How true. I always try to remember that many of the things that impact my user experience are things Apple has been forced to do and not something that design engineers or product managers chose.
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Apple Allows Spotify to Show Pricing Info to EU Users in iPhone App
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So you think Apple haven't made more money from Apple Music than Tay Tay and Drizzy?
If it's Apple's platform they are make as much as they like, using whatever means they like but nobody else can do the same. Strange logic.
You think all of that is bad, be thankful you weren't selling this software in a brick and mortar store like Best Buy back in the day.
Apple invested a lot of money to build things up to where they are now. Could they be a little more flexible with some new categories/tiers? Maybe, but that's stuff you need to bring to their attention and work with them on.
I really wish Jobs was still alive, I'd love to hear him talk about all this. I think Jobs would be just as into Apple Vision as Cook is, to prepare for the future and end reliance on the App Store for most of Apple's income.
Wanting to pay zero commissions when Apple is providing the platform and the dev tools with access to millions of subscribers at the click of a button is just outright selfish.
A better solution would’ve been charging commissions based on the type of content. Like a more reasonable fee for licensed content.
When you’re making money off of someone else’s work pay them damn piper. Freeloading I won’t support. Especially when you pay the least per stream.
A better solution would’ve been charging commissions based on the type of content. Like a more reasonable fee for licensed content.
When you’re making money off of someone else’s work pay them damn piper. Freeloading I won’t support. Especially when you pay the least per stream.
Imagine if Microsoft told the world that everything running on Windows required a 30% fee from now on.
"back in the day" -- Totally different business model, totally different costs, totally different marketing.
Without the internet, your marketing is mostly signage and ads in papers, as opposed to Twitter/Instagram/Facebook and web traffic. But you still have to spend to get the customer. At the same time, though, your software has physical form that's noticeable on the shelf. In the App Store, unless the customer is coming from a direct link like a website, QR code, she doesn't even know you exist. As "things up to where they are now" -- Searching for an app in the App Store by keyword in 2024 still doesn't turn up what you're looking for, unless you're already well-known and have lots of people searching for you. You can bid on Apple Search Ads keywords, but it doesn't get you next to other items in the stores for people who are just browsing, like they would on a shelf in Best Buy.
Developers can also charge more for shrink-wrapped software because the rest of Best Buy isn't full of freemium apps conditioning users to the point that they expect not to pay for their software because they can just find a free alternative with ads. When a market is full of free software, and the high number of downloads from that free software feed into the search algorithm to rank those apps higher, you end up with apps that may be high-quality but also costly being virtually invisible inside the store. It's a race to the bottom. Making a high-quality app takes time, developer hours, and then the cost of marketing/search ads, but at least there would be more wiggle room in the shrink-wrap era to charge more to make up for it, whereas these days you're basically $5 or less unless you're Photoshop, and even then you may need to go to a subscription model to lower initial barrier to entry.
It would be great to "work with them" but they don't really listen. You can schedule a 10-min WWDC session with junior staff or standard marketing reps that will just parrot the App Store guidelines back to you, or file a radar/bug report that never gets read, or gets closed for being a feature. So while humans could improve the algorithm and help developers roll out their apps, they hide behind a huge backlog of bugs and developers that it's not really feasible to reach anyone, unless you're big with someone on your team that can pester/chase/follow-up/raise hell in places like news articles where they have to respond under threat of bad press.
I always felt that the claimed offence of not being able to show the price of a product at one company’s store inside another companies store to be bonkers. I like to use the comparison of Carter’s baby clothing. Stores like Target sell it, but Carter’s also has its own physical locations as well as their online store. I certainly don’t see Target allowing Carter’s to advertise Carter’s prices within Target, or vice versa. As for a tech example, this would be like Sony, Samsung, LG forcing stores like Best Buy to advertise the price of their respective products at their own stores within Best Buy itself. I realize this is the internet, and drawing parrallels to physical stores and merchandise is not without its faults, but I really fail to see how any company should be forced to advertise the price of a product at a competitors store. Should a consumer have the right to purchase the product at another store with a reasonable expectation that the product will be the same, and function the same, yes. But company A should not be required to allow Company B to advertise their prices within company A’s store.
The term "starving artist" goes back at least as far as 1850. This is not at all new. It happened under iTunes and under CDs and under vinyls and it happened before those, too. The fundamental issue is that the number of people who want to be paid to make art far exceeds the demand and amount that people are willing to pay for art.
Until this year, Spotify never made a profit... there's around 10M artists on Spotify, so if they split up their $1B in profits with all of them, that'd be $100 per artist. That's not going to do much of anything. Over 8M of those artists don't even manage 50 listens per month.
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I notice that whenever this argument is made, there is never any mention of the App Store Small Busniess Program, which reduces the commsion rate to 15%
Imagine if they had told Apple in 2003 that they had to pay 30% cut of iTunes sales on Windows.
It's possible that Steve Jobs would have gone that way. But it is also just as likely that he would have told every government and regulator that wanted to "force" him to do something he thought was not in Apple's interest to go f themselves, I mean literally call a press conference and tell them to F OFF.
He certainly mellowed with age, but remember, this is a guy who lived in his own reality, he denied his daughter was his, but then named a computer after her. Not really predictable behavior.
He is also the guy who was happily going to "... spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product...". That is until some level heads (Tim Cook amongst them) convinced him not too. He was always open to scorched earth methods if he thought he was wronged somehow.
SoldOnApple, I'm suggesting that you believe you know what Steve would have done in this situation. But it is mind boggling that so many people seem so confident about what Steve would do today, when his closest friends seem to concede that it was often difficult to know what he was gonna do in any situation.
It would certainly be entertaining to see what Apple would be today under his helm. I don't have a problem with Tim Cook at all. But he does seem to be much more polite and bottom line focused than Steve (on most days).
The reality: Spotify's cheapest and most popular version of the app (ad supported) was always available for free in the App Store. Their more expensive plan was the one that customers went to the internet to pay for. So it was never about customers being prevented from seeing a cheaper price online.
And looking at their growth chart, it's entirely obvious that they and their customers were never harmed by Apple's approach with Apple Music etc.
And looking at their growth chart, it's entirely obvious that they and their customers were never harmed by Apple's approach with Apple Music etc.
All these people defending Apple because they 'made the platform'.
If you follow the same logic brands like Samsung, Sony, LG and many others also should get 30 percent of every subscription people use on their TV. Because the OS on the TV is their platform and if I sub to Apple TV+ or Netflix 30 percent should go to the brand manufacturer. They use the TV API's WebOS, Tizen etc. so they must pay up for all the value provided and getting access to the Samsung/LG/Sony/... customer base. Of course nobody would be okay with such things, unless it is about Apple for some reason.
Also most apps would use the web browser if they could have a good app experience like that but Apple actively doesn't innovate much there so that it will always be the inferior option.
If you follow the same logic brands like Samsung, Sony, LG and many others also should get 30 percent of every subscription people use on their TV. Because the OS on the TV is their platform and if I sub to Apple TV+ or Netflix 30 percent should go to the brand manufacturer. They use the TV API's WebOS, Tizen etc. so they must pay up for all the value provided and getting access to the Samsung/LG/Sony/... customer base. Of course nobody would be okay with such things, unless it is about Apple for some reason.
Also most apps would use the web browser if they could have a good app experience like that but Apple actively doesn't innovate much there so that it will always be the inferior option.
I largely agree with what your saying, and some of the legal cases against Apple. In no world should Google, Apple, Microsoft be charging near 30% commission rate. And, Apple, Google, and other big tech companies that are in the crosshairs of governements around the world are there laregly becasue of their own greed and contrariarian actions. Apple has had ample oppurtunity to ammend their own policies and which would have greatly reduced the chances of being over regulated, but thier statements and actions at every turn made it more likley they would face regulation, and now here we are. Now, the EU is trying to do some good things with the DMA and other regulation, but they most certainly will take that regulation way too far. I still applaud them for trying, as here in the states or legistaltive body is so dysfunctional, and unwilling/unable to keep up with technology that there is a next to 0 chance any regulation would be passed. Instead, we sue companies based on laws passed over 130 years ago.
The E.U. Goes Too Far
Recent E.U. regulatory decisions cross the line from market correction to property theft; if the E.U. continues down this path they are likely to see fewer new features and no new companies.
stratechery.com
Imagine if the internet and digital distribution existed in the 1970s when the desktop computing market started.
That is why places like Target price match. If you know the competitor's price you can pay the competitor's price. There is a reason these things exist. Big box stores want you to come to the big box store without having to worry about the price being lower in five other places, so they offer price matching.
I did see a good point to this chart - spotify has a free tier. Amazon and Apple music do not. I would be curious to see this chart filtered by paid subscribers.
Also there is a “free” tier of Amazon music with a Prime subscription, but that in effect makes it not free. Apple of course doesn’t have a free tier, and is Pandora even relvant anymore?
Making the platform is more difficult than making an app or making phone hardware. There are thousands of app developers and more than two phone hardware manufacturers.
Yes, but that is a store policy, not a government regulation. Also, stores that do price match do not do so without strict limitis. And still, they are not advertising a competitors price. Quick example, I was in Publix the other day and they are currently willing to accept coupons from the following stores… Target. Not Walmart, not Aldi, not the local smaller grocery chain… Just Target. Best Buy has a whole host of limitations on their price matching.
Their App Store pricing structure is illegal & wrong yet they continue to implement everywhere they can
I agree, but I also agree that maintaining the status quo of 30% flat fee (15% small business) is a bit absurd.
Please correct typo
I think it's fair since Apple has their own Music app that directly competes with Spotify and doesn't have these restrictions.