I am not referring to the Epic court case. Please read the House Judiciary subcommittee report to better understand the issues and the possible remedies.
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Spotify Legal Chief: 'Apple's Ability to Strangle its Competitors is Unprecedented'
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isn't that exactly what EPIC did when they broke the rules? Charged the consumer less to purchase from them directly?
They only reduced the cut by 20% though not the 30% Apple were charging.
And thats on a virtual currency exchange where they set the rates. There's no real evidence that anything would actually cost to the consumer if Apple dropped the 30% rate across the board. (if that was the case, prices for services I've subscribed to would cost 15% less after a year).
Huh? Look at Android market share, it's already shown which one the majority of the market prefers. Apple raising prices is irrelevant, people have choices.
But you don’t get a cheaper product. If Apple removed all fees I stake everything that 99.9999% of apps would stay the same price. The handful that charge mor for IAP - like Spotify - will probably drop it some. But people paying $13 for Spotify via IAP or $10 direct may see that got to $12 on IAP and $10 direct. And you can always go direct to get that potentially cheaper option. None of this has anything to do with consumers. We don’t get squat out of this either way. We pay the same $10. Only question is how that $10 is split up.
How about this. I found an app in the App Store. I could have signed up immediately via IAP for $5 per month. I figured I’d just go take a look at the web site first. Hey, it’s only $4 on the web site. Great deal. But, I did come over to the site on my own. I think I should get to pay $3 per month. Any takers for that one? Same logic, just reversed the players.
Coming out with the iTMS in 2003 probably helped. The iPhone launched with music playback and the music store as a keynote feature on day 1.
Apple literally did build a phone to further their music service. And they launched it on their device before 'apps' existed (a year before the app store).
Spotify launched a year after that. It is a less effective argument of abuse of monopoly when the product and platform you are making those claims about existed before your product did.
Nobody I’ve heard or read is crying foul. Lossless over Bluetooth is not physically possible. Anyone truly looking for lossless already knows this and has a small fortune invested in their audio gear. Does it suck that AirPods Max cannot do lossless over the wire? Sure, but, again, not a surprise to people who are looking for it and know where the DAC is on the wire.
most people really cannot tell the difference anyway. Atmos and special are more important to all but the most “sophisticated ear.”
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And the only reason Apple Music was not streaming was also due Apple’s success in moving downloadable music iTMS. Apple had to work hard to get labels on board with downloads. The licenses actually forbade streaming. It’s why any song you played from your iTunes Match library had to be physically downloaded to your phone and played locally.
Spotify actually got a bit of a head start with streaming but it is obvious Apple would rework the licensing to add streaming to Music on their platform.
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You haven't worked in bricks & mortar retail have you? Margins vary by industry, but are often way above 30% of the final price. Where I used to work, if our average margin wasn't over 30% it wouldn't cover rent, wages, stock-keeping fees etc. "Home branded" items typically had a margin around 75%, so we could blow them out in half price promos and still make a per-item profit (though still a loss-leader unless turned over at large volume).
Your wrong, every app developer has to pay a yearly fee of $99 to publish their apps in the Apple app store. If an app developer wants to provide paid services, such as in-app currency/tokens, they have to use Apples own payment system which Apple politely demand that app developers use. If they don't they are politely told to leave the app store.
Therefore, even if Spotify win their case, they will still have to pay the yearly $99 fee. Thus the claims that Spotify will pay nothing for using the app store is completely false.
There were other DRM-free stores before iTunes gradually turned off DRM (not all vendors were onboard), so Apple was not first. They were the first major mainstream music store to go this way though.
More importantly, DRM-free music downloads is a completely separate issue from music streaming services. The streaming services all use DRM, for obvious reasons. DRM-free music did not lead to streaming services.
It’s more like technically false but still true in principle. $99 a year doesn’t cover app hosting and distribution, not by a long shot - especially for apps like Spotify. Raising that fee to do so would hurt small developers, some of whom have completely free apps for exposure.
Of course Epic would lower their prices to try and prove a point. IAPs are priced to maximise revenue, because they have zero marginal cost of production. Under normal circumstances, there would be zero reason for them to charge any lower price for their IAPs regardless of whether Apple was taking a 30% cut or not.
That means then every app in the app store benifits from not paying for hosting and distribution, so why single out Spotify?
You are right, but its about the philosophy on how you let business work in your state/country. Do you want your health insurer to be also your doctor? Do you want the bank to loan you the mortgage, and also be the land lord? Do you want your stock trader also sell you his own stock?
its up to opinion on what is right and what is not, and hence why some things are legal at one place and are not in others.
My take is that as long as the businesses are operating within the confines of the laws they operate in, I do not have any rights to force the businesses to change, just because I don't like what was on offer. Maybe I'm old school, but I would say that if we're faced with challenges, we innovate and find solutions that is better, and not wield the legal weapon and start sueing. This is a big waste to tax payers' funds.
Opinions are largely shaped by culture and environment. I'm not sure if you noticed, but those who are most critical often have the most extreme of opinions, due to their environment (mainly) shaping their opinions. Luckily laws are passed after much debate (in theory, hopefully) and not passed based on the opinion of the day.
That's not what that means at all. Apps pay for it by Apple's commission on download fees, subscriptions, and IAP. Apple is actually more lenient here than most as they allow cross platform wallets and subscriptions for free - not all stores do that.
Anyway, what is true is that most apps don't pay very much. They aren't successful. It's a small number of really big apps make enough that, through the commission, they not only pay for all the ones that don't make anything for anybody, but also turn Apple a rather tidy profit. Spotify, a big app, doesn't want to pay the commission anymore. They have the size and reach to have their own payment processing system and want to use it keep more of the profits. To be fair they have to compete against Apple's own music subscription service. So either way Apple wins, which they understandably chafe at. What's right or just is a different question. Spotify is not wrong that competing in your own walled garden is ... at least unseemly and should be looked at.
However, as I alluded to above, Apple is very much representative of what all walled gardens have always been and is actually better than most. In many ways, Spotify is singling out Apple rather than the other way around. So Spotify in asking for "narrowly tailored" legislation (ie targeting Apple specifically - which btw is unconstitutional) is being disingenuous as to how the industry at large is actually shaped.
Hold, let me see if I have got this right. Your saying that app hosting and distribution for ALL apps within the app store is paid by those apps which use download fees, subscriptions, and IAP?. which if I understand this correctly, from what your saying, apps such as Spotify and Epic are therefore indirectly paying the hosting and distribution costs of all the free apps, correct?
That's ... all how digital retail by commission works. The store only makes money if you make money. If you don't make any money the store doesn't make anything either. Most apps aren't purely free, it just nobody downloads them or spends money on IAP on them - or not enough to cover costs. Heck even in wholesale physical retail not every product will sell well and you hope the other products will make up the difference and turn you a profit. It's just that has to be a much smaller percentage of the inventory that fails to make money due to the higher costs associated with physical wholesale.
The App store is, well, a store. Its main per-app costs are hosting, distribution, advertising, and (for Apple) curation. Fixed costs are things like store updates and feature development. As I said, most apps Apple allows on the app store won't make that much money - purely free or not. Apple hopes that remaining apps they have on the store will make enough to cover those costs and turn them a profit. A priori Apple doesn't know which small indie studio will come out with a big hit so they rely on the fire hose approach. Everyone gets a chance to be the next 99 cent flappy bird. Of course there are a huge number of middling successful apps, but the distribution of revenue in the app store is highly skewed. Apple approves tens of thousands of apps a week. Most of those will fail to find an audience (even some good ones).
Actually, the $99 per year gets you membership to the developer program. That means you get access to the tools (Xcode), documentation, libraries, and extensive tutorials. It gets you access to the technical presentations during WWDC, direct from the engineers who made the stuff. Heck, if there is room, it even gets you into the virtual labs during WWDC where their experts will handhold you.
$99 dollars per year for all of that is a screaming bargain.
That's a good point I forgot to mention the developer program is a lot more than access to the App stores.
Well, if ALL the pissed off developers pulled their apps, that wouldn’t be a whole lot of developers. Because, the majority of them already have golden balls from the money they’re making… brass balls would be kinda shiny, sure, but it would still be a downgrade
While I agree with your point about Epic's IAPs in general - they certainly don't have their customers in mind, and the marginal price is 0 -one should note that the price probably would be lower if they didn't have to pay Apple 30%. The price point maximising revenue if you get 100% of the price is probably lower than the one maximising 70% of the revenue
So, from what your saying, the way the app store works is that app developers with deep financial pockets and resources pay for the free loaders (free apps) to stay in the store. If that is how it works then companies such as Epic and Spotify have every right to demand that Apple allow them to do their own thing with their app. Why should companies such as Epic and Spotify pay for the free app developers to stay in the store??
Apple have no right to force companies such as Epic and Spotify to use Apples pay system to help pay the hosting and distribution costs of app developers who provide free apps.