22 ms·

A secret deal let Spotify bypass Android's app store fees

335 points by mertbio 3y ago

Justin_K 3y ago
Nothing says Anti-Trust like secret deals that violate their published TOS.
- vGPU 3y ago
  This will hurt Google and may destroy Spotify. If they’re the only ones that get the 0/4% deal and the other services like tidal are paying full price that’s a blatant anti-competitive agreement.
  - htrp 3y ago
    >This will hurt Google and may destroy Spotify. How does this destroy Spotify?
    - oliwarner 3y ago
      They could be fined and then forced to pay full whack. But I'm not sure they meet the threshold for anti-competative practice. You'd need to show some sort of paid exclusivity (eg a bribe so only Spotify could get a better rate). 30% for market access is a bigger net evil that anything Spotify might be doing IMO.
    - vGPU 3y ago
      They run very slim profit margins, regulators could fine them more than they could afford to pay.
      - pests 3y ago
        Why would Spotify be fined here? What wrong doing?
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        They run negative profit margins: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...
  - notyourwork 3y ago
    Agreed and this news comes just 6 months after Spotify hiked their subscription price. Which at the time was well received by the stock market. How profitable would Spotify be if they were paying full price?
    - Mindwipe 3y ago
      > How profitable would Spotify be if they were paying full price? They're not profitable now so very not.
      - notyourwork 3y ago
        Last quarter they posted 1.94% profit margin.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Question: how does Spotify pay so well when they have profit margins lower than a restaurant?
        twosdai 3y ago
        Scale. A restaurant can only serve 100's or maybe 1000's of guests in a single day. Spotify has Millions of subscriptions. 2% at scale is significant. Here is their recent Q3 earnings report: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-10-24/spotify-reports-third-quarter-2023-earnings/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-10-24/spotify-reports-thir... Their revenue was 3.4 Billion Euros at 2% they can take away 68 Million dollars. Which is more than enough for the business to be viable.
        callalex 3y ago
        For the same reason you buy nicer toilet paper for your home than the stuff you find at a truck stop: it’s not a significant portion of their expenses.
    - carstenhag 3y ago
      Netflix went a different route. After being offered to only pay a 10% cut, they made calculations and decided to not offer in-app-subscriptions at all. This article has details: https://www.theverge.com/23954852/google-netflix-app-store-deal-play-10-percent-revshare https://www.theverge.com/23954852/google-netflix-app-store-d...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Don’t tell anyone. But Netflix doesn’t pay retail for AWS and Spotify doesn’t pay retail for GCP. Heck Epic has special deals with console makers
  - blackoil 3y ago
    AWS and GCP aren't monopoly/duopoly. Console may be interesting but seems no one cares if that market.
gmerc 3y ago
That’s what nailed FB into the FTC settlement - platform discrimination. A lot of people will have a lot of work with this one very soon.
kotaKat 3y ago
Damn, that's not playing very fair, now, is it, Ek?
_lvbh 3y ago
I’m betting some people will argue that “It’s their store, they can do what they want with it”
- apwell23 3y ago
  yes same as apple app store.
- qwertox 3y ago
  I was about to write that maybe a discount could be OK, due to some kind of high volume income generation for Google, but then again, wouldn't that mean that they should have to create some kind of discount tiers which apply to all depending on a certain criteria?
- itslennysfault 3y ago
  It is pretty hard to argue against that. For me, I think the open question is can they deny 3rd party app stores or side-loading apps. Then, we get into the "Microsoft installing IE by default" fight. How can a 3rd party app store compete? (I don't have an answer)
  - euazOn 3y ago
    > It is pretty hard to argue against that. The European Union's Digital Markets Act finds that pretty easy.
    - everforward 3y ago
      The DMA is about whether they can be the only store, not whether they can do whatever they want with their store. The DMA will let them charge 100% fees if they want, it just won't allow them to be the only store on the platform to force people to pay that fee.
  - packetlost 3y ago
    Because they are over 1/2 of a duopoly? It's pretty darn easy to argue against it and it has been done successfully.
aftbit 3y ago
So much for net neutrality. We were arguing about the wrong thing all along. At least on Android, normal users can sideload your app, so you can bypass all of these store policies if you are big enough. For example, see Termux, PornHub, or Fortnite. On Apple, you're just out of luck if you don't want to pay 30% or comply with every technical policy. Want to try out media over QUIC? Too bad, you need to use HLS and only HLS for streaming, or your app will be removed.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gkoberger 3y ago
  I don’t think it makes net neutrality the wrong fight. Capitalism can afford to fight on many fronts. That being said, rumor has it Apple is going to soon allow sideloading of apps in some places due to regulatory pressure. (I assume they’re hoping to find a balance where it’s too hard for the average person, but possible enough to avoid legal woes) https://www.androidauthority.com/iphone-sideloading-misunderstanding-3387235/ https://www.androidauthority.com/iphone-sideloading-misunder...
  - freedomben 3y ago
    You think they'll allow it in the US? Europe they don't seem to have a choice, but US at least for now...
    - gkoberger 3y ago
      Not right away, but it's clearly trending that direction and hopefully the US pushes for it as well.
      - freedomben 3y ago
        This would be great for consumers and app makers, but do you think this will ultimately help Apple? (honest question)
  - 3y ago
mrweasel 3y ago
Why on earth would Google even suggest such a deal? To get the 4% on the payments made via the Play Store? That seems rather desperate. 4% isn't an amazing deal on payments from Spotifys point of view, and 10% for Netflix seems like in insult for processing payments. Normal payment processors are closer to 1.5 - 2%.
- kleton 3y ago
  Shopify signed a very large and long term GCP contract a while back.
- willsmith72 3y ago
  the closed gardens of mobile app stores don't have the regular healthy market competition that normal payment processors do. it's one of my least favourite parts of building for mobile
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    I'm just questioning the point in offering a "deal" like this to Spotify, when Spotify can just handle their own payments for less. Is those 4% really worth that much to Google that it's outways the risk of others being made aware of how little payments actually cost Google to run. Now that Netflix knows that Spotify pay 4%, why would they ever agree to anything more?
    - freedomben 3y ago
      This clearly wasn't intended to get out, and predicting that Epic would file suit and then it would leak out of the court would be a hard reason to argue against trying to negotiate business in the moment.
    - agloe_dreams 3y ago
      I don't think you understand that over at Apple, not paying the 30% is not being on iPhone..period. Not being on the play store is not being on Android for 90% of customers. This is why both are facing major antitrust cases.
swingingFlyFish 3y ago
When AT&T got fragmented we got C. I think It's time Apple, Google, Amazon and maybe even Microsoft got restructured.
- aalimov_ 3y ago
  I think we’ve got enough programming languages..
  - HaZeust 3y ago
    We didn't, back then. C changed the game for low-level machine coding - what other games would be changed by fragmenting FAANG?
    - stuff4ben 3y ago
      I'd like to see something around operating systems (mobile and desktop) and personal assistants/AI. But that may be too high-level.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        Honestly, just getting back to the point that you can write your own app and easily install it on your friends' phones would change the world. The amount of interesting stuff we lose to the inability of hobbyists to tinker with their technology is incalculable.
        HaZeust 3y ago
        Write a mobile responsive website in HTML/CSS/JS and port it to hybrid mobile with Capacitor.JS?
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        That doesn't allow you to do a large number of things that ordinary apps can do -- or that "approved" apps also can't do, e.g. by modifying parts of the system in advantageous ways. You can also obviously just buy a PC and run whatever you want, but the entire point is the barrier to entry. If it's easy, more people do it, and that's good. If they have to contend with a convoluted mess, people give up, and you lose whatever they might have created.
whoevercares 3y ago
Spotify use GCP as well, and probably one of the biggest customers. No surprise. Source: https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify
- freedomben 3y ago
  You think this secret deal is "no surprise" just because Spotify uses GCP? That seems a little conspiracy-theory-ish to me. This to me is still quite shocking, especially since those are completely separate departments and such behavior would so clearly scream anti-trust
  - hoffs 3y ago
    It can very much be part of the deal that stand their gcp commitment and play store fees.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Why wouldn't every big company stand up their infra on GCP then? Especially games and things that don't have huge backend requirements, this would be a no-brainer. It would scream anti-trust though, and would surely attract the attention of regulators (which are already circling in the skies)
      - kredd 3y ago
        I would say because Spotify has moat? Wouldn’t even be surprised if it is in top 5 apps in the world “running in the background”. Both Google and Spotify kinda win with this agreement. Plus having “Spotify runs on GCP” is a huge advertisement for other enterprise customers.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        What moat? The music industry is willing to make the same deal to everyone. If Spotify had any type of moat, they would be profitable by now.
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Spotify is very good at negotiating sweetheart deals. I am convinced that they negotiated something similar with Sony, because on the PS4, Spotify is the only app I have found that can play overlay audio while you're playing a game to replace the background music.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  True, but in case of Sony, Spotify replaced "PlayStation Music", a competing service of Sony which simply didn't scale, and the only service able to overlay music over any game
  - tantalor 3y ago
    > the only service able to overlay music over any game Able to? Or allowed to?
    - notnmeyer 3y ago
      those are the same thing in this context. obviously it’s not that spotify is the only company capable of figuring it out. what’s left? sony blessing spotify.
      - manwe150 3y ago
        It could also be there is only enough profit for one, so the game theory equilibrium is zero. So Spotify could be the only player large enough for Sony to profitably encourage. Although that theory doesn’t account for them not giving the option of free music players written by hobbyists who don’t care about profit or labels but only serve indy content
        rickdeckard 3y ago
        PlayStation Music (or actually "Music unlimited" as it was called) was the only music application able/allowed to run in background while a game was running. Other (hobbyist) music players are not allowed, likely because it would make the available resources to a game less predictable, so harder to optimizer for the console... As many others, Sony found later that it's not worth it to operate a own streaming service, and probably made a deal with Spotify where Sony provided the initial application, Spotify provided the service and potentially pays some additional revenue share to Sony. It's a story from a moment in time where every distributor/company thought they could do a better/more profitable music streaming service than Spotify...
deleted 3y ago
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jmyeet 3y ago
This is the real problem with the Apple/Google 30% tax: it's not that the App/Play Store costs 30% to run. It's that they want to give sweetheart deals like this to very large customers. You're paying for that slush fund.
- bad_user 3y ago
  The real problem with the 30% is that it's far too high. It could have been 0%. Why do you care about what deals with Spotify they have? Is this resentment? > You're paying for that slush fund. Google is probably getting the difference from Spotify in some other way. Google/Apple also have a lot of profit with their app stores because 30% is too damn much. If Google wouldn't have a deal with Spotify, you'd still be paying 30%.
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    creating winners and losers while owning a majority chunk of any consumer market segment is considered a monopoly
    - bad_user 3y ago
      Monopolies aren't illegal.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Is this resentment? No, it's unfair market conditions which are illegal in most developed countries. How can small companies expect to compete with the big established ones if those players enjoy deals way way better than what the new players have? It's basically hardcoded inequality creating winners and losers from the start and goes against the free market principles.
    - bad_user 3y ago
      That's not true. Most contracts are negotiable, and this is legal. Of course, this may change in the EU due to the “Digital Markets Act”, but this is new. Bigger companies getting better deals has always been the reality, due to volume discounts. We have a different idea about what the free market is.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
It just remains hilarious to see Google under fire for negotiating secret deals to keep companies on the play store. Apple got this right the first time.
- paxys 3y ago
  There is zero chance that Apple isn't doing the same. All their deals with Google are the prime example of anticompetitve behavior in the industry.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    My point is that Apple doesn't need to do the same, because there's no alternative to the App Store. And that's what's funny. If you don't allow competition in the first place, you don't get bothered for "unfair competition" by antitrust regulators.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > If you don't allow competition in the first place, you don't get bothered for "unfair competition" by antitrust regulators. This seems like an obvious defect in antitrust regulators.
    - lern_too_spel 3y ago
      Whether they need to or not, they do the same. https://nitter.net/TechEmails/status/1444367219509637123 https://nitter.net/TechEmails/status/1444367219509637123
      - amadeuspagel 3y ago
        Interesting. I guess in this case it's trying to prevent Netflix from switching to a web app. But apple is still in a much stronger position because a native app isn't an option.
- deleted 3y ago
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Supersaiyan_IV 3y ago
Not sure companies having deals and negotiations is newsworthy. How about that deal where Qualcomm didn't pay to use ARM patents? At least that one's actually interesting.
- carstenhag 3y ago
  This is newsworthy because Google and Apple are facing lawsuits regarding their forced 30% price cut for years now. Also, imagine you are an indie Android Developer/small company and want to sell an app. Nowadays for the first $1M in revenue it's a 15% cut, above that (and it used to be since the first $) 30%. But hooray, the big company Spotify pays 0% to 4%. And then the Google guy says, quote from the article: "These key investment partnerships allow us to bring more users to Android and Play by continuously improving the experience for all users and create new opportunities for all developers." So yeah indie dev or small company, Google says you should be glad they only take 0-4% from Spotify, that way all Android users have an improved experience! Not only is this shameful from a morale perspective, but also lawsuits & the EU will have even more arguments against Google now. Bonus: In the last paragraph Spotify is also shown as hypocrite - taking advantage of a 0-4% deal with Google, but at the same time joining a "Coalition for App Fairness" to reduce fees.
  - Vilian 3y ago
    >n the last paragraph Spotify is also shown as hypocrite - taking advantage of a 0-4% deal with Google, but at the same time joining a "Coalition for App Fairness" to reduce fees but, what's the problem?, yeah they are paying less, but better they're playing less and still helping everyone than paying less and be against app fairness
kmeisthax 3y ago
At the onset of the Epic lawsuits, I thought the Apple lawsuit would have some merit, because they tie users' hands behind their backs, but that the Google lawsuit was a baseless attempt to fragment the Play Store with Epic microtransaction nonsense. All the things coming out of the Google case have shifted my opinion significantly. Google wasn't actually playing fair while Apple was cheating; they both were cheating. Google was just hiding it under a veneer of "open source" and "open platform". The Apple lawsuit failed primarily because, well, it's not illegal to use a legal monopoly (copyright) in the intended manner. Nor is it illegal to merely be big[0]. Epic's lawsuit against Google may succeed purely on the basis of "well, Google opted in to competing app stores and payment methods, Apple didn't", which is not at all the outcome I wanted or expected. [0] Or at least, it stopped being illegal after the neoliberals rewrote history with the "consumer welfare" argument.
- ddavidreed 3y ago
  > [0] Or at least, it stopped being illegal after the neoliberals rewrote history with the "consumer welfare" argument. What are you referring to? I'm not familiar with what you mean, nor have specific enough keywords to self-discover.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard
MargotBainex 3y ago
[dead]
amelius 3y ago
If you hate government regulation, then wait until you see a market regulated by a company ...
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  ancap freedom sounding more like serfdom for us peasantry
- appplication 3y ago
  Corporate regulation looks a lot like an LLM refusing prompts.
- markwkw 3y ago
  I don't know. Look at hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations, many layered regions and municipalities, meddling politicians; agencies and bureaus involved in US market (or EU market). If you wrote down all the rules of Google app store, including all their sweetheart deals (I'm sure there are many), and accounted for all departments within Google that influence AppStore, it would be massively smaller and way simpler conceptually. The scale of bureaucracy, inconsistency, bad incentives and accumulated cruft is just not comparable.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Try finding justice on a company-owned platform like Android's app store, or YouTube. I see a lot of stories titled "YouTube shut down my account for no reason", and I never see stories titled "The government shut down my business for no reason". At least with the government you are backed by the rule of law. With companies it's always "tough luck, you agreed to the EULA". PS: and never forget that government agencies gave us the Internet, so all those layers and layers of bureaucracy did give us something great and it isn't all bad even if you want to see it that way.
  - realusername 3y ago
    Except that in the appstore and playstore case, those rules do not matter and they are not bound to it, they can decide to cut you off from the mobile market at any point for no reason.
meltyness 3y ago
I guess if I were a shareholder I'd be pleased since they seamlessly filled the gap left by GPMAA, spawned a lower maintenance subproduct in YTM, and cashed in on the collusion, but as someone screwed over by a product that Google "just gave up on" everything Google makes is like a hamburger full of sand, and I strive to avoid eating it, to this day.
- RhodesianHunter 3y ago
  Sitting here deeply regretting my home full of Google home devices. Sand tastes bad man.
- Reubachi 3y ago
  Can you share your gripes with YTM? I've been using GPM and thus YTM since....a long long time. When GPM died, I was very anti "switch" to YTM. But now I can't even recall the issues in my head that I suspected/feared with the change. In fact, Youtube Premium and YTM are the only subscription I would recommend to friends and family." To remind me of my hatred for google, can you describe what you dislike? I realize there's the whole monopoly and walled garden thing.
  - meltyness 3y ago
    Lots of things, - playlist decayed and dropped songs, YouTube is even worse about this - Play Music had a new releases browser highlighting new album releases by genre, you could "walk" into them in AA, then they bled that off - as it stands "Play" doesnt have music anymore, and so the only discovery is YouTube's recommendations - YouTube's recommendations are somehow difficult to control, overly gamed, repetitive, coarse, and generic -- some of which are contradictory. Google wasn't even able to protect Gboard from exploits like this with their unsated thirst for big data automation dominance - they haven't begun to cooperate with other vendors to operate with assistant, instead picking winners, again - for a span battery was concerning, it's not right now - for a span Google's failed record of protecting user privacy, even now Google+ echo's when the Photos flow Share workflow walks me into privacy violating features - i have qualms about providing an ad personalization business real-time granular data about my mood (though it's unlikely since my tastes are too obscure, anyway) - i have qualms about subjecting myself to the opinions of a business with large enough reach to be an effective political entity and lever of corporate activism against my neighbors in society (particularly for an inferior product) Hope this helps. Edit: also the playback history was pretty bad IIRC, I assume it lumps audio playback with shorts, and shorts can't be organized into playlist despite their efforts. I need music to be a commodity, not a gift/promise.
happytiger 3y ago
Imagine being a competitor and then finding out the company that is crushing you had a secret deal to pay nothing while you struggled every month to pay royalties and were told over and over by the parent company that “it was the best they could do.” Imagine not being able to figure out how they were so successful while you are struggling to turn profit and make payroll. These kinds of walled garden ecosystems seem to be very bad for creating healthy competition, and this news is just adds to the *massive* mountain of evidence of shady behavior by every company that controls one.
- hedgehog 3y ago
  That assumes Google would bother picking up the phone to say anything at all.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Touché and a deeply important point. There really is no “account manager” for the vast majority of play publishers, is there?
    - hedgehog 3y ago
      I'm sure the people doing devrel over there do their best but have to work under a communications policy that prohibits discussing things like negotiable royalties specifically to avoid situations like the current litigation.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  I mean, that's public cloud in a nutshell too. And before that enterprise software / database vendor. Scale has always conferred substantial pricing advantages. The difference nowadays is that more of a company's business is covered by SaaS, and so more is subject to these taxes. If 15% of your business had wildly variable scale costs vs your competitor... okay. But if 50% does... as you say, hard to compete even with a better product.
- jannes 3y ago
  It's already kind of unfair that these services don't pay fees: - YouTube Music doesn't pay fees on the Google Play Store - Apple Music doesn't pay fees on the Apple App Store
dehrmann 3y ago
Spotify's problem is it has to pay out ~80% of revenue to rightsholders, so Apple's 15% take doesn't leave you with a viable business. For a time, Spotify handled this by charging more for subscriptions from the App Store. I'm guessing Google wanted to get a big name off what would become the Epic suit. They knew Spotify pays ~2% when processing credit card fees, there's a higher conversion rate with in-app payments, but Spotify has a hard fee limit because of rightsholder payouts, so they found a deal that makes everyone happy. Oh, and GCP. The marginal cost for Fortnite is lower, so Google kept squeezing. It's standard price discrimination. The problem for Google is it also controls the marketplace.
- thetrb 3y ago
  Wouldn't they be able to say that the actual revenue is just the 85% they get after Apple's take?
  - hellisothers 3y ago
    No because Apple gets 15% of the IAP price right off the top, Spotify doesn’t cut them a check after the fact with an explanation about rights holders etc.
- josefresco 3y ago
  > Spotify's problem is it has to pay out ~80% of revenue to rightsholders, so Apple's 15% take doesn't leave you with a viable business. It's the 80% of revenue to rightsholders that makes it a non-viable business.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    20% of a very large number is still a large number. There are lots of very profitable businesses that have a ~1% profit margin.
    - xboxnolifes 3y ago
      80% of a very large number is an even larger number.
jameson 3y ago
* Price discrimination is not illegal * Google has been claiming they aren't monopoly because Apple exists * Clearly knowing such secret deal pisses off other customers and yet there are no alternative market for the Android platform It's a very unfair(?) place to be for an app devs to pay the % tax when Google spends one-time fee for reviewing the app + other I/O costs
- lrvick 3y ago
  There is no alternative market on Apple. On Android there is F-Droid. Your app has to be open source to be on it though which most companies would never concede to as it would expose how much anti-user tracking they do.
  - cherryteastain 3y ago
    Also afaik F-Droid insist on building apks directly from source, so non FOSS apps basically can never use it even if they are ok with showing the tracking they do.
    - crtasm 3y ago
      They can, but they'd need to run their own repository. F-Droid makes it easy to add other repos. https://f-droid.org/tutorials/create-repo/ https://f-droid.org/tutorials/create-repo/ https://f-droid.org/tutorials/add-repo/ https://f-droid.org/tutorials/add-repo/
    - Moldoteck 3y ago
      even if this was true, you can make the app fully oss but most of the main logic would be handled by the server
      - askiiart 3y ago
        Why are we even discussing F-Droid here? The topic at hand is whether Google has a monopoly on the Android app market, not whether anyone can put their app on F-Droid, and there are plenty of alternative app stores besides F-Droid.
perfectstorm 3y ago
this should not be surprising. Apple has negotiated their fees with Amazon which was [leaked](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/30/apple-halved-app-store-fee-amazon-prime-video/#:~:text=According%20to%20email%20correspondence%20between,signed%2Dup%20through%20the%20app https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/30/apple-halved-app-store-....) a while back. this was before they changed the rules about devs earning less than 1million pay only 15%. i'm sure major companies like Spotify get nicer deals while indie devs and small shops pay up 30%.
- thedaly 3y ago
  For those who may not be aware, this is only for Prime Video and Music. Marketplaces for physical goods are not subject to app store fees.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    This is not true. You can buy digital movies from Prime Video within the app.
groestl 3y ago
I find it a bit shocking that there are people who think everyone paid the same fees.
- verdagon 3y ago
  Why's that?
  - groestl 3y ago
    Because that is just not how negotiations with (or between) big companies work. There are all kinds of customizations to standard contracts for them. From tweaks to liability, to changes in responsibilities, guarantees, insurances, etc etc. And of course fees. You have weight, you'll get results.
dgudkov 3y ago
So, small Android developers pay all the Google t̶a̶x̶e̶s̶ fees, but big Spotify doesn't.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Correct, just like National Tax and Maryland handing out Chromebooks. Someone has to pay for them, it might as well be us.
- FalconSensei 3y ago
  Makes a lot of sense, especially since spotify decided its going to pay big artists, but not small ones :/
rchaud 3y ago
Spotify and many other services (Netflix, Youtube) began on the web. There's no reason to lock it behind an app store on mobile other than "if we don't do it, Tidal/Deezer/Apple will".
- lxgr 3y ago
  > Spotify and many other services (Netflix, Youtube) began on the web. Spotify didn't have a web player available in the first few years of its existence. > There's no reason to lock it behind an app store on mobile other than "if we don't do it, Tidal/Deezer/Apple will". A webapp-only music streaming service sounds like a nightmare on a smartphone, considering offline playback, integration with the OSes native playback controls, wearable support etc.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Progressive Web Apps have access to persistent storage. I'd be curious to know how much of Spotify listening happens offline; my guess is that it's very little. Either way, once sideloading is allowed on iOS I expect companies to aggressively renegotiate app store fees.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      To gigabytes worth of persistent storage? Last time I looked into it, that was not the case. > I'd be curious to know how much of Spotify listening happens offline; my guess is that it's very little. Then you haven't lived in a country with bad cell coverage, primarily metered/limited data plans, or both.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Have you tried making a mobile music player as a web page? Does it work in the background, does it remain playing when the phone is locked?
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Background audio works in PWAs; see this project for an example: https://github.com/minht11/local-music-pwa/ https://github.com/minht11/local-music-pwa/
iteratethis 3y ago
A percentage-based fee on services like this is criminal. Spotify's value, and the actual stuff people pay for, is music streaming from Spotify towards consumers. Apple nor the app store plays any part in this. Apple faces exactly zero costs to enable the actual streaming of value itself, yet just grabs 30% of it. A flat fee to cover the cost of running an app store? Fine, and fair. Robbing businesses of enormous segments of their revenue: criminal.
- sneak 3y ago
  If they can charge a flat fee, they can censor arbitrarily, like Tumblr, or Fortnite. There should not be any organization that gets to overrule your own wishes about what software you wish to install on your phone. That’s turnkey tyranny because all it takes then is a law (or EO) that compels Apple to censor secure encrypted messaging apps. They already strongarmed them into backdooring iMessage so that it’s not e2ee and Apple and the FBI can easily read all iMessages due to key escrow in (the non-e2ee) iCloud Backup.
  - noitpmeder 3y ago
    I agree in principle but also think apple should be able to remain in control of their own store. However, they should be forced to let others provide alternative stores.
- eek2121 3y ago
  Ooh, sorry, but I have to chime in on this. Percentage based pricing is the norm for any transaction for any amount. 30-50% is typically the retailers take. This also applies to claimed "low margin" PC hardware, games, etc. Manufacturing/distribution (including principles like LEAN, etc.) is something I could honestly write a book about...a book that would sell poorly. However, I've seen the invoices, have been good friends with the right people, etc. At the end of the day, a manufacturer targets 3x costs to account for distributor + retailer. Depending on size, the retailer will buy from a distributor (in most cases) or a manufacturer. Distributors in terms of the above actually DO have super slim margins because they are simply middle-man. They only exist to ship the product to smaller companies.

335 points by mertbio 3y ago

Justin_K 3y ago

Nothing says Anti-Trust like secret deals that violate their published TOS.

vGPU 3y ago
This will hurt Google and may destroy Spotify. If they’re the only ones that get the 0/4% deal and the other services like tidal are paying full price that’s a blatant anti-competitive agreement.
- htrp 3y ago
  >This will hurt Google and may destroy Spotify. How does this destroy Spotify?
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    They could be fined and then forced to pay full whack. But I'm not sure they meet the threshold for anti-competative practice. You'd need to show some sort of paid exclusivity (eg a bribe so only Spotify could get a better rate). 30% for market access is a bigger net evil that anything Spotify might be doing IMO.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    They run very slim profit margins, regulators could fine them more than they could afford to pay.
    - pests 3y ago
      Why would Spotify be fined here? What wrong doing?
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      They run negative profit margins: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...
- notyourwork 3y ago
  Agreed and this news comes just 6 months after Spotify hiked their subscription price. Which at the time was well received by the stock market. How profitable would Spotify be if they were paying full price?
  - Mindwipe 3y ago
    > How profitable would Spotify be if they were paying full price? They're not profitable now so very not.
    - notyourwork 3y ago
      Last quarter they posted 1.94% profit margin.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Question: how does Spotify pay so well when they have profit margins lower than a restaurant?
        twosdai 3y ago
        Scale. A restaurant can only serve 100's or maybe 1000's of guests in a single day. Spotify has Millions of subscriptions. 2% at scale is significant. Here is their recent Q3 earnings report: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-10-24/spotify-reports-third-quarter-2023-earnings/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-10-24/spotify-reports-thir... Their revenue was 3.4 Billion Euros at 2% they can take away 68 Million dollars. Which is more than enough for the business to be viable.
        callalex 3y ago
        For the same reason you buy nicer toilet paper for your home than the stuff you find at a truck stop: it’s not a significant portion of their expenses.
  - carstenhag 3y ago
    Netflix went a different route. After being offered to only pay a 10% cut, they made calculations and decided to not offer in-app-subscriptions at all. This article has details: https://www.theverge.com/23954852/google-netflix-app-store-deal-play-10-percent-revshare https://www.theverge.com/23954852/google-netflix-app-store-d...
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scarface_74 3y ago
Don’t tell anyone. But Netflix doesn’t pay retail for AWS and Spotify doesn’t pay retail for GCP. Heck Epic has special deals with console makers
- blackoil 3y ago
  AWS and GCP aren't monopoly/duopoly. Console may be interesting but seems no one cares if that market.

gmerc 3y ago

That’s what nailed FB into the FTC settlement - platform discrimination. A lot of people will have a lot of work with this one very soon.

kotaKat 3y ago

Damn, that's not playing very fair, now, is it, Ek?

_lvbh 3y ago

I’m betting some people will argue that “It’s their store, they can do what they want with it”

apwell23 3y ago
yes same as apple app store.
qwertox 3y ago
I was about to write that maybe a discount could be OK, due to some kind of high volume income generation for Google, but then again, wouldn't that mean that they should have to create some kind of discount tiers which apply to all depending on a certain criteria?
itslennysfault 3y ago
It is pretty hard to argue against that. For me, I think the open question is can they deny 3rd party app stores or side-loading apps. Then, we get into the "Microsoft installing IE by default" fight. How can a 3rd party app store compete? (I don't have an answer)
- euazOn 3y ago
  > It is pretty hard to argue against that. The European Union's Digital Markets Act finds that pretty easy.
  - everforward 3y ago
    The DMA is about whether they can be the only store, not whether they can do whatever they want with their store. The DMA will let them charge 100% fees if they want, it just won't allow them to be the only store on the platform to force people to pay that fee.
- packetlost 3y ago
  Because they are over 1/2 of a duopoly? It's pretty darn easy to argue against it and it has been done successfully.

aftbit 3y ago

So much for net neutrality. We were arguing about the wrong thing all along. At least on Android, normal users can sideload your app, so you can bypass all of these store policies if you are big enough. For example, see Termux, PornHub, or Fortnite. On Apple, you're just out of luck if you don't want to pay 30% or comply with every technical policy. Want to try out media over QUIC? Too bad, you need to use HLS and only HLS for streaming, or your app will be removed.

deleted 3y ago
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gkoberger 3y ago
I don’t think it makes net neutrality the wrong fight. Capitalism can afford to fight on many fronts. That being said, rumor has it Apple is going to soon allow sideloading of apps in some places due to regulatory pressure. (I assume they’re hoping to find a balance where it’s too hard for the average person, but possible enough to avoid legal woes) https://www.androidauthority.com/iphone-sideloading-misunderstanding-3387235/ https://www.androidauthority.com/iphone-sideloading-misunder...
- freedomben 3y ago
  You think they'll allow it in the US? Europe they don't seem to have a choice, but US at least for now...
  - gkoberger 3y ago
    Not right away, but it's clearly trending that direction and hopefully the US pushes for it as well.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      This would be great for consumers and app makers, but do you think this will ultimately help Apple? (honest question)
- 3y ago

mrweasel 3y ago

Why on earth would Google even suggest such a deal? To get the 4% on the payments made via the Play Store? That seems rather desperate. 4% isn't an amazing deal on payments from Spotifys point of view, and 10% for Netflix seems like in insult for processing payments. Normal payment processors are closer to 1.5 - 2%.

kleton 3y ago
Shopify signed a very large and long term GCP contract a while back.
willsmith72 3y ago
the closed gardens of mobile app stores don't have the regular healthy market competition that normal payment processors do. it's one of my least favourite parts of building for mobile
- mrweasel 3y ago
  I'm just questioning the point in offering a "deal" like this to Spotify, when Spotify can just handle their own payments for less. Is those 4% really worth that much to Google that it's outways the risk of others being made aware of how little payments actually cost Google to run. Now that Netflix knows that Spotify pay 4%, why would they ever agree to anything more?
  - freedomben 3y ago
    This clearly wasn't intended to get out, and predicting that Epic would file suit and then it would leak out of the court would be a hard reason to argue against trying to negotiate business in the moment.
  - agloe_dreams 3y ago
    I don't think you understand that over at Apple, not paying the 30% is not being on iPhone..period. Not being on the play store is not being on Android for 90% of customers. This is why both are facing major antitrust cases.

swingingFlyFish 3y ago

When AT&T got fragmented we got C. I think It's time Apple, Google, Amazon and maybe even Microsoft got restructured.

aalimov_ 3y ago
I think we’ve got enough programming languages..
- HaZeust 3y ago
  We didn't, back then. C changed the game for low-level machine coding - what other games would be changed by fragmenting FAANG?
  - stuff4ben 3y ago
    I'd like to see something around operating systems (mobile and desktop) and personal assistants/AI. But that may be too high-level.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Honestly, just getting back to the point that you can write your own app and easily install it on your friends' phones would change the world. The amount of interesting stuff we lose to the inability of hobbyists to tinker with their technology is incalculable.
      - HaZeust 3y ago
        Write a mobile responsive website in HTML/CSS/JS and port it to hybrid mobile with Capacitor.JS?
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        That doesn't allow you to do a large number of things that ordinary apps can do -- or that "approved" apps also can't do, e.g. by modifying parts of the system in advantageous ways. You can also obviously just buy a PC and run whatever you want, but the entire point is the barrier to entry. If it's easy, more people do it, and that's good. If they have to contend with a convoluted mess, people give up, and you lose whatever they might have created.

whoevercares 3y ago

Spotify use GCP as well, and probably one of the biggest customers. No surprise. Source: https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify https://cloud.google.com/customers/spotify

freedomben 3y ago
You think this secret deal is "no surprise" just because Spotify uses GCP? That seems a little conspiracy-theory-ish to me. This to me is still quite shocking, especially since those are completely separate departments and such behavior would so clearly scream anti-trust
- hoffs 3y ago
  It can very much be part of the deal that stand their gcp commitment and play store fees.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Why wouldn't every big company stand up their infra on GCP then? Especially games and things that don't have huge backend requirements, this would be a no-brainer. It would scream anti-trust though, and would surely attract the attention of regulators (which are already circling in the skies)
    - kredd 3y ago
      I would say because Spotify has moat? Wouldn’t even be surprised if it is in top 5 apps in the world “running in the background”. Both Google and Spotify kinda win with this agreement. Plus having “Spotify runs on GCP” is a huge advertisement for other enterprise customers.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        What moat? The music industry is willing to make the same deal to everyone. If Spotify had any type of moat, they would be profitable by now.

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago

Spotify is very good at negotiating sweetheart deals. I am convinced that they negotiated something similar with Sony, because on the PS4, Spotify is the only app I have found that can play overlay audio while you're playing a game to replace the background music.

rickdeckard 3y ago
True, but in case of Sony, Spotify replaced "PlayStation Music", a competing service of Sony which simply didn't scale, and the only service able to overlay music over any game
- tantalor 3y ago
  > the only service able to overlay music over any game Able to? Or allowed to?
  - notnmeyer 3y ago
    those are the same thing in this context. obviously it’s not that spotify is the only company capable of figuring it out. what’s left? sony blessing spotify.
    - manwe150 3y ago
      It could also be there is only enough profit for one, so the game theory equilibrium is zero. So Spotify could be the only player large enough for Sony to profitably encourage. Although that theory doesn’t account for them not giving the option of free music players written by hobbyists who don’t care about profit or labels but only serve indy content
      - rickdeckard 3y ago
        PlayStation Music (or actually "Music unlimited" as it was called) was the only music application able/allowed to run in background while a game was running. Other (hobbyist) music players are not allowed, likely because it would make the available resources to a game less predictable, so harder to optimizer for the console... As many others, Sony found later that it's not worth it to operate a own streaming service, and probably made a deal with Spotify where Sony provided the initial application, Spotify provided the service and potentially pays some additional revenue share to Sony. It's a story from a moment in time where every distributor/company thought they could do a better/more profitable music streaming service than Spotify...

deleted 3y ago

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jmyeet 3y ago

This is the real problem with the Apple/Google 30% tax: it's not that the App/Play Store costs 30% to run. It's that they want to give sweetheart deals like this to very large customers. You're paying for that slush fund.

bad_user 3y ago
The real problem with the 30% is that it's far too high. It could have been 0%. Why do you care about what deals with Spotify they have? Is this resentment? > You're paying for that slush fund. Google is probably getting the difference from Spotify in some other way. Google/Apple also have a lot of profit with their app stores because 30% is too damn much. If Google wouldn't have a deal with Spotify, you'd still be paying 30%.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  creating winners and losers while owning a majority chunk of any consumer market segment is considered a monopoly
  - bad_user 3y ago
    Monopolies aren't illegal.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Is this resentment? No, it's unfair market conditions which are illegal in most developed countries. How can small companies expect to compete with the big established ones if those players enjoy deals way way better than what the new players have? It's basically hardcoded inequality creating winners and losers from the start and goes against the free market principles.
  - bad_user 3y ago
    That's not true. Most contracts are negotiable, and this is legal. Of course, this may change in the EU due to the “Digital Markets Act”, but this is new. Bigger companies getting better deals has always been the reality, due to volume discounts. We have a different idea about what the free market is.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

It just remains hilarious to see Google under fire for negotiating secret deals to keep companies on the play store. Apple got this right the first time.

paxys 3y ago
There is zero chance that Apple isn't doing the same. All their deals with Google are the prime example of anticompetitve behavior in the industry.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  My point is that Apple doesn't need to do the same, because there's no alternative to the App Store. And that's what's funny. If you don't allow competition in the first place, you don't get bothered for "unfair competition" by antitrust regulators.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > If you don't allow competition in the first place, you don't get bothered for "unfair competition" by antitrust regulators. This seems like an obvious defect in antitrust regulators.
  - lern_too_spel 3y ago
    Whether they need to or not, they do the same. https://nitter.net/TechEmails/status/1444367219509637123 https://nitter.net/TechEmails/status/1444367219509637123
    - amadeuspagel 3y ago
      Interesting. I guess in this case it's trying to prevent Netflix from switching to a web app. But apple is still in a much stronger position because a native app isn't an option.
deleted 3y ago
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Supersaiyan_IV 3y ago

Not sure companies having deals and negotiations is newsworthy. How about that deal where Qualcomm didn't pay to use ARM patents? At least that one's actually interesting.

carstenhag 3y ago
This is newsworthy because Google and Apple are facing lawsuits regarding their forced 30% price cut for years now. Also, imagine you are an indie Android Developer/small company and want to sell an app. Nowadays for the first $1M in revenue it's a 15% cut, above that (and it used to be since the first $) 30%. But hooray, the big company Spotify pays 0% to 4%. And then the Google guy says, quote from the article: "These key investment partnerships allow us to bring more users to Android and Play by continuously improving the experience for all users and create new opportunities for all developers." So yeah indie dev or small company, Google says you should be glad they only take 0-4% from Spotify, that way all Android users have an improved experience! Not only is this shameful from a morale perspective, but also lawsuits & the EU will have even more arguments against Google now. Bonus: In the last paragraph Spotify is also shown as hypocrite - taking advantage of a 0-4% deal with Google, but at the same time joining a "Coalition for App Fairness" to reduce fees.
- Vilian 3y ago
  >n the last paragraph Spotify is also shown as hypocrite - taking advantage of a 0-4% deal with Google, but at the same time joining a "Coalition for App Fairness" to reduce fees but, what's the problem?, yeah they are paying less, but better they're playing less and still helping everyone than paying less and be against app fairness

kmeisthax 3y ago

At the onset of the Epic lawsuits, I thought the Apple lawsuit would have some merit, because they tie users' hands behind their backs, but that the Google lawsuit was a baseless attempt to fragment the Play Store with Epic microtransaction nonsense. All the things coming out of the Google case have shifted my opinion significantly. Google wasn't actually playing fair while Apple was cheating; they both were cheating. Google was just hiding it under a veneer of "open source" and "open platform". The Apple lawsuit failed primarily because, well, it's not illegal to use a legal monopoly (copyright) in the intended manner. Nor is it illegal to merely be big[0]. Epic's lawsuit against Google may succeed purely on the basis of "well, Google opted in to competing app stores and payment methods, Apple didn't", which is not at all the outcome I wanted or expected. [0] Or at least, it stopped being illegal after the neoliberals rewrote history with the "consumer welfare" argument.

ddavidreed 3y ago
> [0] Or at least, it stopped being illegal after the neoliberals rewrote history with the "consumer welfare" argument. What are you referring to? I'm not familiar with what you mean, nor have specific enough keywords to self-discover.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard

MargotBainex 3y ago

[dead]

amelius 3y ago

If you hate government regulation, then wait until you see a market regulated by a company ...

wahnfrieden 3y ago
ancap freedom sounding more like serfdom for us peasantry
appplication 3y ago
Corporate regulation looks a lot like an LLM refusing prompts.
markwkw 3y ago
I don't know. Look at hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations, many layered regions and municipalities, meddling politicians; agencies and bureaus involved in US market (or EU market). If you wrote down all the rules of Google app store, including all their sweetheart deals (I'm sure there are many), and accounted for all departments within Google that influence AppStore, it would be massively smaller and way simpler conceptually. The scale of bureaucracy, inconsistency, bad incentives and accumulated cruft is just not comparable.
- amelius 3y ago
  Try finding justice on a company-owned platform like Android's app store, or YouTube. I see a lot of stories titled "YouTube shut down my account for no reason", and I never see stories titled "The government shut down my business for no reason". At least with the government you are backed by the rule of law. With companies it's always "tough luck, you agreed to the EULA". PS: and never forget that government agencies gave us the Internet, so all those layers and layers of bureaucracy did give us something great and it isn't all bad even if you want to see it that way.
- realusername 3y ago
  Except that in the appstore and playstore case, those rules do not matter and they are not bound to it, they can decide to cut you off from the mobile market at any point for no reason.

meltyness 3y ago

I guess if I were a shareholder I'd be pleased since they seamlessly filled the gap left by GPMAA, spawned a lower maintenance subproduct in YTM, and cashed in on the collusion, but as someone screwed over by a product that Google "just gave up on" everything Google makes is like a hamburger full of sand, and I strive to avoid eating it, to this day.

RhodesianHunter 3y ago
Sitting here deeply regretting my home full of Google home devices. Sand tastes bad man.
Reubachi 3y ago
Can you share your gripes with YTM? I've been using GPM and thus YTM since....a long long time. When GPM died, I was very anti "switch" to YTM. But now I can't even recall the issues in my head that I suspected/feared with the change. In fact, Youtube Premium and YTM are the only subscription I would recommend to friends and family." To remind me of my hatred for google, can you describe what you dislike? I realize there's the whole monopoly and walled garden thing.
- meltyness 3y ago
  Lots of things, - playlist decayed and dropped songs, YouTube is even worse about this - Play Music had a new releases browser highlighting new album releases by genre, you could "walk" into them in AA, then they bled that off - as it stands "Play" doesnt have music anymore, and so the only discovery is YouTube's recommendations - YouTube's recommendations are somehow difficult to control, overly gamed, repetitive, coarse, and generic -- some of which are contradictory. Google wasn't even able to protect Gboard from exploits like this with their unsated thirst for big data automation dominance - they haven't begun to cooperate with other vendors to operate with assistant, instead picking winners, again - for a span battery was concerning, it's not right now - for a span Google's failed record of protecting user privacy, even now Google+ echo's when the Photos flow Share workflow walks me into privacy violating features - i have qualms about providing an ad personalization business real-time granular data about my mood (though it's unlikely since my tastes are too obscure, anyway) - i have qualms about subjecting myself to the opinions of a business with large enough reach to be an effective political entity and lever of corporate activism against my neighbors in society (particularly for an inferior product) Hope this helps. Edit: also the playback history was pretty bad IIRC, I assume it lumps audio playback with shorts, and shorts can't be organized into playlist despite their efforts. I need music to be a commodity, not a gift/promise.

happytiger 3y ago

Imagine being a competitor and then finding out the company that is crushing you had a secret deal to pay nothing while you struggled every month to pay royalties and were told over and over by the parent company that “it was the best they could do.” Imagine not being able to figure out how they were so successful while you are struggling to turn profit and make payroll. These kinds of walled garden ecosystems seem to be very bad for creating healthy competition, and this news is just adds to the *massive* mountain of evidence of shady behavior by every company that controls one.

hedgehog 3y ago
That assumes Google would bother picking up the phone to say anything at all.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Touché and a deeply important point. There really is no “account manager” for the vast majority of play publishers, is there?
  - hedgehog 3y ago
    I'm sure the people doing devrel over there do their best but have to work under a communications policy that prohibits discussing things like negotiable royalties specifically to avoid situations like the current litigation.
ethbr1 3y ago
I mean, that's public cloud in a nutshell too. And before that enterprise software / database vendor. Scale has always conferred substantial pricing advantages. The difference nowadays is that more of a company's business is covered by SaaS, and so more is subject to these taxes. If 15% of your business had wildly variable scale costs vs your competitor... okay. But if 50% does... as you say, hard to compete even with a better product.
jannes 3y ago
It's already kind of unfair that these services don't pay fees: - YouTube Music doesn't pay fees on the Google Play Store - Apple Music doesn't pay fees on the Apple App Store

dehrmann 3y ago

Spotify's problem is it has to pay out ~80% of revenue to rightsholders, so Apple's 15% take doesn't leave you with a viable business. For a time, Spotify handled this by charging more for subscriptions from the App Store. I'm guessing Google wanted to get a big name off what would become the Epic suit. They knew Spotify pays ~2% when processing credit card fees, there's a higher conversion rate with in-app payments, but Spotify has a hard fee limit because of rightsholder payouts, so they found a deal that makes everyone happy. Oh, and GCP. The marginal cost for Fortnite is lower, so Google kept squeezing. It's standard price discrimination. The problem for Google is it also controls the marketplace.

thetrb 3y ago
Wouldn't they be able to say that the actual revenue is just the 85% they get after Apple's take?
- hellisothers 3y ago
  No because Apple gets 15% of the IAP price right off the top, Spotify doesn’t cut them a check after the fact with an explanation about rights holders etc.
josefresco 3y ago
> Spotify's problem is it has to pay out ~80% of revenue to rightsholders, so Apple's 15% take doesn't leave you with a viable business. It's the 80% of revenue to rightsholders that makes it a non-viable business.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  20% of a very large number is still a large number. There are lots of very profitable businesses that have a ~1% profit margin.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    80% of a very large number is an even larger number.

jameson 3y ago

* Price discrimination is not illegal * Google has been claiming they aren't monopoly because Apple exists * Clearly knowing such secret deal pisses off other customers and yet there are no alternative market for the Android platform It's a very unfair(?) place to be for an app devs to pay the % tax when Google spends one-time fee for reviewing the app + other I/O costs

lrvick 3y ago
There is no alternative market on Apple. On Android there is F-Droid. Your app has to be open source to be on it though which most companies would never concede to as it would expose how much anti-user tracking they do.
- cherryteastain 3y ago
  Also afaik F-Droid insist on building apks directly from source, so non FOSS apps basically can never use it even if they are ok with showing the tracking they do.
  - crtasm 3y ago
    They can, but they'd need to run their own repository. F-Droid makes it easy to add other repos. https://f-droid.org/tutorials/create-repo/ https://f-droid.org/tutorials/create-repo/ https://f-droid.org/tutorials/add-repo/ https://f-droid.org/tutorials/add-repo/
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    even if this was true, you can make the app fully oss but most of the main logic would be handled by the server
    - askiiart 3y ago
      Why are we even discussing F-Droid here? The topic at hand is whether Google has a monopoly on the Android app market, not whether anyone can put their app on F-Droid, and there are plenty of alternative app stores besides F-Droid.

perfectstorm 3y ago

this should not be surprising. Apple has negotiated their fees with Amazon which was [leaked](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/30/apple-halved-app-store-fee-amazon-prime-video/#:~:text=According%20to%20email%20correspondence%20between,signed%2Dup%20through%20the%20app https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/30/apple-halved-app-store-....) a while back. this was before they changed the rules about devs earning less than 1million pay only 15%. i'm sure major companies like Spotify get nicer deals while indie devs and small shops pay up 30%.

thedaly 3y ago
For those who may not be aware, this is only for Prime Video and Music. Marketplaces for physical goods are not subject to app store fees.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  This is not true. You can buy digital movies from Prime Video within the app.

groestl 3y ago

I find it a bit shocking that there are people who think everyone paid the same fees.

verdagon 3y ago
Why's that?
- groestl 3y ago
  Because that is just not how negotiations with (or between) big companies work. There are all kinds of customizations to standard contracts for them. From tweaks to liability, to changes in responsibilities, guarantees, insurances, etc etc. And of course fees. You have weight, you'll get results.

dgudkov 3y ago

So, small Android developers pay all the Google t̶a̶x̶e̶s̶ fees, but big Spotify doesn't.

doublerabbit 3y ago
Correct, just like National Tax and Maryland handing out Chromebooks. Someone has to pay for them, it might as well be us.
FalconSensei 3y ago
Makes a lot of sense, especially since spotify decided its going to pay big artists, but not small ones :/

rchaud 3y ago

Spotify and many other services (Netflix, Youtube) began on the web. There's no reason to lock it behind an app store on mobile other than "if we don't do it, Tidal/Deezer/Apple will".

lxgr 3y ago
> Spotify and many other services (Netflix, Youtube) began on the web. Spotify didn't have a web player available in the first few years of its existence. > There's no reason to lock it behind an app store on mobile other than "if we don't do it, Tidal/Deezer/Apple will". A webapp-only music streaming service sounds like a nightmare on a smartphone, considering offline playback, integration with the OSes native playback controls, wearable support etc.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Progressive Web Apps have access to persistent storage. I'd be curious to know how much of Spotify listening happens offline; my guess is that it's very little. Either way, once sideloading is allowed on iOS I expect companies to aggressively renegotiate app store fees.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    To gigabytes worth of persistent storage? Last time I looked into it, that was not the case. > I'd be curious to know how much of Spotify listening happens offline; my guess is that it's very little. Then you haven't lived in a country with bad cell coverage, primarily metered/limited data plans, or both.
yencabulator 3y ago
Have you tried making a mobile music player as a web page? Does it work in the background, does it remain playing when the phone is locked?
- rchaud 3y ago
  Background audio works in PWAs; see this project for an example: https://github.com/minht11/local-music-pwa/ https://github.com/minht11/local-music-pwa/

iteratethis 3y ago

A percentage-based fee on services like this is criminal. Spotify's value, and the actual stuff people pay for, is music streaming from Spotify towards consumers. Apple nor the app store plays any part in this. Apple faces exactly zero costs to enable the actual streaming of value itself, yet just grabs 30% of it. A flat fee to cover the cost of running an app store? Fine, and fair. Robbing businesses of enormous segments of their revenue: criminal.

sneak 3y ago
If they can charge a flat fee, they can censor arbitrarily, like Tumblr, or Fortnite. There should not be any organization that gets to overrule your own wishes about what software you wish to install on your phone. That’s turnkey tyranny because all it takes then is a law (or EO) that compels Apple to censor secure encrypted messaging apps. They already strongarmed them into backdooring iMessage so that it’s not e2ee and Apple and the FBI can easily read all iMessages due to key escrow in (the non-e2ee) iCloud Backup.
- noitpmeder 3y ago
  I agree in principle but also think apple should be able to remain in control of their own store. However, they should be forced to let others provide alternative stores.
eek2121 3y ago
Ooh, sorry, but I have to chime in on this. Percentage based pricing is the norm for any transaction for any amount. 30-50% is typically the retailers take. This also applies to claimed "low margin" PC hardware, games, etc. Manufacturing/distribution (including principles like LEAN, etc.) is something I could honestly write a book about...a book that would sell poorly. However, I've seen the invoices, have been good friends with the right people, etc. At the end of the day, a manufacturer targets 3x costs to account for distributor + retailer. Depending on size, the retailer will buy from a distributor (in most cases) or a manufacturer. Distributors in terms of the above actually DO have super slim margins because they are simply middle-man. They only exist to ship the product to smaller companies.