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Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

Kettle. Pot. Black.

Monopolistic practices is what Spotify is, not just something it does.

Recently they went about buying podcasts. The idea was/is to kill off the free protocol and centralise podcasts under their control... That way, listeners, advertisers and podcasters would all have to live by spotify's rules. Like streaming music.

Sure. Apple give themselves every advantage, cream the market, etc. They have a monopoly. So does Spotify!

What happens when an artist doesn't like Spotify's take-it-or-leave-it terms? Why should apple treat you better then you treat others? Cry me a river.

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I feel like Apple is a much stronger offender than Spotify. You can literally not use billions of devices on this planet for your app* if you don't send something like a 25-50% cut of all your possible profits (15-30% of revenue(!)) to them. That makes apple effectively (in monetary terms) an owner of many businesses they shouldn't own.

* no, not any application can run fine in safari

Apple is a much bigger company than Spotify. In. fact, it's quite impressive how monopolistic they managed to become for their size. There are a lot of monopolies and wanna be monopolies about. That's why big tech profit margins are so high.

All I am saying is that if your business model is entirely based on market monopolisation, to the extent that spotify's model is... go f##$ yourself. Yes, Apple charges you a take-it-or-leave-it fee. Does that "makes apple effectively an owner of many businesses they shouldn't own?" Maybe. But if it does, then Spotify is an effective owner of Black Sabbath. Should Spotify own Black Sabbath?

In many industries, Google & FB are "effectively an owner." Without their advertising, many businesses can't function. Lots of startups, even established businesses have to advertise on adwords. Google can also takes a massive* cut.

Apple has all the best customers. You can't have a great online business without apple users. That's why Google pay Apple >$100bn pa to be their default search engine. Apple also do this to spotify. Spotify do it to music artists. They want to do it to podcasters.

> That's why Google pay Apple >$100bn pa to be their default search engine.

In case anyone is curious, reports of Google's payments to Apple have been in the range 8--20 billion dollars/year. The highest estimates appear to be $8--12 billion in 2020, $15 billion in 2021, and $18--20 billion in 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/apple-google-s... https://archive.ph/loAMx

My estimates from the information I have found suggest that the amount Google has paid to Apple for being the default search engine (on Macs, iPhones, etc) to be less than 65 billion nominal dollars total for all time, or less than 80 billion present value (ie, CPI-adjusted) dollars total for all time.

It's not technically a monopoly, but in so far as it might become one, it is someone else's responsibility to tweet and complain about it.

And there is a difference in scale between Apple's control and everyone else's.

In the case of Apple I think if you look at the mobile phone usage of people in the top 25% of incomes in America you would find that they are well over 80% market share. While this is a somewhat contrived segmentation, it is also most important segment for a lot of businesses. Monopoly power is typically assessed by the doj at a regional level so it is not unprecedented to arrive at monopoly issues on the basis of a portion of a larger market. The novelty here is about switching costs and bundling.

You can't cherry-pick a market segment like that. Each successful product has a niche somewhere.

Dominant market share is not the same thing as a monopoly, because the existence of competitive alternatives is a check on the behavior of the market leader. Also, it is tough to ignore the fact that any customer can buy a Samsung phone with largely the same capabilities at a similar price point to the iPhone.

Not all monopolies are unlawful in the US. There is a need to prove that practices are anticompetitive, such as by unfair pricing or exclusive dealing. If Apple is expected to curate and support an App Store with non-malicious apps and reviews thereof, used on a platform for which they provide an ecosystem of developer tools, they are entitled to charge a fee for that.

It's inexact, but not contrived at all. If you've ever worked in online advertising, you'll know to treat apple users as a distinct segmentat without worrying to much about why exactly.

There's a reason Google pays Apple so 15 billion pa for search defaults. Adwords would be deeply hurt if Apple decided to withhold its users.

>> It's not technically a monopoly

What is the technicality? It's certainly a monopoly in layman's terms.

Is the technicality monopsony? IE, the fact that Spotify have more power over artists than consumers? Is it the fact that there are other streaming services in existence, and spotify has <100%.

I feel like people can specify "textbook-monopoly," if they need to use a hyper-strict definition of one kind or another. For regular conversation, the common definition of the term works fine.

There are many alternatives to Spotify.

That's not the definition of a monopoly, unless we're describing some sort of textbook/theoretical concept. Spotify are certainly a monopsony in their relationship to artists/studios. The whole business model depends on and assumes market power. They're absolutely a monopoly in normal language.

https://twitter.com/dada_drummer/status/1598051231817433088?...

Two wrongs don't make a right. Spotify and Musk's conduct have no bearing on the validity of their arguments. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Well, I've never been a monopoly so... thump.

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