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To ask the obvious question — many musicians argue that Spotify has been terrible for artists [0]. Let’s say you grow as big as Spotify. Will you be terrible f

To ask the obvious question — many musicians argue that Spotify has been terrible for artists [0]. Let’s say you grow as big as Spotify. Will you be terrible for devs? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify

gregjw 4y ago
Xbox Game Pass operates a similar model but from a mixture of AAA titles and indies and they're renowned for being a great platform to be on. Obviously, Microsoft are probably loss-leading with Game Pass, but still, not every all-you-cant-eat subscription service is bad to their vendors.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  AFAIK game pass is losing money at the moment and is still in the "pay a premium to get content on the platform" phase. They haven't switched to the Spotify "screw the content providers" phase yet.
  - setgree 4y ago
    And they may never get there because Microsoft can float loss leaders indefinitely if they can justify them in strategic terms.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    Spotify was in that phase since it's creation. Contrast paying amounts between Apple Music and Spotify to see that in numbers. Game Pass has the huge advantage of being about games, it can retain a much lower game library number (~100 titles) but still keep people subscribed by rotating the games around first party titles. This means that until the landscape changes (Nvidia's attempt being squandered nullifies a lot of potential here of a landscape changing), being an invited third party means good income, due to the revenue being split ~100 ways rather than ~11 million ways. Of course the above is a simplification, as each game gets its own separate contract agreement and the payout isn't based on how many times a game is played.
Pedro_Magna 4y ago
Nope! We pay devs by distributing player subscriptions at the individual level, not the aggregate. I.e. what others play on a given month doesn't affect how we'll distribute your subscription in that month. This way, devs are meritocratically paid according to how many people are playing their game, and it doesn't matter if that is 1 person or a 100,000. We consider adding diminishing returns and other factors to our model to maybe help smaller titles, but there are no solid plans at the moment.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  I predict that will change the minute a hot indie game that would significantly boost your subscriber count says they want some amount up front/guaranteed to be listed on your platform (and the math checks out). Unless you transparently publish your financials, there is no way to be held accountable to this system.
  - Pedro_Magna 4y ago
    We could offer more stuff on top of the distributed subscriptions. But, we're not going to be changing our model without letting developers know. I'm pretty sure we'd be committing some kind of fraud.
    - sharemywin 4y ago
      you could always allow the indie devs to vote on "exceptions" to the model.
- k3liutZu 4y ago
  I wish Spotify (and iTunes) would do this as well for music.
- setgree 4y ago
  I'm not sure how this addresses the fundamental problem, which is that Spotify pays a very low price per stream, so you have to be a huge star to make any money, and Spotify is taking a large part of the proceeds in the meantime. Also there's the secondary problem that Spotify has an incentive to produce easy-to-digest content in house for which it pays lower (or no) royalties [0]. For you, the equivalent of problem #2 is your incentive to make deliberately addictive content of no artistic merit. Easy to say you won't do this, a lot harder when your backers demand growth and your analytics team demonstrates that Angry Birds For Tots will maximize engagement. Don't get me wrong, I think you have a cool idea and I hope it works, but everything you say about your commitment to devs is cheap talk, and in my experience, such ideals tend to get discarded during, e.g., difficult funding rounds. good luck! [0] https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-much https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-...

gregjw 4y ago

Xbox Game Pass operates a similar model but from a mixture of AAA titles and indies and they're renowned for being a great platform to be on. Obviously, Microsoft are probably loss-leading with Game Pass, but still, not every all-you-cant-eat subscription service is bad to their vendors.

candiddevmike 4y ago
AFAIK game pass is losing money at the moment and is still in the "pay a premium to get content on the platform" phase. They haven't switched to the Spotify "screw the content providers" phase yet.
- setgree 4y ago
  And they may never get there because Microsoft can float loss leaders indefinitely if they can justify them in strategic terms.
- waboremo 4y ago
  Spotify was in that phase since it's creation. Contrast paying amounts between Apple Music and Spotify to see that in numbers. Game Pass has the huge advantage of being about games, it can retain a much lower game library number (~100 titles) but still keep people subscribed by rotating the games around first party titles. This means that until the landscape changes (Nvidia's attempt being squandered nullifies a lot of potential here of a landscape changing), being an invited third party means good income, due to the revenue being split ~100 ways rather than ~11 million ways. Of course the above is a simplification, as each game gets its own separate contract agreement and the payout isn't based on how many times a game is played.

Pedro_Magna 4y ago

Nope! We pay devs by distributing player subscriptions at the individual level, not the aggregate. I.e. what others play on a given month doesn't affect how we'll distribute your subscription in that month. This way, devs are meritocratically paid according to how many people are playing their game, and it doesn't matter if that is 1 person or a 100,000. We consider adding diminishing returns and other factors to our model to maybe help smaller titles, but there are no solid plans at the moment.

candiddevmike 4y ago
I predict that will change the minute a hot indie game that would significantly boost your subscriber count says they want some amount up front/guaranteed to be listed on your platform (and the math checks out). Unless you transparently publish your financials, there is no way to be held accountable to this system.
- Pedro_Magna 4y ago
  We could offer more stuff on top of the distributed subscriptions. But, we're not going to be changing our model without letting developers know. I'm pretty sure we'd be committing some kind of fraud.
  - sharemywin 4y ago
    you could always allow the indie devs to vote on "exceptions" to the model.
k3liutZu 4y ago
I wish Spotify (and iTunes) would do this as well for music.
setgree 4y ago
I'm not sure how this addresses the fundamental problem, which is that Spotify pays a very low price per stream, so you have to be a huge star to make any money, and Spotify is taking a large part of the proceeds in the meantime. Also there's the secondary problem that Spotify has an incentive to produce easy-to-digest content in house for which it pays lower (or no) royalties [0]. For you, the equivalent of problem #2 is your incentive to make deliberately addictive content of no artistic merit. Easy to say you won't do this, a lot harder when your backers demand growth and your analytics team demonstrates that Angry Birds For Tots will maximize engagement. Don't get me wrong, I think you have a cool idea and I hope it works, but everything you say about your commitment to devs is cheap talk, and in my experience, such ideals tend to get discarded during, e.g., difficult funding rounds. good luck! [0] https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-much https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-...