This will hurt Google and may destroy Spotify. If they’re the only ones that get the 0/4% deal and the other services like tidal are paying full price that’s a blatant anti-competitive agreement.
How profitable would Spotify be if they were paying full price?
They're not profitable now so very not.
Spotify has Millions of subscriptions. 2% at scale is significant.
Here is their recent Q3 earnings report: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-10-24/spotify-reports-thir...
Their revenue was 3.4 Billion Euros at 2% they can take away 68 Million dollars. Which is more than enough for the business to be viable.
How does this destroy Spotify?
But I'm not sure they meet the threshold for anti-competative practice. You'd need to show some sort of paid exclusivity (eg a bribe so only Spotify could get a better rate).
30% for market access is a bigger net evil that anything Spotify might be doing IMO.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...