EU Commission protects consumers in Apple music streaming case
beuc.eu
beuc.eu
"Artists don't get paid fairly" is a tale that existed long before Spotify existed.
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 the industry has been fighting tooth and nail to make streaming services use performance licenses, not mechanical licenses. Here's a very good (long) overview https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17117160/spotify-mechanic...
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
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.
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.
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.
Going to be very interesting to see what the EU courts say in a few years.
I don't see any reason this must be true. It's totally possible, and indeed reality, that both harm has been done, and at least 1 competitor is growing. So there seems to be no mutual exclusivity there in real life.
But it’s a strong clue that maybe the EU got this one wrong. The fact that Spotify doesn’t pay the Apple tax and yet still is the market leader shows you that, at the very least, Apple is not foreclosing competition.
It is really disappointing to see such behavior here on HN.
This is evident in the lack of meaningful consumer technology businesses over the last 20 years and a dearth of startups precipitated by hand-wringing VCs that would rather invest in land than ideas. As such, the EU has missed out in trillions of euros in growth and millions of jobs.
Even stretching back to WWII we can see that, from daylight bombings to Normandy, American military strategy and culture was much more bold and high-risk, high-reward, which is what you need to get shit done.
People are more risk-averse in the EU and that significantly slows the pace of progress. As the EU's share of the global economy continues to decline, something will have to give. The EU encourages inheriting wealth and punishes building it.