
| be eating into map maker's business? Laptop maker's
| business? Camera maker's business? A secretary's business?
| kurikuri wrote:
| This comparison doesn't seem to address the issue of who you
| replied to. If I were running a streaming service, knew the
| business intimately, and still couldn't figure out how
| Spotify had such an advantage against me, I would be both
| perplexed and need to admit defeat.
|
| I wouldn't have the same sentiment against YouTube music or
| Apple Music, because these are explicitly part of the same
| companies that host the marketplace.
| happytiger wrote:
| That's true. But it also raises question about whether the
| marketplace should be able to advantage itself for its own
| applications in the first place? It's "might is right" but
| is it ethical and will it create a better society? It seems
| consolidation is inevitable and meaningful competition
| impossible.
|
| I mean, ultimately, if you run a marketplace without posted
| rules and only let your friends and your own self succeed,
| aren't you at a minimum sort of cheating? Like a Vegas
| house who claims fairness but the house gets special odds?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Have you ever walked into any retailer that has house
| brands right next to name brands cheaper?
| brandensilva wrote:
| Yes and it is also a borderline thing to me. Amazon
| Basics does the same thing and it's pretty messed up that
| you can put a product in the same marketplace you control
| and run out the competition.
|
| These walled gardens need to be opened up.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So would you rather pay $30 for Sudafed or buy the house
| brand for $15?
| maccard wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure of those things
|
| A few years ago, I worked on a video game published by
| Microsoft. We ran game servers in Azure, and on Windows for
| obvious reasons. The project had to pay for the windows
| licenses from MS, despite being entirely funded by them,
| partially developed by an internal studio, on aMS first party
| IP.
|
| I don't recall how much it cost exactly, but the cost of the
| per-core windows server license hourly is not far off the
| cost of a core on AWS these days.
| benbristow wrote:
| Microsoft seem to be pushing Linux in Azure quite heavily
| nowadays. Surprised about the Windows thing. Especially for
| game servers where Linux is in it's element.
| maccard wrote:
| This was neither today, nor yesterday.
|
| Also, my experience of working in games is that the
| developers are exclusively windows. The backend services
| might use other OS's, but all the game development
| happens on Windows. When this was going on, I don't think
| a single developer in our room would have know the first
| thing about Linux.
|
| > Especially for game servers where Linux is in it's
| element.
|
| I think you'd be surprised at just how many games use
| Windows servers :)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What difference does that make? Surely, any business
| decisions would take into account that it is all still
| Microsoft's money.
|
| "Paying" for accounting purposes, and "paying" where the
| payer loses access to the funds has different consequences.
|
| For example, Apple and Alphabet can account for YouTube and
| Apple Music paying App Store fees, but leadership can
| ignore the fees for the purposes of selling a loss leader.
| Spotify cannot ignore the fees, since it would run out of
| money to pay other bills (or negatively effect net income).
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Amazon definitely didn't ignore internal costs when
| deciding to axe its gaming studio
|
| https://www.protocol.com/amp/amazon-bad-at-
| games-2646952917
|
| Neither is Disney ignoring transfer cost between Disney
| Studios and Disney+.
|
| Management accounting takes into account opportunity
| costs.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The difference is they can choose to ignore it if it is
| accomplishing some purpose, such as being a loss leader
| to gain marketshare.
| maccard wrote:
| Have you any examples of this happening? Because every
| experience I've seen points to sweetheart deals (such as
| android + spotify) but internal teams have to play by the
| normal rules.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ais-costly-buildup-could-
| make-ea...
|
| >Individuals pay $10 a month for the AI assistant. In the
| first few months of this year, the company [Microsoft]
| was losing on average more than $20 a month per user,
| according to a person familiar with the figures, who said
| some users were costing the company as much as $80 a
| month.
|
| Who knows if Apple is earning a profit on its Music +
| Classical Music apps or whatever else it bundles into its
| products. Maybe they consider it to be a small enough
| loss to offset the chance that a customer buys an Apple
| One bundle, which then makes up for the loss because the
| margins on cloud storage are much higher.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| If they were a worthy competitor they'd be able to get an even
| better deal from Google. Making deals is an open marketplace,
| it's all about what you can offer. Obviously Spotify is
| offering Google something worth waiving the fees.
| broken_clock wrote:
| You can't be serious?
| chucke1992 wrote:
| Spotify was basically the first company. And they had the
| advantage due to that. So any new competitor would not be
| just disadvantaged - against the established Spotify - but
| would also have to spend more money to compete (due to
| Spotify having a deal).
|
| It is basically anti-competitive behavior.
| Shaanie wrote:
| Isn't that generally true? A company making a billion
| widgets per year likely gets a way better deal on the
| materials required to make them than a company making only
| ten thousand.
| happytiger wrote:
| There's a big difference when you run the marketplace
| where those deals are being brokered _and_ set the
| pricing for discounts and deals.
|
| When you run the marketplace and make sweetheart deals,
| you change the terms of everyone else in the market. But
| if you don't tell everyone in the category about your
| marketplace changes, they become disadvantaged and yet
| they would never suspect a thing if you don't tell them.
|
| So it's less like a cheaper input widget for a scale
| operation and more like the terms and conditions change
| but just for yourself or one customer that nobody else
| even knows is happening.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| This is why not all product categories are equal. Go to market
| is a fundamental calculation when creating any product.
| andsoitis wrote:
| You should always assume your competitors are negotiating for
| the best deal on things and so should you.
|
| Being passive and simply accepting things at face value is not
| competitive or smart.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Yeah, I am sure that if I tomorrow start with my 0 customers
| google will give me the same treatment as spotify.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Why should they?
| happytiger wrote:
| They should or they shouldn't.
|
| The issue is the right to know as a competitor or
| potential competitor isn't it? These aren't deals between
| two companies, they are terms for public marketplaces,
| and that is a critical difference.
| yencabulator wrote:
| To limit the power of monopolies.
|
| https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > Being a passive and simply accepting things at face value
| is not competitive or smart.
|
| The parent comment did not suggest doing anything of the
| kind, and what should a spotify competitor do in this
| instance anyway?
| apienx wrote:
| This is why we can't have nice things. So-called moats are
| responsible for a lot of the ambient enshitification.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > Imagine being a competitor and then finding out the company
| that is crushing you had a secret deal to pay nothing while you
| struggled every month to pay royalties and were told over and
| over by the parent company that "it was the best they could
| do."
|
| Imagine you're an also ran streaming service and found out that
| AWS gave a special deal to Netflix and they had reduced rates
|
| Or imagine you're selling "Joe Bobs Cola" and that Coke had a
| special deal with Walmart.
|
| This is not new. You really think big vendors are getting the
| same deals as everyone else?
| joekrill wrote:
| The difference is that you can easily sell Joe Bob's Cola at
| many other retailers and still reach a huge amount of
| customers. Your streaming service can use Azure, GCP, or any
| number of other options. But if you want to distribute your
| mobile app you are essentially forced to use Google Play and
| App Store, and you must give Google and Apple their 30% (or
| whatever percentage it is now) cut.
|
| We can argue that you can distribute your app other ways (at
| least on Android), but that's not even comparable because of
| the artificial barriers that are put in place to make that
| difficult.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Spotify's problem is it has to pay out ~80% of _revenue_ to
| rightsholders, so Apple 's 15% take doesn't leave you with a
| viable business. For a time, Spotify handled this by charging
| more for subscriptions from the App Store. I'm guessing Google
| wanted to get a big name off what would become the Epic suit.
| They knew Spotify pays ~2% when processing credit card fees,
| there's a higher conversion rate with in-app payments, but
| Spotify has a hard fee limit because of rightsholder payouts, so
| they found a deal that makes everyone happy. Oh, and GCP.
|
| The marginal cost for Fortnite is lower, so Google kept
| squeezing. It's standard price discrimination. The problem for
| Google is it also controls the marketplace.
| thetrb wrote:
| Wouldn't they be able to say that the actual revenue is just
| the 85% they get after Apple's take?
| hellisothers wrote:
| No because Apple gets 15% of the IAP price right off the top,
| Spotify doesn't cut them a check after the fact with an
| explanation about rights holders etc.
| josefresco wrote:
| > Spotify's problem is it has to pay out ~80% of revenue to
| rightsholders, so Apple's 15% take doesn't leave you with a
| viable business.
|
| It's the 80% of revenue to rightsholders that makes it a non-
| viable business.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 20% of a very large number is still a large number. There are
| lots of very profitable businesses that have a ~1% profit
| margin.
| paldepind2 wrote:
| Surely the revenue is calculated from how much money Spotify
| actually gets right? If they sell a $10 subscription and get $7
| after Apple takes their cut then that is $7 dollars of revenue,
| no?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Spotify's problem is it has to pay out ~80% of revenue to
| rightsholders, so Apple's 15% take doesn't leave you with a
| viable business.
|
| Any payment fees would be subtracted before the payout to the
| rights holders, they pay based on NET revenue not gross revenue
| [1]
|
| [1]https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/
| araes wrote:
| The part I don't get with the Epic / Fortnite deal, is the last
| sentence.
|
| "it was one of the highest-profile early members of the
| Coalition for App Fairness, a group that included Epic and
| supported the Fortnite publisher's antitrust suit"
|
| If they support the suit, why not "psst, btw, we got a great
| deal from Google. You know, have somebody subpoena contract
| records ..." Instead they're "We got our 4%, we Support you..."
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > Google is it also controls the marketplace.
|
| And? Retailers cut deals and do kickbacks with certain
| merchants all of the time for different reasons.
| jameson wrote:
| * Price discrimination is not illegal * Google has been claiming
| they aren't monopoly because Apple exists * Clearly knowing such
| secret deal pisses off other customers and yet there are no
| alternative market for the Android platform
|
| It's a very unfair(?) place to be for an app devs to pay the %
| tax when Google spends one-time fee for reviewing the app + other
| I/O costs
| lrvick wrote:
| There is no alternative market on Apple. On Android there is
| F-Droid. Your app has to be open source to be on it though
| which most companies would never concede to as it would expose
| how much anti-user tracking they do.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Also afaik F-Droid insist on building apks directly from
| source, so non FOSS apps basically can never use it even if
| they are ok with showing the tracking they do.
| crtasm wrote:
| They can, but they'd need to run their own repository.
|
| F-Droid makes it easy to add other repos.
|
| https://f-droid.org/tutorials/create-repo/
|
| https://f-droid.org/tutorials/add-repo/
| px1999 wrote:
| > Price discrimination is not illegal
|
| The Play store operates in many jurisdictions, including some
| where this is borderline or could be deemed to be illegal
|
| I hope that some of those jurisdictions start showing some
| teeth on this sort of anticompetitive behavior
| perfectstorm wrote:
| this should not be surprising. Apple has negotiated their fees
| with Amazon which was
| [leaked](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/30/apple-halved-app-
| store-....) a while back. this was before they changed the rules
| about devs earning less than 1million pay only 15%. i'm sure
| major companies like Spotify get nicer deals while indie devs and
| small shops pay up 30%.
| thedaly wrote:
| For those who may not be aware, this is only for Prime Video
| and Music. Marketplaces for physical goods are not subject to
| app store fees.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| This is not true. You can buy digital movies from Prime Video
| within the app.
| groestl wrote:
| I find it a bit shocking that there are people who think everyone
| paid the same fees.
| verdagon wrote:
| Why's that?
| groestl wrote:
| Because that is just not how negotiations with (or between)
| big companies work. There are all kinds of customizations to
| standard contracts for them. From tweaks to liability, to
| changes in responsibilities, guarantees, insurances, etc etc.
| And of course fees. You have weight, you'll get results.
| dgudkov wrote:
| So, small Android developers pay all the Google taxes fees, but
| big Spotify doesn't.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Correct, just like National Tax and Maryland handing out
| Chromebooks.
|
| Someone has to pay for them, it might as well be us.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Makes a lot of sense, especially since spotify decided its
| going to pay big artists, but not small ones :/
| rchaud wrote:
| Spotify and many other services (Netflix, Youtube) began on the
| web.
|
| There's no reason to lock it behind an app store on mobile other
| than "if we don't do it, Tidal/Deezer/Apple will".
| lxgr wrote:
| > Spotify and many other services (Netflix, Youtube) began on
| the web.
|
| Spotify didn't have a web player available in the first few
| years of its existence.
|
| > There's no reason to lock it behind an app store on mobile
| other than "if we don't do it, Tidal/Deezer/Apple will".
|
| A webapp-only music streaming service sounds like a nightmare
| on a smartphone, considering offline playback, integration with
| the OSes native playback controls, wearable support etc.
| rchaud wrote:
| Progressive Web Apps have access to persistent storage. I'd
| be curious to know how much of Spotify listening happens
| offline; my guess is that it's very little.
|
| Either way, once sideloading is allowed on iOS I expect
| companies to aggressively renegotiate app store fees.
| lxgr wrote:
| To gigabytes worth of persistent storage? Last time I
| looked into it, that was not the case.
|
| > I'd be curious to know how much of Spotify listening
| happens offline; my guess is that it's very little.
|
| Then you haven't lived in a country with bad cell coverage,
| primarily metered/limited data plans, or both.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Have you tried making a mobile music player as a web page? Does
| it work in the background, does it remain playing when the
| phone is locked?
| rchaud wrote:
| Background audio works in PWAs; see this project for an
| example: https://github.com/minht11/local-music-pwa/
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-21 23:04 UTC)