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Google admits Spotify pays no Play Store fees because of a secret deal | TechCrunch
(techcrunch.com)
And Spotify pass these savings onto the artists, right?
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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In effect, yes. Given that ~70% of revenue goes to rights holders, making the amount of revenue bigger by not paying 30% of subscriptions to Google, the savings are passed on to rights holders.
So, not exactly to the artists. I get the impression you seem to know quite a lot about the deal, can you try to analyze how this 70% gets divided?
https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/
It's net revenue split to rights holders according to the share of streams. If you have 1% of all streams on Spotify in a given time period, you get 0.7% of net revenue for that period.
How the rights holders distribute the money onward to the artists is not exactly transparent though.
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No fees when users choose to pay via Spotify (which had been the case and only option since the beginning, until User Choice Billing was implemented).
If users choose to pay with Google Play Billing, Google keeps 4%.
Even so, what I find hypocritical is that Spotify got this deal and seemingly agreed to keep it under wraps, without advocating for it to be extended to all other music streaming services in the platform.
Because... having a deal with the platform holder that gives it unfair advantage over the competition is exactly what they accuse Apple of doing with iOS.
Sauce: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23969690/google-spotify-android-billing-commission-secret-deal
4% is basically just the payment processing fee (averaged out, since it's slightly different for every transaction). Spotify has to pay that regardless of how you pay.
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The game is rigged
And we're the pawns
Bold of you to consider yourself a pawn in this game.
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We're totally screwing the artist, so we'll give you a cut if we don't pay any gees.
Yea no shit, idk if it's just for my region or what, but Spotify does not manage their subscription through the play store. Makes it more annoying to cancel it too, which the execs at Spotify probably see as a plus.
Kind of weird, considering they're a major competitor, but so what? Why is this something they need to "admit"?
Stuff like this will be used in the anti monopoly cases going on world wide.
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Netflix makes heavy use of Amazon Web Services, specifically S3 Buckets. I’m sure there’s a special deal worked out with them as an anchor client.
Malls do the same thing. While they’re not in direct competition in the same sense as Google/Spotify or Amazon/Netflix, some stores don’t even pay rent in a mall because it’s expected that they’ll drive traffic to the rest of the stores. 90% sure Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, etc are some of these anchor stores that very often pay little or negative rent due to the sheer revenue generated by other avenues.
What alternatives do you guys use besides Bandcamp? I am open to paying a sub as long as the artist is getting a decent cut.
Pirate and buy official merch, they make more of that anyway. Also live shows
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Buying the music and selfhosting a streaming server is an option, though obviously not for everyone
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Idk if Bandcamp is better, but there I buy my beloved albums with a big tip. The only thing I dislike is many artists default to PayPal for their merch. Ah, and they got owned by someone like Tencent or Epic?
Its not a bug, its a feature. The end game has lots of backdoor deals.
I'm doing great with xManager so I don't give a flying fuck about this haha
What is xManager?
I wondered this myself, so Googled it, and found https://www.xmanagerapp.com/
... And I'm still none the wiser. All I learned that it's for Android and does... something.
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