Claims by an unidentified author(s) replying to comments with a 4-hour old HN account.. How did this make it to the front page other than the catchy name?
Totally agree - I don't find "stunningly thin and light design" to be a selling point any more. I want to hold a durable device without feeling like it might break or slip out of my hands, without needing a chunky case.
Lost in all coverage of this battle of the middlemen is the effect on the artists actually making the product. How would lower prices make any difference in Spotify’s royalty rate bullying in a market saturated with alternatives that they already dominate? Are there really that many more consumers who want but aren’t already paying for a streaming service or using free alternatives? There are legit discussions to be had about app store policies, but I can’t see how the music streaming context is the place to have them.
Fairer App Store policies allows more streaming choice for consumers, including potentially opting for "fair trade"-style offerings that give more to artists.
Right now, both Apple AND Spotify have an anti-competitive advantage due to the app store (with Apple Music getting a massive advantage, and Spotify getting a better deal than new competition entering the market).
Although a lot of streaming payment rates are set upstream of streaming services.
What policies need to be made more fair? It makes no sense to make Apple pay itself. And surely, Spotify is subject to the same fees as any other music streaming business.
And all fees can be avoided by not taking payment via the App Store. A streaming service can even accept payment in the Safari browser in iOS via Apple Pay, and it would not cost them anything.
99% of musicians being paid small amounts has only to do with the population at large liking a very, very small percentage of music much more than the vast majority of music.
> And all fees can be avoided by not taking payment via the App Store. A streaming service can even accept payment in the Safari browser in iOS via Apple Pay, and it would not cost them anything.
That was the crux of the case. Spotify was accepting payment through their web site in addition to taking payment via the App Store. And because they were processing their own payments, they could offer the same subscriptions for a lower price than on the App Store.
The issue was that Apple was not allowing them to inform App Store users that they could pay through a browser.
Yes, agree that like any other technology, the artists typically get the short end of the stick regardless of the delivery platform. Even for the megastars, more money is raked in from sources other than streaming. (With notable exceptions, like megastars owning their own masters instead of a label, or blockbuster established songwriters.)
Are you sure about this? I hear the rates vary by platform. For example Tidal was pushing for much higher royalties as part of its push to get more artists to sign with it.
Reasonably. Without any specific knowledge, Spotify doesn't actually own the rights to music - it's the rights holders (labels) that chose to make their music available to Spotify under the terms they want.
It's 10 years old at this point, but Sony's leaked contract with Spotify basically outlines that there's no such thing as a 'per stream' rate. Roughly, all the money available was split between the labels (with most favored nation clauses to get them even more money) https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotif...
Also:
> Contrary to what you might have heard, Spotify does not pay artist royalties according to a per-play or per-stream rate; the royalty payments that artists receive might vary according to differences in how their music is streamed or the agreements they have with labels or distributors.
> In many cases, royalty payments happen once a month, but exactly when and how much artists and songwriters get paid depends on their agreements with their record label or distributor
Yes, the rates vary by platform. In the US, there's a combo of statutory (or CRB-approved) rates on the publisher side, and negotiations on the label side.
On the publisher/songwriter side, streams are not "public performances" under the Copyright Act (in the US), so royalties are not handled by the court-sanctioned monopolies that have been in place since the early 20th century (ASCAP, BMI).
And if publishers and/or labels were able to obtain better rates - via direct negotiations, the CRB, or otherwise - presumably some of those fractional cents per stream would trickle down to the artists and songwriters who are already in notoriously oppressive contracts with the major label and publisher oligopoly.
It's definitely important, but the DMA isn't a response to the existence of music streaming services. It's a direct remediation for Apple's uniquely anticompetitive practices, which affects everyone, artists or not. Arguably, this was a necessary first-step to prevent other platforms from following Apple's example and presenting less choice to the user.
It’s beyond laughable that the company didn’t better address these concerns beyond performative press releases without the need for regulatory intervention before rolling out in any jurisdiction, let alone the EU. Whatever one’s opinion on the privacy implications, it’s a simply embarassing business* move given the number of countries with data protection legislation (and/or active regulators).
* or whatever motive one wishes to ascribe to the mix of for- and non-profit entities involved in muddying the waters OpenAI-style
Fueling clickbait conspiracy theories is one probable outcome that comes to mind. For example, even a winning candidate may claim that a "woke" employee sabotaged the site in an effort to subvert the will of the people to have free and open discourse, they won despite the media deck stacked against them, etc.
Xoogler here - Totally agree that the bulging middle management layers and lack of crisp CEO vision have dismantled the company's ability to weather the changes of "growing up". Had a few managers and multiple reorgs in my < two years there, during a time of record profits. Peers said that wasn't an uncommon thing. Who cares about vision or management so long as the ads money printer goes brrr?
Still, there are definitely people trying to do the right thing for users despite frequent bu$iness side overrides, and IMO still some best-of-breed products amongst the sprawling graveyard/zombies. I could even get through to a real person at Nest customer support a few weeks ago!
Great overview, thanks for sharing. Maybe this was unintentional, but I got a good laugh out of, "In 1952, the International Astronomical Union changed the definition of time"!
Release the lobbyists! Hopefully this moves forward without getting too watered down. Its limited scope is more promising than recent attempts at more comprehensive data protection legislation.
