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0 pointsalkonaut4y ago0 comments

Absolutely. I want 100% of the money to go to Spotify and I want a centralized one-click cancel, that looks the same for all subscriptions.

That's an unlikely combination. So the viable alternative is a middle ground. A central app store and subscription management takes a cut/adds a tax. I'm ready to pay say 1% or 2% for that service.

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falcolas4y ago

I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply as Apple (google, steam, microsoft, sony, etc) does.

dmitriid4y ago

> I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply

Never ever in all these accusations do people mention The Big Four [1]. It's always Apple to blame. And Spotify. And Deezer. And Pandora. And...

Even though music distributors control all f the market, collect all the royalties, and pay artists peanuts. Does Spotify pay artists directly? No, it can't do that. It pays the license holders which are, in 99% of the cases [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation

Edit: it's worse now, it's Big Three. They control 88.5% of the market, but by popularity of music that is listened to on streaming platforms, it's likely closer to 100%.

falcolas4y ago

This is where I shrug my shoulders and say "Why not [blame] both?"

It can be that Apple, Spotify, and Google can all be screwing over creators in conjunction with their publishers.

That said, not all musicians on Spotify go through publishers.

1 more reply

alanchen4y ago

I think https://privacy.com is close to that. You get a virtual credit card number for every single service that you sign up for, and you can simply disable them in a centralized place.

It works on the web but it is still a hassle to use on mobile. I imagine Apple can potentially do this using Apple Card, but I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.

brimble4y ago

I think the norm that everyone seems to slowly be settling on, of 15% for: 1) hosting the program itself, 2) displaying in the store, 3) payments and subscriptions including figuring out local taxes and CC fees and such, 4) various other services (push messages, for example), is pretty damn reasonable. 30% is clearly too high, but somewhere around 20% it actually starts to look like not-a-rip-off.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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falcolas4y ago

dmitriid4y ago

> I'd rather 100% of the money go to the artists, personally. It is possible in many cases, but not with Spotify (or Google, Apple, etc). Middlemen want their cut, and Spotify cuts as deeply

Never ever in all these accusations do people mention The Big Four [1]. It's always Apple to blame. And Spotify. And Deezer. And Pandora. And...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation

Edit: it's worse now, it's Big Three. They control 88.5% of the market, but by popularity of music that is listened to on streaming platforms, it's likely closer to 100%.

falcolas4y ago

This is where I shrug my shoulders and say "Why not [blame] both?"

It can be that Apple, Spotify, and Google can all be screwing over creators in conjunction with their publishers.

That said, not all musicians on Spotify go through publishers.

1 more reply

alanchen4y ago

I think https://privacy.com is close to that. You get a virtual credit card number for every single service that you sign up for, and you can simply disable them in a centralized place.

It works on the web but it is still a hassle to use on mobile. I imagine Apple can potentially do this using Apple Card, but I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.

brimble4y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse