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I know that a consumptionist attitude is popular these days, but as a user of something like Spotify I would surely prefer as much as possible of my monetary co

by olau 5y ago

I know that a consumptionist attitude is popular these days, but as a user of something like Spotify I would surely prefer as much as possible of my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians instead of in the hands of a company controlling the market place. To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? The only reason the phone OS companies get away with it is lack of real competition. The regulatory environment is very slow in catching up - it's not more than a few years ago that the EU finally hit the payment card companies. And yes, the EU also has something to say when it comes to dark subscription cancelling patterns.

bennysomething 5y ago
What did the eu hit payment card companies with? Only thing I know about is banning vendors from passing on fees to the customer, which harmed us: it prevented the customer from seeing they were being ripped off by credit card companies at the point of sale. (Genuine question here)
altairprime 5y ago
I would trust Spotify but not NYTimes, in this model, so perhaps consider a more hostile example than Spotify as well.
Shank 5y ago
> To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Just so that we're talking on equal terms here, card processors and networks solve a massive amount of problems that existed with cash. Pre-card, many stores setup credit accounts with individuals, had book keeping practices to deal with, and had to chase down credit lines they themselves offered. Even with debit cards, card networks facilitate the ability to automatically move money between parties and give customers the ability to dispute/chargeback fraudulent transactions easily. If you physically hand a merchant cash, you can't claw that back without a legal process, whereas you're afforded protections by the card network. But the 30% cut is completely different from card processors. Of the 30% to Google Play or to Apple, a small fraction (2.9%ish) is actually the card overhead. The rest is split between pure profit, infrastructure, and whatever else gets tacked on. Cards definitely offer important things to facilitate transactions that are objectively better than a pure cash world for most people. But it's important to call out crazy cash grabs like 30%, which is unheard of even in the payment network world.
- bmhin 5y ago
  Choice is the real thing though more than actual value add. I feel like I see it less now, but recall seeing how vendors would only accept certain cards and not others (frequently, not American Express) which was as far as I know stemming mostly from higher fees they didn't want to pay. Similarly, places would not accept credit cards at all if they had razor margins and didn't want to eat the fee. I still know of a few places like that, often with an ATM near by so the customer can pay a fee if they are caught unaware. That was the thing though, a business could decline to accept particular cards or cards at all and still perform transactions. That "opportunity" has generally not extended to the app store world in a practical way. If you want to play, they had their cut and customers and vendors didn't have a whole lot of say in what was reasonable. There is no simple default transaction (like cash) that they were trying to out compete.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Cash-only businesses are dodging taxes not money handling fees.
- Sesse__ 5y ago
  Even your 2.9% number is probably too high. Perhaps for AmEx or in super-high-risk situations you need to pay that kind of fees, but for regular MC/VISA in developed countries, even a medium-sized business can get below 1%. Large companies, like Apple, can almost certainly get it lower than that. Source: Involved in multiple such deals over the years.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It is 2% to 3% in the US due to the copious rewards programs which result in minimum 2% cash back for credit card users.
    - Sesse__ 5y ago
      But those are paid for by your bank (by charging high interest rates on the percentage of people who don't pay right away), not by MC/VISA.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I don't think Spotify is the best example here, since I'm not particularly convinced that more cash going to them would end up in the hands of musicians. But certainly, if I subscribe to The Economist I want as much of my money as possible to go to the journalists who actually write the content.
- Erwin 5y ago
  Spotify is public and you can see most of their numbers -- the Cost of Revenue for 2021 was 7 billion EUR on 9.6 in revenue. The cost is said to be mostly the royalties though it would include paying the many millions to some podcasters. The ad-supported users outnumbers premium users (236 million to 180 million) but bring in only 1/6th the revenue. So that's a factor depressing the payout per stream. https://investors.spotify.com/financials/press-release-details/2022/Spotify-Technology-S.A.-Announces-Financial-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-2021/default.aspx https://investors.spotify.com/financials/press-release-detai...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Or phrased slightly differently, Spotify takes 30% of revenue generated by selling access to artists' songs.
    - dale_glass 5y ago
      Seems pretty fair, since if it was easy for an artist to undercut Spotify, they'd be doing it.
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Just like the application developers on Google Play, Apple's app store, and Steam, eh?
nerdjon 5y ago
Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making the situation worse for consumers. However to be clear, that percent is in the same area that game consoles and I believe Steam (someone correct me?) charge. And we accept that. When the 30% rule for the App Store came down, our smart phones were basically the same as a game console. Most people did not expect these devices to become the central part of all of our lives. At least not in this way. Now that it has, than sure the percent needs to be lowered and I am not arguing that (I said in another comment the 30% is worth it for me personally but doesn't mean I am ok with it).
- rusk 5y ago
  > let's focus on lowering that percent A noble position but it seems to have been going other way unfortunately. Not sure how you would do that … further regulation or introducing artificial competition in the market. I think the most pro-business approach is to quash the monopoly and open up the market.
  - enos_feedler 5y ago
    Going the other way? The fee started at 30% and has only gone down from there (ex. 15% for subs active > 1 yr). I believe the fees will fragment further and give developers the option of paying less but receiving less too. For example: You can pay 5% less but you will only show up in app store search results. Or something to this effect. We will never get blanket 30% take rates again. It was a simplification when the market was early
- nightski 5y ago
  Steam lets developers sell keys without the tax using their own systems. In addition to this you are allowed to list your games on other storefronts for PC.
  - lxgr 5y ago
    Do you know if there is any revenue sharing happening in the background in that model?
endgame 5y ago
> To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Since we are heading to a world with no cash, what's stopping the card companies from doing that after there's no way back? This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that day.
- applecrazy 5y ago
  > This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that day. A big thing discouraging me from using cash is how suspicious people are of you when you pay in cash. I've definitely gotten weird looks from cashiers when doing so, especially when you pay in larger bills (like $100).
  - Audiophilip 5y ago
    Why would I care what a cashier _thinks_ of me when I pay for products with common legal tender? It's a completely normal means of transaction in exchange for products and services.
    - vasco 5y ago
      Humans tend to want to have other humans like them and think highly of them.
  - godelski 5y ago
    I've never gotten weird looks when paying with cash except during the beginning of the pandemic. But I think that's a special case where we can have exceptions.
  - hombre_fatal 5y ago
    The pharmacist turned me down from picking up my doctor-prescribed scheduled substance from CVS because I wanted to pay in cash and she thought it seemed suspicious. Never went to CVS again, I assure you, but cash definitely has a stigma in some situations.
judge2020 5y ago
I think you’re mistaken - why would Google have agreed to this if they gave up their cut of the subscription revenue? They’re surely making some money on the backed still, possibly just 3% less than they were (to account for Spotify’s processor fees).
alkonaut 5y ago
Absolutely. I want 100% of the money to go to Spotify and I want a centralized one-click cancel, that looks the same for all subscriptions. That's an unlikely combination. So the viable alternative is a middle ground. A central app store and subscription management takes a cut/adds a tax. I'm ready to pay say 1% or 2% for that service.
- alanchen 5y ago
  I think https://privacy.com https://privacy.com is close to that. You get a virtual credit card number for every single service that you sign up for, and you can simply disable them in a centralized place. It works on the web but it is still a hassle to use on mobile. I imagine Apple can potentially do this using Apple Card, but I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.
- falcolas 5y ago
  I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply as Apple (google, steam, microsoft, sony, etc) does.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply Never ever in all these accusations do people mention The Big Four [1]. It's always Apple to blame. And Spotify. And Deezer. And Pandora. And... Even though music distributors control all f the market, collect all the royalties, and pay artists peanuts. Does Spotify pay artists directly? No, it can't do that. It pays the license holders which are, in 99% of the cases [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation Edit: it's worse now, it's Big Three. They control 88.5% of the market, but by popularity of music that is listened to on streaming platforms, it's likely closer to 100%.
    - 5y ago
taf2 5y ago
Pretty confident in the US since at least 2002 - after aol, sprint and others got in big trouble it’s been super illegal to not allow people to cancel
- NeutronStar 5y ago
verisimi 5y ago
> Imagine a world with no cash. I'm in :)
newuser94303 5y ago
Is there a way to pay for musicians but not the podcasts.
Spooky23 5y ago
> To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? More like a world with only endcaps. The difference between the app stores and retail is that every SKU has a fixed margin. At most stores that sell a variety of product, anything you see right away is a paid placement. The first beer you see, Pepsi in the front of one store, Coke in the other. That’s why you don’t see canned corn on the end cap. The notion that I should have the feels because poor Epic pays a 30% commission to Apple so they can sell my kid a virtual character dance move at 98% margin is absurd. The argument is specious.
- lupire 5y ago
  It may surprise you to learn that not every app is Fortnite.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    It may surprise you that just under 70% of app revenue is games. The myth of the indie developer held down by Apple and Google is a trope thrown out there just like every supermarket brand evokes images of family farms.
binkHN 5y ago
> Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Careful there. Someone might pipe up and say this is what cryptocurrency was designed to resolve.
lamontcg 5y ago
> I would surely prefer as much as possible of my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians If you care about the musicians you should probably be using Tidal and not Spotify.
- distances 5y ago
  Tidal et al. only seem to pay more to artists because they have lower engagement than Spotify. So the same monthly pot is just divided between fewer artists. It's a misleading metric.
rootusrootus 5y ago
> Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? I don't really care for this attempt at analogy. The cut that Apple or Google takes is more similar to the price manufacturers pay for shelf space in a retail store. I'm guessing that in many instances these kinds of charges amount to far more than the 2-3% a card processor takes. And frankly, 2-3% is already ridiculous.
Nursie 5y ago
> my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians Spotify don't give much to musicians compared to other platforms. They are keen on putting hundreds of millions into podcasts though, which is why I left them. Joe Rogan's objectionable behaviour aside - I just don't give a shit about podcasts, so I feel like my sub money would be going to the wrong people.
ehsankia 5y ago
> Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions What you did there is subtle, but you're comparing apples to oranges. "payment card companies" charge 2-3%. It's platforms like Steam, Play store or App store that charge 30%. Those are not comparable. I'm not arguing that 30% is the right number, but the analogy is very flawed. Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic. Let alone the dozens of other things that you get with a few lines of code (cloud saves, free in-game text/voice chat, workshop, marketplace, free download and easy patching, achievements, etc) and without having to host a single server or maintain anything. How much would it cost both in development but also hosting cost to code all of that yourself?
- boogies 5y ago
  > Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic. What % of payments come through payment card companies vs. cash/crypto/checks/etc. ?
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    What does that have to do with what I said? I'm not talking about payment companies at all. 30% is for platforms, not payment companies.
    - boogies 5y ago
      It sounded like you were saying those platforms were justified in taking a 10× higher cut than payment companies because they provide services that developers would make fewer sales without and would have much more difficulty implementing and hosting themselves. But what makes payment companies not platforms? They seem similarly difficult to sell without, similarly difficult to reimplemement and host yourself, and just as valuable as store platforms for the same reasons you gave.
canadianfella 5y ago
brodock 5y ago
If payment processing costs 30%, you are expected to pay that as an end-user in the end. There is no "company will eat the costs". They will find ways to recoup that and reach similar profitability levels. So by choosing the expensive way of paying, you will eventually endup paying more. There is no shortage of ways companies can do that: "oh you want this new content, too bad it's for our premium gold users only", "ohh you want improved audio quality, here is upsell", "ohh, traveling a lot lately? Maybe we will limit the amount of offline content you can keep, but not in the premium diamond plan", etc
lowbloodsugar 5y ago
Lol. You can't play the "I want my money to go to the people that deserve it" card, in the very same sentence as "I want the convenience of using Spotify". Spotify pays artists less than Tidal, Apple and Amazon. And if you're using any of those services, you've already decided that convenience is more important than paying the artists. I use Tidal because it pays artists the most. I also buy music that I listen to a lot on CD or, previously Bandcamp - but Bandcamp just got bought by Epic, so no more purchases from them.
elzbardico 5y ago
Well what made Spotify possible was the giant investments done by apple and google in the modern smartphone. I don't want to pay more for a new phone.

by olau 5y ago

bennysomething 5y ago

What did the eu hit payment card companies with? Only thing I know about is banning vendors from passing on fees to the customer, which harmed us: it prevented the customer from seeing they were being ripped off by credit card companies at the point of sale. (Genuine question here)

altairprime 5y ago

I would trust Spotify but not NYTimes, in this model, so perhaps consider a more hostile example than Spotify as well.

Shank 5y ago

> To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Just so that we're talking on equal terms here, card processors and networks solve a massive amount of problems that existed with cash. Pre-card, many stores setup credit accounts with individuals, had book keeping practices to deal with, and had to chase down credit lines they themselves offered. Even with debit cards, card networks facilitate the ability to automatically move money between parties and give customers the ability to dispute/chargeback fraudulent transactions easily. If you physically hand a merchant cash, you can't claw that back without a legal process, whereas you're afforded protections by the card network. But the 30% cut is completely different from card processors. Of the 30% to Google Play or to Apple, a small fraction (2.9%ish) is actually the card overhead. The rest is split between pure profit, infrastructure, and whatever else gets tacked on. Cards definitely offer important things to facilitate transactions that are objectively better than a pure cash world for most people. But it's important to call out crazy cash grabs like 30%, which is unheard of even in the payment network world.

bmhin 5y ago
Choice is the real thing though more than actual value add. I feel like I see it less now, but recall seeing how vendors would only accept certain cards and not others (frequently, not American Express) which was as far as I know stemming mostly from higher fees they didn't want to pay. Similarly, places would not accept credit cards at all if they had razor margins and didn't want to eat the fee. I still know of a few places like that, often with an ATM near by so the customer can pay a fee if they are caught unaware. That was the thing though, a business could decline to accept particular cards or cards at all and still perform transactions. That "opportunity" has generally not extended to the app store world in a practical way. If you want to play, they had their cut and customers and vendors didn't have a whole lot of say in what was reasonable. There is no simple default transaction (like cash) that they were trying to out compete.
- lupire 5y ago
  Cash-only businesses are dodging taxes not money handling fees.
Sesse__ 5y ago
Even your 2.9% number is probably too high. Perhaps for AmEx or in super-high-risk situations you need to pay that kind of fees, but for regular MC/VISA in developed countries, even a medium-sized business can get below 1%. Large companies, like Apple, can almost certainly get it lower than that. Source: Involved in multiple such deals over the years.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It is 2% to 3% in the US due to the copious rewards programs which result in minimum 2% cash back for credit card users.
  - Sesse__ 5y ago
    But those are paid for by your bank (by charging high interest rates on the percentage of people who don't pay right away), not by MC/VISA.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

I don't think Spotify is the best example here, since I'm not particularly convinced that more cash going to them would end up in the hands of musicians. But certainly, if I subscribe to The Economist I want as much of my money as possible to go to the journalists who actually write the content.

Erwin 5y ago
Spotify is public and you can see most of their numbers -- the Cost of Revenue for 2021 was 7 billion EUR on 9.6 in revenue. The cost is said to be mostly the royalties though it would include paying the many millions to some podcasters. The ad-supported users outnumbers premium users (236 million to 180 million) but bring in only 1/6th the revenue. So that's a factor depressing the payout per stream. https://investors.spotify.com/financials/press-release-details/2022/Spotify-Technology-S.A.-Announces-Financial-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-2021/default.aspx https://investors.spotify.com/financials/press-release-detai...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- falcolas 5y ago
  Or phrased slightly differently, Spotify takes 30% of revenue generated by selling access to artists' songs.
  - dale_glass 5y ago
    Seems pretty fair, since if it was easy for an artist to undercut Spotify, they'd be doing it.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Just like the application developers on Google Play, Apple's app store, and Steam, eh?

nerdjon 5y ago

Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making the situation worse for consumers. However to be clear, that percent is in the same area that game consoles and I believe Steam (someone correct me?) charge. And we accept that. When the 30% rule for the App Store came down, our smart phones were basically the same as a game console. Most people did not expect these devices to become the central part of all of our lives. At least not in this way. Now that it has, than sure the percent needs to be lowered and I am not arguing that (I said in another comment the 30% is worth it for me personally but doesn't mean I am ok with it).

rusk 5y ago
> let's focus on lowering that percent A noble position but it seems to have been going other way unfortunately. Not sure how you would do that … further regulation or introducing artificial competition in the market. I think the most pro-business approach is to quash the monopoly and open up the market.
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  Going the other way? The fee started at 30% and has only gone down from there (ex. 15% for subs active > 1 yr). I believe the fees will fragment further and give developers the option of paying less but receiving less too. For example: You can pay 5% less but you will only show up in app store search results. Or something to this effect. We will never get blanket 30% take rates again. It was a simplification when the market was early
nightski 5y ago
Steam lets developers sell keys without the tax using their own systems. In addition to this you are allowed to list your games on other storefronts for PC.
- lxgr 5y ago
  Do you know if there is any revenue sharing happening in the background in that model?

endgame 5y ago

> To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Since we are heading to a world with no cash, what's stopping the card companies from doing that after there's no way back? This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that day.

applecrazy 5y ago
> This is why I use cash as much as possible - to delay that day. A big thing discouraging me from using cash is how suspicious people are of you when you pay in cash. I've definitely gotten weird looks from cashiers when doing so, especially when you pay in larger bills (like $100).
- Audiophilip 5y ago
  Why would I care what a cashier _thinks_ of me when I pay for products with common legal tender? It's a completely normal means of transaction in exchange for products and services.
  - vasco 5y ago
    Humans tend to want to have other humans like them and think highly of them.
- godelski 5y ago
  I've never gotten weird looks when paying with cash except during the beginning of the pandemic. But I think that's a special case where we can have exceptions.
- hombre_fatal 5y ago
  The pharmacist turned me down from picking up my doctor-prescribed scheduled substance from CVS because I wanted to pay in cash and she thought it seemed suspicious. Never went to CVS again, I assure you, but cash definitely has a stigma in some situations.

judge2020 5y ago

I think you’re mistaken - why would Google have agreed to this if they gave up their cut of the subscription revenue? They’re surely making some money on the backed still, possibly just 3% less than they were (to account for Spotify’s processor fees).

alkonaut 5y ago

Absolutely. I want 100% of the money to go to Spotify and I want a centralized one-click cancel, that looks the same for all subscriptions. That's an unlikely combination. So the viable alternative is a middle ground. A central app store and subscription management takes a cut/adds a tax. I'm ready to pay say 1% or 2% for that service.

alanchen 5y ago
I think https://privacy.com https://privacy.com is close to that. You get a virtual credit card number for every single service that you sign up for, and you can simply disable them in a centralized place. It works on the web but it is still a hassle to use on mobile. I imagine Apple can potentially do this using Apple Card, but I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.
falcolas 5y ago
I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply as Apple (google, steam, microsoft, sony, etc) does.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply Never ever in all these accusations do people mention The Big Four [1]. It's always Apple to blame. And Spotify. And Deezer. And Pandora. And... Even though music distributors control all f the market, collect all the royalties, and pay artists peanuts. Does Spotify pay artists directly? No, it can't do that. It pays the license holders which are, in 99% of the cases [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation Edit: it's worse now, it's Big Three. They control 88.5% of the market, but by popularity of music that is listened to on streaming platforms, it's likely closer to 100%.
  - 5y ago

taf2 5y ago

Pretty confident in the US since at least 2002 - after aol, sprint and others got in big trouble it’s been super illegal to not allow people to cancel

NeutronStar 5y ago

verisimi 5y ago

> Imagine a world with no cash. I'm in :)

newuser94303 5y ago

Is there a way to pay for musicians but not the podcasts.

Spooky23 5y ago

> To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? More like a world with only endcaps. The difference between the app stores and retail is that every SKU has a fixed margin. At most stores that sell a variety of product, anything you see right away is a paid placement. The first beer you see, Pepsi in the front of one store, Coke in the other. That’s why you don’t see canned corn on the end cap. The notion that I should have the feels because poor Epic pays a 30% commission to Apple so they can sell my kid a virtual character dance move at 98% margin is absurd. The argument is specious.

lupire 5y ago
It may surprise you to learn that not every app is Fortnite.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It may surprise you that just under 70% of app revenue is games. The myth of the indie developer held down by Apple and Google is a trope thrown out there just like every supermarket brand evokes images of family farms.

binkHN 5y ago

> Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Careful there. Someone might pipe up and say this is what cryptocurrency was designed to resolve.

lamontcg 5y ago

> I would surely prefer as much as possible of my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians If you care about the musicians you should probably be using Tidal and not Spotify.

distances 5y ago
Tidal et al. only seem to pay more to artists because they have lower engagement than Spotify. So the same monthly pot is just divided between fewer artists. It's a misleading metric.

rootusrootus 5y ago

> Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? I don't really care for this attempt at analogy. The cut that Apple or Google takes is more similar to the price manufacturers pay for shelf space in a retail store. I'm guessing that in many instances these kinds of charges amount to far more than the 2-3% a card processor takes. And frankly, 2-3% is already ridiculous.

Nursie 5y ago

> my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians Spotify don't give much to musicians compared to other platforms. They are keen on putting hundreds of millions into podcasts though, which is why I left them. Joe Rogan's objectionable behaviour aside - I just don't give a shit about podcasts, so I feel like my sub money would be going to the wrong people.

ehsankia 5y ago

> Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions What you did there is subtle, but you're comparing apples to oranges. "payment card companies" charge 2-3%. It's platforms like Steam, Play store or App store that charge 30%. Those are not comparable. I'm not arguing that 30% is the right number, but the analogy is very flawed. Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic. Let alone the dozens of other things that you get with a few lines of code (cloud saves, free in-game text/voice chat, workshop, marketplace, free download and easy patching, achievements, etc) and without having to host a single server or maintain anything. How much would it cost both in development but also hosting cost to code all of that yourself?

boogies 5y ago
> Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic. What % of payments come through payment card companies vs. cash/crypto/checks/etc. ?
- ehsankia 5y ago
  What does that have to do with what I said? I'm not talking about payment companies at all. 30% is for platforms, not payment companies.
  - boogies 5y ago
    It sounded like you were saying those platforms were justified in taking a 10× higher cut than payment companies because they provide services that developers would make fewer sales without and would have much more difficulty implementing and hosting themselves. But what makes payment companies not platforms? They seem similarly difficult to sell without, similarly difficult to reimplemement and host yourself, and just as valuable as store platforms for the same reasons you gave.

canadianfella 5y ago

brodock 5y ago

If payment processing costs 30%, you are expected to pay that as an end-user in the end. There is no "company will eat the costs". They will find ways to recoup that and reach similar profitability levels. So by choosing the expensive way of paying, you will eventually endup paying more. There is no shortage of ways companies can do that: "oh you want this new content, too bad it's for our premium gold users only", "ohh you want improved audio quality, here is upsell", "ohh, traveling a lot lately? Maybe we will limit the amount of offline content you can keep, but not in the premium diamond plan", etc

lowbloodsugar 5y ago

Lol. You can't play the "I want my money to go to the people that deserve it" card, in the very same sentence as "I want the convenience of using Spotify". Spotify pays artists less than Tidal, Apple and Amazon. And if you're using any of those services, you've already decided that convenience is more important than paying the artists. I use Tidal because it pays artists the most. I also buy music that I listen to a lot on CD or, previously Bandcamp - but Bandcamp just got bought by Epic, so no more purchases from them.

elzbardico 5y ago

Well what made Spotify possible was the giant investments done by apple and google in the modern smartphone. I don't want to pay more for a new phone.