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Spotify Shares Its Vision for In-App Purchases Ahead of EU Regulation

semyon said:
Bad take, this and every one like it.

Imagine if target charged an extra 30% on top of your monthly internet bill, just because you bought your router at target; if Ford or BMW asked for 30% of every bit of gas you buy to fuel your car; if your TV's maker charged you 30% extra for your monthly TV, Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, just because they built the device you're using those services on.

Yes, hosting and providing data transfer (downloads) takes some resources, no it isn't free - but the upkeep is so, SO much cheaper than running a retail store. Retail means paying rent, employees, stocking product which (unlike digital goods) take up a lot of warehouse space, with remaining unsold stock (unlike digital goods) being a net loss for the store that has invested into that product.

Running the data centres surely makes up for the bulk of its total cost to Apple. The App Store also needs employees for auditing, moderation, new features and maintenance, but you might well be able to run that whole thing with as many people as a small handful of retail stores would need. Yet, they charge as much of a fee as any retailer.
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It's not even about the 30%, it's about the monopoly power. Target can require 30% of my internet bill because I bought a router there, fine, I'll just go get another router from Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, MicroCenter, or any other place that sells routers. There are choices, and the competition keeps bad behavior in check.

With Apple App Store and Google Play Store, there is no choice. There is only one store for iPhone, and only one store for Android (effectively). And the stores do not compete, because I cannot choose to sell my app to iPhone users on the Google Play Store, and I cannot choose to sell my app to Android users on the Apple App Store. They are totally separate markets, and each market has one monopoly platform for app distribution. So they can do whatever they want with no competition to keep them in check. Today it's arbitrary 30% fees on transactions, but this fight is about preventing things from getting even worse.
 
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Mrkevinfinnerty said:
They've shortened the sequence to show the checkout flow for premium individual, family and audiobooks.

When you tap the 'explore premium' button. It lays out all of the available plans on one screen, including trials and promotions.

It literally couldn't be any clearer.


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No completely agree with you there. Here it's made perfectly clear what the normal subscription price is. On their newsroom page however (the one linked to in the article). There the first example of how the new setup would be, shows a special 3 months free trial but there they don't show a regular price there as they do here. The image you send is also not from that newsroom page of Spotify (my comment was only in regards to that first example on their page, on in all other examples they don't hide the regular price, so I've also got no clue why they would do that in the first example)
 
Abazigal said:
Why should it? Spotify isn’t paying Apple anything currently. All subscriptions are made directly through their website, bypassing iTunes and their 30% cut.
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That's why their advertising clip above is misleading and completely biased.

They're telling users 'Apple can't force their mandatory 30% commission on you', but actually, they've been bypassing Apple for years, and there wasn't a 30% discount when they did, so essentially Spotify cut the middleman but kept pocketing the difference. It wasn't forced on users, but on Spotify themselves.

I'm all for sideloading but won't stand for an hypocritical company pretending to champion users rights and finances when ultimately it makes no difference for us and it's just a corporate argument about who's getting bigger margins...
 
How good competition is… I don’t like Spotify and I’ll keep using Apple Music, but now thanks to EU regulators Apple has to face real competition and maybe keep prices low
 
FlyingDutch said:
How good competition is… I don’t like Spotify and I’ll keep using Apple Music, but now thanks to EU regulators Apple has to face real competition and maybe keep prices low
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How so? Do you understand what you are actually typing, or are you simply throwing a bunch of buzzwords together?
 
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