20 ms·

Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

439 points by laminarflow 5y ago

xwowsersx 5y ago
Why do/should I, as a Spotify subscriber, care about this at all? I don't understand why there's so much fanfare around this. I feel like I'm missing something basic here...
- alias_neo 5y ago
  I don't think there is much fanfare. Obviously Google and Spotify want to make a big deal out of this for when regulators come knocking, but as a Spotify user who pays directly to Spotify outside of Play Store, this news is nothing more at a mild irritation at them both patting each other's backs over nothing.
- drbacon 5y ago
  I actually don't think of this as a consumer issue at all. You probably shouldn't care, but I can see why some consumers might care (e.g. how many entities have their credit card on file, concerns about privacy, a desire to allocate as much money as possible to artists...). I think of this as a developer issue. There's good money being the middle man for transactions. Did consumers really care about the Epic/Apple IAP issue? Were there iOS users clamoring to use Epic's payment platform? I never really heard the consumer voice in that discussion. I did hear a lot of developer voices that cared about their right to charge consumers without Apple's 30% transaction cut.
  - xwowsersx 5y ago
    I see, thanks. So why would Spotify agree to this if they were able to handle premium subscriptions outside of Google? They expect they will make more money this way even after having to give a cut to Google?
gmiller123456 5y ago
This may sound like a snippy question, but I'm genuinely curious as to why this is considered news? Isn't this just getting another payment option, similar to what many, many other services have been offering for over a decade? Seriously, am I missing something?
- dm319 5y ago
  I'm also confused, as I think I simply pay Spotify for my premium subscription (given I joined Spotify using it mainly on the desktop). Which bit is new?
  - addandsubtract 5y ago
    I just reread the article, because at first it sounded like Spotify was announcing a payment method of their own, ala Google Pay. Instead, this is Spotify announcing that you'll be able to pay for a subscription in the app using another payment method _besides_ Google Pay, which is the standard for all in app purchases. It's only news, because it's the first finde Google has allowed an IAP without going through Google Pay.
- meatmanek 5y ago
  Both the Apple App Store and (I believe) the Google Play Store have requirements that any digital goods purchased through an app that's distributed through the App/Play store use the payment system provided by Apple/Google, which takes a 30% cut in most cases. This is a big deal because both Apple and Google have been fighting to keep that 30% cut for years, despite the fact that neither company is really providing much value as a payments provider; they're just extracting rent from their monopoly position as the distributor for apps in iPhone/Android land.
simow 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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analogdreams 5y ago
truly the innovation the end user has been clamoring for
version_five 5y ago
I have paid spotify but I can't remember how I got the all or paid for it, other than there is not way it involved google because I wouldn't do that. Is this a compromise that gives google some in-app purchases that used to go to spotify, or is it the opposite? And I wonder if it means some kind of data sharing with google? One whiff of google involvement in the actual experience or data use would be the end of my spotify subscription. If it's just a settlement about app store rules then I don't care.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  You may want to analyze connections made by the Spotify client…
lbotos 5y ago
Is this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" play where Google makes Apple look bad in an effort to avoid some of the regulations that might catch Apple? I cant figure out why Google would want this otherwise?
- dannyw 5y ago
  The EU has been looking into this for months now, and statements made by the Commission have not been kind to Google. I suspect Google expects an incoming loss.
- lalos 5y ago
  Retaliation from all the iPhone privacy ads, modern capitalistic warfare.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Google made the same decision as Apple when they removed Fortnite in response to Epic Games completely bypassing the store's in-app purchasing flow, thus losing their 30% revenue cut, so the motivation is likely not 'to make Apple look bad'. This is probably just a good show of faith to regulators while Google still collects their percentage of subscription revenue from Spotify on the backend.
  - phamilton 5y ago
    > percentage of subscription revenue from Spotify on the backend This is an advantage of Google vs Apple. Google has multiple business relationships with Spotify. An increase in advertising dollars, infrastructure spend on GCP, etc could all offset the lost revenue for Google here.
- WestCoastJustin 5y ago
  Spotify is a BIG Google Cloud customer with a $450 million commit back in 2018 [0, 1, 2]. Companies want to keep these types of customers obviously and will leverage other teams internally to get a value add to get that renewal. This is likely just another integration as they look to leverage the relationship across bizdev, partner marketing, and sales teams, internal engineering dogfood projects, discounts, etc. Lots of this type of stuff isn't even targeted at competition just an evolution of the relationship. Normally how this type of stuff happens, is you'll have some internal team working on a new initiative and looking for headline customers, they will reach out to the sales teams, and say, "hey, you are working with XYZ customer, want to float this idea with them". It's a win-win. So, having said all they. Google vs Apple, etc, and other large competition politics almost never are on the radar of these teams. They just want to help the customer win, get the sales commissions, and make their internal product successful. It's easy to look at this stuff from the outside and think there is some big plan but the motivation down at the teams level has nothing to do with that since they want mostly to look good on perf reviews. I have no knowledge of the internals here just talking from experience from what I've seen. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/spotify-will-spend-nearly-450-million-on-google-cloud-over-3-years.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/spotify-will-spend-nearly-45... [1] https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/spotify-google-cloud-platform https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/spotify-google-cloud-pla... [2] https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify Note: I originally had Shopify here. The same strategy/tactics apply.
judge2020 5y ago
Spotify doesn't disclose their pay cut so I have to assume Google is still getting their cut of revenue, maybe 25% with payment processor fees taken into account instead of 30%, since they surely wouldn't want to set a precedent of any digital content app being able to not pay for the OS/platform by simply adding their own payment method (otherwise Epic wouldn't have needed their lawsuit).
fitzroy 5y ago
The "Chief Freemium Business Officer" seems an odd choice for a quote about consumer billing.
- version_five 5y ago
  Doesn't freemium mean in-app purchases which would be subject of a deal with the google app store?
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  I wonder how much work someone with that title has on a day-to-day basis.
  - zerocrates 5y ago
    Depends on how much energy they have left.
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paxys 5y ago
Crazy that this new revolutionary "first of its kind" feature is – letting the user pick between two payment processors.
- chews 5y ago
  Basic choice for payments became a discount offering for Google cloud use.... Total monopolistic behavior
  - judge2020 5y ago
    While that's alluded to in some other comments there is 0 proof of this - it'd be a huge issue if the price for choosing another payment processor (while still likely paying Google their Store % cut on the backend) is being an enterprise customer of a completely separate business unit.
- drusepth 5y ago
  I don't understand how this is a "feature". Is the price different, or the features gained different, or does it just determine who ends up getting what % cut? I can't imagine most people actually care whether Google or Spotify is getting a bigger piece of the same price they're paying either way.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    The conditions and trust are different. I personally believe that letting Google have my credit card is allowing a kid with no supervision to play with my life savings; While some others will believe Google provides better guarantees than Spotify when you want to unsubscribe. At least competition will allow us to see “who’s better” and what T&C customers care about, and that’s the important point.
    - maratc 5y ago
      It's not a choice of who's better; it's a choice of who's not worse. Given a choice of Apple vs. anything, I can't see myself choosing anything over Apple.
ggoo 5y ago
Seems like a step towards non-vendor locked payments _if you're big enough_. This future does not look so bright.
criddell 5y ago
> represents a first-of-its-kind option in payment choice and offers opportunities for both consumers and developers What is the opportunity here? For consumers is it that you can pick who you pay? That doesn't sound like much of an opportunity to me. What is the opportunity for developers?
- librish 5y ago
  Presumably that they'll see the difference in price.
  - syspec 5y ago
    Hah! As if... If there is a reduction in price, it will be temporary so they can get users to switch. After a year or two there will be a PR announcement: Congratulations to us! Today we're announcing going forward all plans will be priced exactly the same. This means whether you pay via Google or Spotify, you no longer need to worry about confusing pricing options because all plans will have one single price. As an additional benefit users who pay via Spotify will get a limited edition Snoop Dogg / Jaden Smith / Billy Ray Cyrus NFT usable in Fortnite while logged into Spotify Pro Max
- onelovetwo 5y ago
  So there is no user choice, technically just a lesser commission. Nothing stopping Google from upping this 5% "fee" to 10% when they feel like it. This is still a loss for devs, I was hoping we can just rip of Google garbage payment system and use something like Stripe, or whatever new companies that would've emerged to fill our needs. Obviously they'll give a sweet deal to massive companies but not the small devs.
  - kyrra 5y ago
    Googler, opinions are my own. What issues do you have with the Google payments system? With the stripe bring that Google does not already have? (Outside the fee issue most people raise)
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
I wonder how much Google sweetened the deal. I can't imagine Spotify accepted a standard 15% cut.
u2077 5y ago
This is great, I guess? Is Google just caving in at a smaller scale before they get forced to do this at a larger scale? I feel like by doing this now, they are trying to dodge something that’s very likely to come down the road. (antitrust regulations) Then again, partnering with only the big names will create a new wave of complaints.
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barbazoo 5y ago
I was hoping this would mean I get to decide how much I pay
- pishpash 5y ago
  That would be too much user choice.
cletus 5y ago
This is smart and what Apple should've done. Apple is clearly beholden to the massive cash cow that the App Store has become. Apple's attempts at complying with various orders are that their cut should be 27% and the payment processor can have 3%. That's ridiculous and is going to get them into trouble. You see this pattern repeatedly and people will bring up things like the Pareto Principle or argue it's better to squeeze the profits for as long as you can but ultimately some government or court will take away your monopoly. As someone in possession of such a monopoly it is always better for you to control how that happens. Having it decided for you could be truly disastrous. Any government investigation could widen in scope to areas it otherwise wouldn't. I predict App Store cuts will ultimately drop to a far more reasonable 10-15% including payment processing or 5-10% without.
- deleted 5y ago
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- threeseed 5y ago
  App Store is 15% for developers making up $1 million a year. And I know you think this is somehow unique to Apple but it isn't. Channel costs have existed probably for centuries and are present in every industry.
  - 10u152 5y ago
    Yep. Traditionally printers/publishers took 85-95% of revenue from authors. Now perhaps you can argue that there's more costs involved in printing that running an app store, but an app store taking 30% sounds like a great deal in that context.
simow 5y ago
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javert 5y ago
> Spotify has been publicly advocating for platform fairness Big companies arguing for "fairness" is absurd and in the long run it will blow up in their faces. In a society that prioritizes "fairness" over capitalism, Spotify and Google are not allowed to exist.
nerdjon 5y ago
As a user, why would I choose this? I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have to go through them to cancel. Meaning they can send me through screen after screen trying to convince me to stay (dark pattern) or even worse forcing me to call to cancel. As a user, if you want to offer this fine. But as long as the ability to subscribe through Google or Apple is not removed I will be fine. But if this starts a trend of more and more apps having their own billing that then uses dark patterns to keep me subscribed... I will just end up spending less money on subscriptions than I currently do, and I have quite a few subscriptions.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  It's very easy to stop your Spotify subscription, on their website. There isn't any trick.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  > disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. Paypal
  - nerdjon 5y ago
    Any optional third party option is not a solution. As long as it is a choice for the developer, it doesn't fix the issue. The only reason Apple (and I assume Google) are able to make it this easy is because the app developers are forced to allow it. But if they are no longer forced, why would an app developer choose make it easy to cancel?
    - babypuncher 5y ago
      Apple could make easy in-app service cancellation a requirement for store approval. This does not solve the problem of users needing to provide their CC info to additional payment providers, but it at least solves the problem of dark patterns being used to keep users from unsubscribing.
encryptluks2 5y ago
I was under the impression that they were combining the libraries or you'd get to pick which provider you wanted to stream music from but use the same app. If all this does is give you the option to pay for Spotify using Spotify app or a Google Pay subscription, then it only matters if Google is giving this option to all developers for any app.
swarnie 5y ago
I don't understand what i'm getting here? I downloaded Spotify on to my android phone, it takes my payment and it works. For a tech non-Silibro, what does this blog post mean?
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Spotify keeps more of the money when you use their payment system instead of Google's. Presumably they'll give you a discount for not using google pay.
  - harrisonjackson 5y ago
    Or use the extra money to improve their product and pay the musicians more - in a perfect world.
    - ars 5y ago
      Or more realistically they'll lower prices.
      - syspec 5y ago
        Temporarily to get users to switch, or permanently if they can determine how to monetize the user's information (what you didn't read the whole EULA?)
gumby 5y ago
I do see one potential customer benefit: rather than increasing your attack surface by giving two companies your CC info you just give one (google). In theory Google is going to have more security than a bunch of smaller companies. I use Apple Pay whenever possible for this precise reason. I don't want to trust Target with my CC info. Of course since under this scheme the company I'd be sharing my card info with is the largest dossier assembling company in the world, so I wouldn't be comfortable with it. But presumably they will collect the info anyway (even though they aren't subject to the same regulation as the credit bureaux or credit card networks), so perhaps going directly through them doesn't make things worse and at least eliminates one risk (spotify themselves).
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- mustyoshi 5y ago
  Or more credit card companies could offer virtual cards, that way you can even tell which service leaked your card. Capital One offers them for free.
  - gumby 5y ago
    citi used to but it was so clumsy to use I didn't bother. You'd think it would be in their interest to do so.
    - lxgr 5y ago
      Issuing banks are generally not liable for card-not-present fraud, so it's essentially just extra work with little benfit to them.
  - BatteryMountain 5y ago
    My bank offers virtual cards. Can generate and disable them in the mobile banking app, no need to go to the physical bank for it. I have a card for each service I pay for. Also useful for "free" trails that wants you to enter a CC. Oh and the the whole virtual card feature is free from my bank, no extra card fees etc. (I'm not in the USA)
AndrewDucker 5y ago
It has always seemed weird that if I use my Spotify account on my Android phone, iPad, and desktop, who gets a cut of my money depends on which one I use to set up billing.
- alias_neo 5y ago
  Agreed. I mostly use Spotify on a Raspberry Pi using Spotifyd and a display driver I wrote myself, on Linux. Now who should get a cut of my subscription? Do I get any of it? For services which exist and function perfectly well outside of the Google/Apple binary, why should they get any more than a nominal fee for hosting the app download?
- conductr 5y ago
  I feel like only the one processing the transaction should be paid to process the transaction. The usage part is no different than if you used a free app on every device, they make nothing.
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  That is because the person who does the billing incurs the costs...the billing isn't based on usage, it is based on who processes the bill.
  - asdfaoeu 5y ago
    The fee is much higher than would be for just "processing the bill"
  - 8note 5y ago
    I don't think it's costs they care about, but control. When apple gets control over the transaction, they can take whatever cut they want
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    processing fees are on the order of 2-3% at most, platform fees are 30%. That being said, the platforms do incur all sorts of other costs, but these costs are unequally shared across all apps. A free app with no ads does not pay anything but gets all the same features as a 100$ app who contributes 30$ on each sale. The problem is that there isn't a more "fair" solution.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
> “Android has always been about openness and user choice,” said Sameer Samat, Vice President, Product Management at Google. Oh **** off. Publish the Android MADA to the public, lol. Also, reinstate Fortnite then? Great, you cut a deal, can we not pretend that it's an openness thing though? We know it's not.
hughrr 5y ago
If this was Spotify vs Google I’d take Spotify. If this was anything vs Apple I’d take Apple. That’s the ranking of trust I have as far as customer support goes. It’ll be a crap fest when match.com or some other atomic level shyster markets their way into sounding more reputable than they are.
- alias_neo 5y ago
  I dislike Apple, and right now I wouldn't consider buying an Apple product again (I had an iPhone 1 ahead of most people in the UK). I spent the first ~5 years of my career developing on Android and I still use Android. I agree with your payment hierarchy 100%.
nostromo 5y ago
Is the price the same for both? It seems odd not to include this information.
jmacd 5y ago
"Over the coming months, Spotify will work with Google’s product and engineering teams to build this new experience" It's so absolutely bizarre to announce something at this stage. I wonder what is prompting it.
- mnholt 5y ago
  To maximize the amount of media coverage this receives. In a number of months they will announce that it’s done.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- nawgz 5y ago
  I don't know much about things, but I was immediately left with the feeling that this was a Google action performed vis a vis antitrust. Whether to strengthen a case against Apple or weaken one against them or some other ball game entirely, I have no clue.
- extheat 5y ago
  It is a big and notable event in the middle of antitrust investigations into Apple/Google by the US and the EU.
- kenhwang 5y ago
  Pretty standard Google playbook these days. Instead of building something and then cancelling it later when it doesn't gain traction to get their PR win, they decide to cash in on the PR win upfront with a big partnership announcement, then cancel the product before building it if it doesn't gain sufficient traction, thus saving on engineering costs and streamlining the typical Google technical offering lifecycle. Behind the scenes, Google usually gives the partnering company some pretty nice discounts. Usually no one does any engineering until someone else sees the PR and also wants in on this "exciting new feature" and they're the one actually beta testing the product that they thought the announced companies already used.
aketchum 5y ago
I just want to point out that Spotify as a position with the title 'Chief Freemium Business Officer'. Is there also a 'Chief Subscription Business Officer'?
kevincox 5y ago
> Together, we’ll work to innovate in how consumers make in-app purchases, deliver engaging experiences across multiple devices, and bring more consumers to the Android platform. I wanna vomit. The fix is just deleting 3 lines of your policies. The world will innovate on its own. No need to limit innovation to a couple companies who are big enough to negotiate.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Why not just use f droid and not be behold your the play store at all? Or just host on your own site?
  - kevincox 5y ago
    Because it adds a lot of friction to the average user.
  - realusername 5y ago
    Google thought about that and made it as inconvenient as possible and crippled the update
- nimbius 5y ago
  agreed. both of these companies --google and apple-- have leadership that see this as a hill to die on. Apple looks ready to go to the guillotine for the right to gouge startups, while Google seems more amicable to try obfuscation tactics to keep their hand in the cookie jar. my opinion: a couple million dollars invested in F-Droid might do the world a whole lot of good. if you were say, epic, you might consider an anonymous donation.
  - vertis 5y ago
    The difference between iOS and Android though is you absolutely can avoid the Google Play app store and install items directly (or through stores like f-droid). I'm not a fan of either ecosystem really, but Apple is definitely worse on this one metric because there is no ability to NOT pay them.
bogwog 5y ago
Google sees the writing on the wall. Their billing monopoly is under threat, and is probably not going to last forever. This situation looks like Google allowed Spotify to add their own payment system with some terms. The obvious one is that they need to keep Google's payment system alongside their own. A less obvious (but IMO likely) requirement may be that Spotify cannot offer a much lower price through their billing system to incentivize users to switch (100% assumption here). From the outside, this looks like a pro-consumer move: consumers get more choices (even if the prices are the same). But the reality is (probably; I'm just assuming here) that Google still has the power to shove their billing system down developers' throats, since there aren't yet any laws or rulings to prevent it. So even though the writing in this press release makes it seem like a pro-consumer move, I hope it doesn't take any momentum away from all of the antitrust lawsuits. Google's (and Apple's) monopolies need to end. In an ideal world, Spotify would add Google billing (and others) as options to attract more customers, not because Google is forcing them to.
- darkwater 5y ago
  And Spotify will probably also get less discounts in GCP to compensate part of that. I'm totally speculating, just to be clear.
  - Traster 5y ago
    Why on earth would Spotify be getting a discount on GCP?
    - bowmessage 5y ago
      Bulk/multi-year commitments to a single cloud provider often come with steep discounts.
      - Traster 5y ago
        Ok sure, but that's not likely to have anything to do with app store pricing etc. That's just GCP trying to acquire customers. They're not going to start trying to punish customers for other decisions because that would be an incredibly way to shoot yourself in the foot. This is a problem AWS already sees a lot.
robbiet480 5y ago
Google's post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782640
kobalsky 5y ago
keep in mind that it's not for everyone, it says: "pilot will allow a small number of participating developers" it's also an agreement, so it's very likely that they are requiring price parity. in that case the only benefit of picking a different payment processor for end users would be for they joy of typing their billing information again. regardless, looks like a step in the right direction
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  For the reason you mentioned I don’t think its a step in the right direction. Carriers already know how to charge their users. Google and Apple should let the user choose their carrier as a systemwide in—app payment processor. Its a small fix, its a good user experience. Arguably even better than what exists today. And is a step in the right direction (move away from Apple and Google controlled things)
  - Bilal_io 5y ago
    Or they could allow app devs to integrate with the OS payment API, so that when I want to pay, I get prompted to choose if I want to pay with MyBank App, MyCreditCard App, or ThirdParty App. But I'd also like legislation to force apps that I subscribed to,or paid through to allow me to unsubscribe with a single click.
    - enos_feedler 5y ago
      I think if we got the OS level payments API that you envision Apple and Google would do a decent job policing the user experience
      - rswail 5y ago
        It exists, I can "pay with apple pay" that then lets me choose one of the cards in my apple pay wallet. The issue is access of payment providers to the wallet. There's no real reason why there couldn't be a "MyTelco card" in your wallet that supports EMV processing rails.
smm11 5y ago
I thought at first it was "pay what you want," which I'd prefer with Spotify. I keep getting near-free SiriusXM deals, and with the integration in my car, why not. Then I start Spotify after two weeks, and it takes five minutes to load.
candiddevmike 5y ago
They'll unlock a ton of innovation by letting developers use documented and testable payment platforms instead of the "I really hope this works in production" android (and apple) payment systems. Having to support all of these payment processors is such a pain the ass.
- gboss 5y ago
  I actually agree with this. We’ve really struggled with Apple Pay. It’s partly our payment processor’s fault but the limited documentation from Apple and the strict limitations we’ve encountered trying to debug Apple Pay has taken us way longer than it should have to get right.
goldenManatee 5y ago
This does not warrant PR excitement getting built up. It’s just another payment option, not a discount package deal for consumers, so … who cares enough to make a press release about a feature this boring.
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judge2020 5y ago
They mention the fee for small businesses but don’t say that there is 0 fee or a reduced fee for this program, so it’s pretty obvious that they’re still at least making 15% per transaction under this agreement, maybe 27% if they do what Apple did by only reducing their fee to account for the fee taken by the alternative payment processor.
obert 5y ago
Imagine if AWS, Azure, Gcloud were charging for your VMs a % of your business revenue… AppStores are services, they should have a fixed price like any other service, and that can cover also variable costs like cents per download, cents per review, etc
- ehsankia 5y ago
  You're paying for compute, whereas you can put an app on a store for (basically) free. A million people can download your app and you wouldn't pay a penny more, whereas if a million people suddenly used your AWS app, you'd see a nice bump in cost.
  - obert 5y ago
    as per my previous comment, they could charge a fixed price per view/download and any other functionality of the app store. It would be the same price for everyone, regardless of revenue, and for most apps, it would be less, fairer, and more transparent
    - ehsankia 5y ago
      It could be an option, but there is also value for everyone, poor or rich, no matter in what country, being able to host an app, no matter no popular, without going bankrupt. It's the same with Youtube; the ad-model is not ideal, but there is also value to being able to, with the click of a button, host a video that can be watched by millions of people without you paying a penny. Two decades ago that would've been very hard for an average person to do.
- jasongi 5y ago
  Compute likely is a rough function of business revenue though.
  - obert 5y ago
    with the same amount of compute power one can run a successful business and earn $100M or something not successful and earn $100K. The compute cost is the same, compute does not become more or less expensive just because one makes more or less money with it.
gentleman11 5y ago
Keywords “to allow.” You still don’t own your device or have control over it, they are merely giving permission to some of their serfs
- smegma2 5y ago
  What are you referring to exactly
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  That's weird; the side-loaded apps I'm running seem to disagree. I mean, I guess I'm not cutting my own silicon wafers in my chip fab in the basement so who knows what's really in the radio circuitry, but this is certainly enough ownership for my use-case.
civilized 5y ago
This is one of the most boring and insignificant things I've ever seen on HN. The amount of intense discussion it's getting is very funny. I would consider it a much bigger event if Costco announced they'd take American Express. (No judgment against anyone who finds this event fascinating! You all clearly know more than me...)
olliej 5y ago
Does this actually reduce the fees, or simply let Spotify make it harder to cancel you subscription? I know on Mac+ios it’s controlled through centralized UI (which let me catch paramount charging two subscription when they renamed some service).
AviationAtom 5y ago
I'm sure Spotify will pass on the extra profit from the savings to the artists, right?
eatonphil 5y ago
"Chief Freemium Business Officer" is an interesting, genuinely not-made-up title.
thenerdhead 5y ago
Yet another decision a user has to make to buy something online. Why? Infrastructure?
xphos 5y ago
Maybe this is controversial but the fact that it's "revolutionary" to use/not use a non play store payment options is a sign of monopolization of payment method this should already have existed. And while I know Google is not the worst (looking at you apple) it's still not an achievement in my eyes it's management imposed dilemma.
greatgib 5y ago
This is so terribly full of corporate bullshit snake-oil. I would like so much that, one day, the whole tech community would decide to call out loudly each time of abusive PR like that is published. With something like "no one is duped by your shit, we are not stupid enough". "User Choice Billing" => it is a feature when we don't racket you. "When users choose Google Play, it’s because they count on us to deliver a safe experience, and that includes in-app payment systems that protect users’ data and financial information." => No, Google says that but users don't. Remember it's a racket they have no choice than using the Google store in most cases to have their device working. No one let you the choice to install your bank app from anywhere else than the play store. "We think that users should continue to have the choice to use Play’s billing system when they install an app from Google Play" => this is legendary as a sentence: we decided that you will not have the choice to integrate our billing system. But we said the work 'choice', so like in communist Russia, it looks like that you decided to use us (...without constraint...) "We also think it’s critical that alternative billing systems meet similarly high safety standards in protecting users’ personal data and sensitive financial information." => Even if the user willingly don't want to do business with Google's racketeering shit, still we decided that we will decide what the user and app developer can do. Because... fuck you!
manifoldgeo 5y ago
Imagine being a member of a duopoly with a fairly locked-down market and then releasing the ability to pay another way as a revolutionary "feature" worthy of a press release
ryanobjc 5y ago
For a site filled with developers y’all really misunderstand the whole 30% cut thing. It’s an alternate way to pay for API, sdk, and platform access. Before the era of phones, if you wanted to develop for some kind of gated platform, for example video game consoles, one would have to pay very high SDK fees. Fees that would scale based on licensed seat, enterprise size, and more. Then when you ship, you’d pay royalties on a per item basis. You sold a game cartridge or cd? Great, a portion of your sale prices goes back to Sony/Nintendo/whatever. If Apple and google were to provide un-marked up card services, they’d probably charge 3-5% like stripe: there’s a certain amount of fraud that would be priced in. Then they would charge for dev tools. A lot. They’d probably charge for API or SDK usage, perhaps tied to the sales volume and enterprise size. But instead they give the tools away for free, and charge at point of delivery. I think the current situation is actually a great deal for developers: you get access to an always improving platform, it’s free for personal/hobby use, and if you make sales, you get paid. And the first $X is fee reduced/free. And it’s a highly available distribution platform that scales world wide. Good luck getting your Indy game into every brick and mortar store. The world is really different, and way way better, for developers. This Spotify announcement is great for users, it’s handy to have all your subscriptions in one platform. And not having to sign up on a desktop or outside the app flow.
- alickz 5y ago
  But why are phones considered gated platforms in the first place? How is a phone not just a general computing device? How is a phone not just a laptop in a different form factor? Because Apple/Google say so? There would be massive pushback if developers had to pay $100/y and 30% of revenue to develop an app for macOS, or Windows. But for iOS and Android we just accept it as true. I don't know, I just feel like phones are a lot closer to laptops than they are to video game consoles. I don't feel like them being gated is justified, or good for anyone other than Apple/Google.
tarsinge 5y ago
> Today, we are excited to announce a new chapter in our partnership with Google Not related to payment but recently Spotify is half broken (like unusable search) if I block calls to Google in Little Snitch on Mac.
dalbasal 5y ago
So I guess the big questions remains: (1)Do Google still get to tax all revenue made by the app? (2) are we likely to see price differentials, so that Spotify can return some of the savings to users?
lazyeye 5y ago
"new experience" lol.
gigatexal 5y ago
ApplePay checkout is so smooth and amazing I wish all apps and websites supported it. More related to this, I am not on the Google ecosystem but if an app in the Appstore offered say something from a third-party and that of Apple's I'd choose Apple's all day long. Subscription management is so much better, I trust the payment platform, and it's all very seamless. That being said, if Apple were not so heavy handed perhaps the other providers could offer or plug into the Apple Pay system.
Hardik_Shah 5y ago
Google and Spotify have announced a first-of-its-kind partnership that will give Android users a choice to pay for the music streaming service with a payment method other than Google Play Billing. Google is also working with other developers to test third-party billing in the Play Store that will allow users to bypass its own billing system.

439 points by laminarflow 5y ago

Why do/should I, as a Spotify subscriber, care about this at all? I don't understand why there's so much fanfare around this. I feel like I'm missing something basic here...

alias_neo 5y ago
I don't think there is much fanfare. Obviously Google and Spotify want to make a big deal out of this for when regulators come knocking, but as a Spotify user who pays directly to Spotify outside of Play Store, this news is nothing more at a mild irritation at them both patting each other's backs over nothing.
drbacon 5y ago
I actually don't think of this as a consumer issue at all. You probably shouldn't care, but I can see why some consumers might care (e.g. how many entities have their credit card on file, concerns about privacy, a desire to allocate as much money as possible to artists...). I think of this as a developer issue. There's good money being the middle man for transactions. Did consumers really care about the Epic/Apple IAP issue? Were there iOS users clamoring to use Epic's payment platform? I never really heard the consumer voice in that discussion. I did hear a lot of developer voices that cared about their right to charge consumers without Apple's 30% transaction cut.
- xwowsersx 5y ago
  I see, thanks. So why would Spotify agree to this if they were able to handle premium subscriptions outside of Google? They expect they will make more money this way even after having to give a cut to Google?

gmiller123456 5y ago

This may sound like a snippy question, but I'm genuinely curious as to why this is considered news? Isn't this just getting another payment option, similar to what many, many other services have been offering for over a decade? Seriously, am I missing something?

dm319 5y ago
I'm also confused, as I think I simply pay Spotify for my premium subscription (given I joined Spotify using it mainly on the desktop). Which bit is new?
- addandsubtract 5y ago
  I just reread the article, because at first it sounded like Spotify was announcing a payment method of their own, ala Google Pay. Instead, this is Spotify announcing that you'll be able to pay for a subscription in the app using another payment method _besides_ Google Pay, which is the standard for all in app purchases. It's only news, because it's the first finde Google has allowed an IAP without going through Google Pay.
meatmanek 5y ago
Both the Apple App Store and (I believe) the Google Play Store have requirements that any digital goods purchased through an app that's distributed through the App/Play store use the payment system provided by Apple/Google, which takes a 30% cut in most cases. This is a big deal because both Apple and Google have been fighting to keep that 30% cut for years, despite the fact that neither company is really providing much value as a payments provider; they're just extracting rent from their monopoly position as the distributor for apps in iPhone/Android land.

simow 5y ago

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analogdreams 5y ago

truly the innovation the end user has been clamoring for

version_five 5y ago

I have paid spotify but I can't remember how I got the all or paid for it, other than there is not way it involved google because I wouldn't do that. Is this a compromise that gives google some in-app purchases that used to go to spotify, or is it the opposite? And I wonder if it means some kind of data sharing with google? One whiff of google involvement in the actual experience or data use would be the end of my spotify subscription. If it's just a settlement about app store rules then I don't care.

eurasiantiger 5y ago
You may want to analyze connections made by the Spotify client…

lbotos 5y ago

Is this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" play where Google makes Apple look bad in an effort to avoid some of the regulations that might catch Apple? I cant figure out why Google would want this otherwise?

dannyw 5y ago
The EU has been looking into this for months now, and statements made by the Commission have not been kind to Google. I suspect Google expects an incoming loss.
lalos 5y ago
Retaliation from all the iPhone privacy ads, modern capitalistic warfare.
judge2020 5y ago
Google made the same decision as Apple when they removed Fortnite in response to Epic Games completely bypassing the store's in-app purchasing flow, thus losing their 30% revenue cut, so the motivation is likely not 'to make Apple look bad'. This is probably just a good show of faith to regulators while Google still collects their percentage of subscription revenue from Spotify on the backend.
- phamilton 5y ago
  > percentage of subscription revenue from Spotify on the backend This is an advantage of Google vs Apple. Google has multiple business relationships with Spotify. An increase in advertising dollars, infrastructure spend on GCP, etc could all offset the lost revenue for Google here.
WestCoastJustin 5y ago
Spotify is a BIG Google Cloud customer with a $450 million commit back in 2018 [0, 1, 2]. Companies want to keep these types of customers obviously and will leverage other teams internally to get a value add to get that renewal. This is likely just another integration as they look to leverage the relationship across bizdev, partner marketing, and sales teams, internal engineering dogfood projects, discounts, etc. Lots of this type of stuff isn't even targeted at competition just an evolution of the relationship. Normally how this type of stuff happens, is you'll have some internal team working on a new initiative and looking for headline customers, they will reach out to the sales teams, and say, "hey, you are working with XYZ customer, want to float this idea with them". It's a win-win. So, having said all they. Google vs Apple, etc, and other large competition politics almost never are on the radar of these teams. They just want to help the customer win, get the sales commissions, and make their internal product successful. It's easy to look at this stuff from the outside and think there is some big plan but the motivation down at the teams level has nothing to do with that since they want mostly to look good on perf reviews. I have no knowledge of the internals here just talking from experience from what I've seen. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/spotify-will-spend-nearly-450-million-on-google-cloud-over-3-years.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/spotify-will-spend-nearly-45... [1] https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/spotify-google-cloud-platform https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/spotify-google-cloud-pla... [2] https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify Note: I originally had Shopify here. The same strategy/tactics apply.

judge2020 5y ago

Spotify doesn't disclose their pay cut so I have to assume Google is still getting their cut of revenue, maybe 25% with payment processor fees taken into account instead of 30%, since they surely wouldn't want to set a precedent of any digital content app being able to not pay for the OS/platform by simply adding their own payment method (otherwise Epic wouldn't have needed their lawsuit).

fitzroy 5y ago

The "Chief Freemium Business Officer" seems an odd choice for a quote about consumer billing.

version_five 5y ago
Doesn't freemium mean in-app purchases which would be subject of a deal with the google app store?
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
I wonder how much work someone with that title has on a day-to-day basis.
- zerocrates 5y ago
  Depends on how much energy they have left.

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paxys 5y ago

Crazy that this new revolutionary "first of its kind" feature is – letting the user pick between two payment processors.

chews 5y ago
Basic choice for payments became a discount offering for Google cloud use.... Total monopolistic behavior
- judge2020 5y ago
  While that's alluded to in some other comments there is 0 proof of this - it'd be a huge issue if the price for choosing another payment processor (while still likely paying Google their Store % cut on the backend) is being an enterprise customer of a completely separate business unit.
drusepth 5y ago
I don't understand how this is a "feature". Is the price different, or the features gained different, or does it just determine who ends up getting what % cut? I can't imagine most people actually care whether Google or Spotify is getting a bigger piece of the same price they're paying either way.
- laurent92 5y ago
  The conditions and trust are different. I personally believe that letting Google have my credit card is allowing a kid with no supervision to play with my life savings; While some others will believe Google provides better guarantees than Spotify when you want to unsubscribe. At least competition will allow us to see “who’s better” and what T&C customers care about, and that’s the important point.
  - maratc 5y ago
    It's not a choice of who's better; it's a choice of who's not worse. Given a choice of Apple vs. anything, I can't see myself choosing anything over Apple.

ggoo 5y ago

Seems like a step towards non-vendor locked payments _if you're big enough_. This future does not look so bright.

criddell 5y ago

> represents a first-of-its-kind option in payment choice and offers opportunities for both consumers and developers What is the opportunity here? For consumers is it that you can pick who you pay? That doesn't sound like much of an opportunity to me. What is the opportunity for developers?

librish 5y ago
Presumably that they'll see the difference in price.
- syspec 5y ago
  Hah! As if... If there is a reduction in price, it will be temporary so they can get users to switch. After a year or two there will be a PR announcement: Congratulations to us! Today we're announcing going forward all plans will be priced exactly the same. This means whether you pay via Google or Spotify, you no longer need to worry about confusing pricing options because all plans will have one single price. As an additional benefit users who pay via Spotify will get a limited edition Snoop Dogg / Jaden Smith / Billy Ray Cyrus NFT usable in Fortnite while logged into Spotify Pro Max
onelovetwo 5y ago
So there is no user choice, technically just a lesser commission. Nothing stopping Google from upping this 5% "fee" to 10% when they feel like it. This is still a loss for devs, I was hoping we can just rip of Google garbage payment system and use something like Stripe, or whatever new companies that would've emerged to fill our needs. Obviously they'll give a sweet deal to massive companies but not the small devs.
- kyrra 5y ago
  Googler, opinions are my own. What issues do you have with the Google payments system? With the stripe bring that Google does not already have? (Outside the fee issue most people raise)

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

I wonder how much Google sweetened the deal. I can't imagine Spotify accepted a standard 15% cut.

u2077 5y ago

This is great, I guess? Is Google just caving in at a smaller scale before they get forced to do this at a larger scale? I feel like by doing this now, they are trying to dodge something that’s very likely to come down the road. (antitrust regulations) Then again, partnering with only the big names will create a new wave of complaints.

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barbazoo 5y ago

I was hoping this would mean I get to decide how much I pay

pishpash 5y ago
That would be too much user choice.

cletus 5y ago

This is smart and what Apple should've done. Apple is clearly beholden to the massive cash cow that the App Store has become. Apple's attempts at complying with various orders are that their cut should be 27% and the payment processor can have 3%. That's ridiculous and is going to get them into trouble. You see this pattern repeatedly and people will bring up things like the Pareto Principle or argue it's better to squeeze the profits for as long as you can but ultimately some government or court will take away your monopoly. As someone in possession of such a monopoly it is always better for you to control how that happens. Having it decided for you could be truly disastrous. Any government investigation could widen in scope to areas it otherwise wouldn't. I predict App Store cuts will ultimately drop to a far more reasonable 10-15% including payment processing or 5-10% without.

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threeseed 5y ago
App Store is 15% for developers making up $1 million a year. And I know you think this is somehow unique to Apple but it isn't. Channel costs have existed probably for centuries and are present in every industry.
- 10u152 5y ago
  Yep. Traditionally printers/publishers took 85-95% of revenue from authors. Now perhaps you can argue that there's more costs involved in printing that running an app store, but an app store taking 30% sounds like a great deal in that context.

simow 5y ago

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javert 5y ago

> Spotify has been publicly advocating for platform fairness Big companies arguing for "fairness" is absurd and in the long run it will blow up in their faces. In a society that prioritizes "fairness" over capitalism, Spotify and Google are not allowed to exist.

nerdjon 5y ago

As a user, why would I choose this? I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have to go through them to cancel. Meaning they can send me through screen after screen trying to convince me to stay (dark pattern) or even worse forcing me to call to cancel. As a user, if you want to offer this fine. But as long as the ability to subscribe through Google or Apple is not removed I will be fine. But if this starts a trend of more and more apps having their own billing that then uses dark patterns to keep me subscribed... I will just end up spending less money on subscriptions than I currently do, and I have quite a few subscriptions.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
It's very easy to stop your Spotify subscription, on their website. There isn't any trick.
curiousgal 5y ago
> disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. Paypal
- nerdjon 5y ago
  Any optional third party option is not a solution. As long as it is a choice for the developer, it doesn't fix the issue. The only reason Apple (and I assume Google) are able to make it this easy is because the app developers are forced to allow it. But if they are no longer forced, why would an app developer choose make it easy to cancel?
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    Apple could make easy in-app service cancellation a requirement for store approval. This does not solve the problem of users needing to provide their CC info to additional payment providers, but it at least solves the problem of dark patterns being used to keep users from unsubscribing.

encryptluks2 5y ago

I was under the impression that they were combining the libraries or you'd get to pick which provider you wanted to stream music from but use the same app. If all this does is give you the option to pay for Spotify using Spotify app or a Google Pay subscription, then it only matters if Google is giving this option to all developers for any app.

swarnie 5y ago

I don't understand what i'm getting here? I downloaded Spotify on to my android phone, it takes my payment and it works. For a tech non-Silibro, what does this blog post mean?

colinmhayes 5y ago
Spotify keeps more of the money when you use their payment system instead of Google's. Presumably they'll give you a discount for not using google pay.
- harrisonjackson 5y ago
  Or use the extra money to improve their product and pay the musicians more - in a perfect world.
  - ars 5y ago
    Or more realistically they'll lower prices.
    - syspec 5y ago
      Temporarily to get users to switch, or permanently if they can determine how to monetize the user's information (what you didn't read the whole EULA?)

gumby 5y ago

I do see one potential customer benefit: rather than increasing your attack surface by giving two companies your CC info you just give one (google). In theory Google is going to have more security than a bunch of smaller companies. I use Apple Pay whenever possible for this precise reason. I don't want to trust Target with my CC info. Of course since under this scheme the company I'd be sharing my card info with is the largest dossier assembling company in the world, so I wouldn't be comfortable with it. But presumably they will collect the info anyway (even though they aren't subject to the same regulation as the credit bureaux or credit card networks), so perhaps going directly through them doesn't make things worse and at least eliminates one risk (spotify themselves).

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mustyoshi 5y ago
Or more credit card companies could offer virtual cards, that way you can even tell which service leaked your card. Capital One offers them for free.
- gumby 5y ago
  citi used to but it was so clumsy to use I didn't bother. You'd think it would be in their interest to do so.
  - lxgr 5y ago
    Issuing banks are generally not liable for card-not-present fraud, so it's essentially just extra work with little benfit to them.
- BatteryMountain 5y ago
  My bank offers virtual cards. Can generate and disable them in the mobile banking app, no need to go to the physical bank for it. I have a card for each service I pay for. Also useful for "free" trails that wants you to enter a CC. Oh and the the whole virtual card feature is free from my bank, no extra card fees etc. (I'm not in the USA)

AndrewDucker 5y ago

It has always seemed weird that if I use my Spotify account on my Android phone, iPad, and desktop, who gets a cut of my money depends on which one I use to set up billing.

alias_neo 5y ago
Agreed. I mostly use Spotify on a Raspberry Pi using Spotifyd and a display driver I wrote myself, on Linux. Now who should get a cut of my subscription? Do I get any of it? For services which exist and function perfectly well outside of the Google/Apple binary, why should they get any more than a nominal fee for hosting the app download?
conductr 5y ago
I feel like only the one processing the transaction should be paid to process the transaction. The usage part is no different than if you used a free app on every device, they make nothing.
darkwizard42 5y ago
That is because the person who does the billing incurs the costs...the billing isn't based on usage, it is based on who processes the bill.
- asdfaoeu 5y ago
  The fee is much higher than would be for just "processing the bill"
- 8note 5y ago
  I don't think it's costs they care about, but control. When apple gets control over the transaction, they can take whatever cut they want
- ehsankia 5y ago
  processing fees are on the order of 2-3% at most, platform fees are 30%. That being said, the platforms do incur all sorts of other costs, but these costs are unequally shared across all apps. A free app with no ads does not pay anything but gets all the same features as a 100$ app who contributes 30$ on each sale. The problem is that there isn't a more "fair" solution.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

> “Android has always been about openness and user choice,” said Sameer Samat, Vice President, Product Management at Google. Oh **** off. Publish the Android MADA to the public, lol. Also, reinstate Fortnite then? Great, you cut a deal, can we not pretend that it's an openness thing though? We know it's not.

hughrr 5y ago

If this was Spotify vs Google I’d take Spotify. If this was anything vs Apple I’d take Apple. That’s the ranking of trust I have as far as customer support goes. It’ll be a crap fest when match.com or some other atomic level shyster markets their way into sounding more reputable than they are.

alias_neo 5y ago
I dislike Apple, and right now I wouldn't consider buying an Apple product again (I had an iPhone 1 ahead of most people in the UK). I spent the first ~5 years of my career developing on Android and I still use Android. I agree with your payment hierarchy 100%.

nostromo 5y ago

Is the price the same for both? It seems odd not to include this information.

jmacd 5y ago

"Over the coming months, Spotify will work with Google’s product and engineering teams to build this new experience" It's so absolutely bizarre to announce something at this stage. I wonder what is prompting it.

mnholt 5y ago
To maximize the amount of media coverage this receives. In a number of months they will announce that it’s done.
- deleted 5y ago
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nawgz 5y ago
I don't know much about things, but I was immediately left with the feeling that this was a Google action performed vis a vis antitrust. Whether to strengthen a case against Apple or weaken one against them or some other ball game entirely, I have no clue.
extheat 5y ago
It is a big and notable event in the middle of antitrust investigations into Apple/Google by the US and the EU.
kenhwang 5y ago
Pretty standard Google playbook these days. Instead of building something and then cancelling it later when it doesn't gain traction to get their PR win, they decide to cash in on the PR win upfront with a big partnership announcement, then cancel the product before building it if it doesn't gain sufficient traction, thus saving on engineering costs and streamlining the typical Google technical offering lifecycle. Behind the scenes, Google usually gives the partnering company some pretty nice discounts. Usually no one does any engineering until someone else sees the PR and also wants in on this "exciting new feature" and they're the one actually beta testing the product that they thought the announced companies already used.

aketchum 5y ago

I just want to point out that Spotify as a position with the title 'Chief Freemium Business Officer'. Is there also a 'Chief Subscription Business Officer'?

kevincox 5y ago

> Together, we’ll work to innovate in how consumers make in-app purchases, deliver engaging experiences across multiple devices, and bring more consumers to the Android platform. I wanna vomit. The fix is just deleting 3 lines of your policies. The world will innovate on its own. No need to limit innovation to a couple companies who are big enough to negotiate.

endisneigh 5y ago
Why not just use f droid and not be behold your the play store at all? Or just host on your own site?
- kevincox 5y ago
  Because it adds a lot of friction to the average user.
- realusername 5y ago
  Google thought about that and made it as inconvenient as possible and crippled the update
nimbius 5y ago
agreed. both of these companies --google and apple-- have leadership that see this as a hill to die on. Apple looks ready to go to the guillotine for the right to gouge startups, while Google seems more amicable to try obfuscation tactics to keep their hand in the cookie jar. my opinion: a couple million dollars invested in F-Droid might do the world a whole lot of good. if you were say, epic, you might consider an anonymous donation.
- vertis 5y ago
  The difference between iOS and Android though is you absolutely can avoid the Google Play app store and install items directly (or through stores like f-droid). I'm not a fan of either ecosystem really, but Apple is definitely worse on this one metric because there is no ability to NOT pay them.

bogwog 5y ago

Google sees the writing on the wall. Their billing monopoly is under threat, and is probably not going to last forever. This situation looks like Google allowed Spotify to add their own payment system with some terms. The obvious one is that they need to keep Google's payment system alongside their own. A less obvious (but IMO likely) requirement may be that Spotify cannot offer a much lower price through their billing system to incentivize users to switch (100% assumption here). From the outside, this looks like a pro-consumer move: consumers get more choices (even if the prices are the same). But the reality is (probably; I'm just assuming here) that Google still has the power to shove their billing system down developers' throats, since there aren't yet any laws or rulings to prevent it. So even though the writing in this press release makes it seem like a pro-consumer move, I hope it doesn't take any momentum away from all of the antitrust lawsuits. Google's (and Apple's) monopolies need to end. In an ideal world, Spotify would add Google billing (and others) as options to attract more customers, not because Google is forcing them to.

darkwater 5y ago
And Spotify will probably also get less discounts in GCP to compensate part of that. I'm totally speculating, just to be clear.
- Traster 5y ago
  Why on earth would Spotify be getting a discount on GCP?
  - bowmessage 5y ago
    Bulk/multi-year commitments to a single cloud provider often come with steep discounts.
    - Traster 5y ago
      Ok sure, but that's not likely to have anything to do with app store pricing etc. That's just GCP trying to acquire customers. They're not going to start trying to punish customers for other decisions because that would be an incredibly way to shoot yourself in the foot. This is a problem AWS already sees a lot.

robbiet480 5y ago

Google's post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782640

kobalsky 5y ago

keep in mind that it's not for everyone, it says: "pilot will allow a small number of participating developers" it's also an agreement, so it's very likely that they are requiring price parity. in that case the only benefit of picking a different payment processor for end users would be for they joy of typing their billing information again. regardless, looks like a step in the right direction

enos_feedler 5y ago
For the reason you mentioned I don’t think its a step in the right direction. Carriers already know how to charge their users. Google and Apple should let the user choose their carrier as a systemwide in—app payment processor. Its a small fix, its a good user experience. Arguably even better than what exists today. And is a step in the right direction (move away from Apple and Google controlled things)
- Bilal_io 5y ago
  Or they could allow app devs to integrate with the OS payment API, so that when I want to pay, I get prompted to choose if I want to pay with MyBank App, MyCreditCard App, or ThirdParty App. But I'd also like legislation to force apps that I subscribed to,or paid through to allow me to unsubscribe with a single click.
  - enos_feedler 5y ago
    I think if we got the OS level payments API that you envision Apple and Google would do a decent job policing the user experience
    - rswail 5y ago
      It exists, I can "pay with apple pay" that then lets me choose one of the cards in my apple pay wallet. The issue is access of payment providers to the wallet. There's no real reason why there couldn't be a "MyTelco card" in your wallet that supports EMV processing rails.

smm11 5y ago

I thought at first it was "pay what you want," which I'd prefer with Spotify. I keep getting near-free SiriusXM deals, and with the integration in my car, why not. Then I start Spotify after two weeks, and it takes five minutes to load.

candiddevmike 5y ago

They'll unlock a ton of innovation by letting developers use documented and testable payment platforms instead of the "I really hope this works in production" android (and apple) payment systems. Having to support all of these payment processors is such a pain the ass.

gboss 5y ago
I actually agree with this. We’ve really struggled with Apple Pay. It’s partly our payment processor’s fault but the limited documentation from Apple and the strict limitations we’ve encountered trying to debug Apple Pay has taken us way longer than it should have to get right.

goldenManatee 5y ago

This does not warrant PR excitement getting built up. It’s just another payment option, not a discount package deal for consumers, so … who cares enough to make a press release about a feature this boring.

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judge2020 5y ago

They mention the fee for small businesses but don’t say that there is 0 fee or a reduced fee for this program, so it’s pretty obvious that they’re still at least making 15% per transaction under this agreement, maybe 27% if they do what Apple did by only reducing their fee to account for the fee taken by the alternative payment processor.

obert 5y ago

Imagine if AWS, Azure, Gcloud were charging for your VMs a % of your business revenue… AppStores are services, they should have a fixed price like any other service, and that can cover also variable costs like cents per download, cents per review, etc

ehsankia 5y ago
You're paying for compute, whereas you can put an app on a store for (basically) free. A million people can download your app and you wouldn't pay a penny more, whereas if a million people suddenly used your AWS app, you'd see a nice bump in cost.
- obert 5y ago
  as per my previous comment, they could charge a fixed price per view/download and any other functionality of the app store. It would be the same price for everyone, regardless of revenue, and for most apps, it would be less, fairer, and more transparent
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    It could be an option, but there is also value for everyone, poor or rich, no matter in what country, being able to host an app, no matter no popular, without going bankrupt. It's the same with Youtube; the ad-model is not ideal, but there is also value to being able to, with the click of a button, host a video that can be watched by millions of people without you paying a penny. Two decades ago that would've been very hard for an average person to do.
jasongi 5y ago
Compute likely is a rough function of business revenue though.
- obert 5y ago
  with the same amount of compute power one can run a successful business and earn $100M or something not successful and earn $100K. The compute cost is the same, compute does not become more or less expensive just because one makes more or less money with it.

gentleman11 5y ago

Keywords “to allow.” You still don’t own your device or have control over it, they are merely giving permission to some of their serfs

smegma2 5y ago
What are you referring to exactly
shadowgovt 5y ago
That's weird; the side-loaded apps I'm running seem to disagree. I mean, I guess I'm not cutting my own silicon wafers in my chip fab in the basement so who knows what's really in the radio circuitry, but this is certainly enough ownership for my use-case.

civilized 5y ago

This is one of the most boring and insignificant things I've ever seen on HN. The amount of intense discussion it's getting is very funny. I would consider it a much bigger event if Costco announced they'd take American Express. (No judgment against anyone who finds this event fascinating! You all clearly know more than me...)

olliej 5y ago

Does this actually reduce the fees, or simply let Spotify make it harder to cancel you subscription? I know on Mac+ios it’s controlled through centralized UI (which let me catch paramount charging two subscription when they renamed some service).

AviationAtom 5y ago

I'm sure Spotify will pass on the extra profit from the savings to the artists, right?

eatonphil 5y ago

"Chief Freemium Business Officer" is an interesting, genuinely not-made-up title.

thenerdhead 5y ago

Yet another decision a user has to make to buy something online. Why? Infrastructure?

xphos 5y ago

Maybe this is controversial but the fact that it's "revolutionary" to use/not use a non play store payment options is a sign of monopolization of payment method this should already have existed. And while I know Google is not the worst (looking at you apple) it's still not an achievement in my eyes it's management imposed dilemma.

greatgib 5y ago

This is so terribly full of corporate bullshit snake-oil. I would like so much that, one day, the whole tech community would decide to call out loudly each time of abusive PR like that is published. With something like "no one is duped by your shit, we are not stupid enough". "User Choice Billing" => it is a feature when we don't racket you. "When users choose Google Play, it’s because they count on us to deliver a safe experience, and that includes in-app payment systems that protect users’ data and financial information." => No, Google says that but users don't. Remember it's a racket they have no choice than using the Google store in most cases to have their device working. No one let you the choice to install your bank app from anywhere else than the play store. "We think that users should continue to have the choice to use Play’s billing system when they install an app from Google Play" => this is legendary as a sentence: we decided that you will not have the choice to integrate our billing system. But we said the work 'choice', so like in communist Russia, it looks like that you decided to use us (...without constraint...) "We also think it’s critical that alternative billing systems meet similarly high safety standards in protecting users’ personal data and sensitive financial information." => Even if the user willingly don't want to do business with Google's racketeering shit, still we decided that we will decide what the user and app developer can do. Because... fuck you!

manifoldgeo 5y ago

Imagine being a member of a duopoly with a fairly locked-down market and then releasing the ability to pay another way as a revolutionary "feature" worthy of a press release

ryanobjc 5y ago

For a site filled with developers y’all really misunderstand the whole 30% cut thing. It’s an alternate way to pay for API, sdk, and platform access. Before the era of phones, if you wanted to develop for some kind of gated platform, for example video game consoles, one would have to pay very high SDK fees. Fees that would scale based on licensed seat, enterprise size, and more. Then when you ship, you’d pay royalties on a per item basis. You sold a game cartridge or cd? Great, a portion of your sale prices goes back to Sony/Nintendo/whatever. If Apple and google were to provide un-marked up card services, they’d probably charge 3-5% like stripe: there’s a certain amount of fraud that would be priced in. Then they would charge for dev tools. A lot. They’d probably charge for API or SDK usage, perhaps tied to the sales volume and enterprise size. But instead they give the tools away for free, and charge at point of delivery. I think the current situation is actually a great deal for developers: you get access to an always improving platform, it’s free for personal/hobby use, and if you make sales, you get paid. And the first $X is fee reduced/free. And it’s a highly available distribution platform that scales world wide. Good luck getting your Indy game into every brick and mortar store. The world is really different, and way way better, for developers. This Spotify announcement is great for users, it’s handy to have all your subscriptions in one platform. And not having to sign up on a desktop or outside the app flow.

alickz 5y ago
But why are phones considered gated platforms in the first place? How is a phone not just a general computing device? How is a phone not just a laptop in a different form factor? Because Apple/Google say so? There would be massive pushback if developers had to pay $100/y and 30% of revenue to develop an app for macOS, or Windows. But for iOS and Android we just accept it as true. I don't know, I just feel like phones are a lot closer to laptops than they are to video game consoles. I don't feel like them being gated is justified, or good for anyone other than Apple/Google.

tarsinge 5y ago

> Today, we are excited to announce a new chapter in our partnership with Google Not related to payment but recently Spotify is half broken (like unusable search) if I block calls to Google in Little Snitch on Mac.

dalbasal 5y ago

So I guess the big questions remains: (1)Do Google still get to tax all revenue made by the app? (2) are we likely to see price differentials, so that Spotify can return some of the savings to users?

lazyeye 5y ago

"new experience" lol.

gigatexal 5y ago

ApplePay checkout is so smooth and amazing I wish all apps and websites supported it. More related to this, I am not on the Google ecosystem but if an app in the Appstore offered say something from a third-party and that of Apple's I'd choose Apple's all day long. Subscription management is so much better, I trust the payment platform, and it's all very seamless. That being said, if Apple were not so heavy handed perhaps the other providers could offer or plug into the Apple Pay system.

Hardik_Shah 5y ago

Google and Spotify have announced a first-of-its-kind partnership that will give Android users a choice to pay for the music streaming service with a payment method other than Google Play Billing. Google is also working with other developers to test third-party billing in the Play Store that will allow users to bypass its own billing system.