Going after Apple for monopolistic practices is ridiculous on its face, considering the extremely low market share of its platforms in Europe.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant, but while I think it’s a totally fair point to qualify this lawsuit as protectionist, unfair, and a shakedown of the wealthiest company in the world (let’s face it, that’s exactly what it is) bringing in “capitalism vs socialism” is just utterly laughable.
Thanks for the words of sanity! It's worth noting that the United States are pondering very similar moves.
Also, one doesn't need a majority market share to unfairly utilise market clout. Apple is at around 30% on continental Europe; that's not "extremely low" — it just isn't as high as the US or Great Britain.
The UK please, Northern Ireland might be teetering, but they haven't left us yet.
Yeah, but how is the Apple Store in Belfast doing? And how is Brexit and the hard border affecting transport of Apple products between the Republic and Ulster?
There isn’t a hard border between the republic and Northern Ireland.
Spotify submit complaint to Eu while being a number 1 leader in the market. How low this company can go?
You still have money you haven't given to them. Only once they have their hands on that, will they stop.
Thanks, Capitalism!
If Spotify were to spend more money on RD to make their music streaming service the better choice than their competitors or on the RD to develop their own platform and their own devices, in order to be more competitive and attract more subscribers ..... that's Capitalism!
When CEO's like that of Epic, Match and Spotify must rely on the EU government ability to penalize companies for being more innovative and competitive, by crying like little kids about to lose a game of Checkers, on how it's not fair that they have to spend more of their own money to be more competitive ..... that's Socialism!
That must be why Spotify has more than twice the market share of its nearest competitor (Apple Music) in the United States… because SOCIALISM!
It’s hilarious how some people here have a Fox News vision of the world where Amerikkka is the bastion of heroic capitalism and Europe is rife with filthy socialist gubments that torture poor multinational corporations. The actual reality is that a vast majority of countries are under capitalist systems with social programs — of course some more than others. What do you think Social Security is, if not a social program? Same wity Medicare. The whole “Capitalism vs. evil European Socialism” is nothing but a made up talking point. Europe just has governments that have not yet fallen to the interests of big business — at least to US big business — and they’re trying to regulate monopolies and unfair business practices, using laws not unlike what the US used to apply not that long ago.
How they do that, however, leaves much to be desired, one just needs to look at the ridiculous conclusion of their decade long antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for Windows, which only ended up focusing on Internet Explorer and forcing Microsoft to decouple the browser from the OS. Going after Apple for monopolistic practices is ridiculous on its face, considering the extremely low market share of its platforms in Europe.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant, but while I think it’s a totally fair point to qualify this lawsuit as protectionist, unfair, and a shakedown of the wealthiest company in the world (let’s face it, that’s exactly what it is) bringing in “capitalism vs socialism” is just utterly laughable.
Some great points with a giant “but” … European governments are just as beholden to local entrenched business interests, just in different ways from here in the U.S. It’s far more passive aggressive, which is why the anti-trust actions against Apple are taking the outlines it has so far.
The New Yorker has a great article that shows how the E.U. starts with different reasoning and methods, but for all practical purposes ends up with the same poor results the U.S. does.
A quote for the “the E.U. is only doing the logical thing” gang (regarding large tech corps and supposed e-waste concerns**)
“The E.U. did something they carefully considered and planned for many years,” Salah Marghani, Libya’s Minister of Justice from 2012 to 2014, told me. “Create a hellhole in Libya, with the idea of deterring people from heading to Europe.”
** I say “supposed” because if you’re concerned about e-waste and other environmental concerns, you don’t do it by forcing companies to scrap the extensive tooling and manufacturing behind certain technologies for ones that arguably have greater breakage issues (and so are more disposable) and have a supply-chain with far less environmental oversight by the assembler and designer (not to mention rampant quality issues and a consumer unfriendly/confusing range of use-cases.) USB-C/USB3.2-4.0 is an obnoxious mess in so many ways. And, of course, artificially obsoleting existing accessories, thereby expanding e-waste by necessitating adapters or new purchases.
It’s akin to tearing down while blocks of housing to build new ones and declaring them “greener” (or “better”). [Those of you with familiarity with the issue will know all the manifold arguments that have evolved out of that industry.]
Spotify submit complaint to Eu while being a number 1 leader in the market. How low this company can go?
You still have money you haven't given to them. Only once they have their hands on that, will they stop.
Thanks, Capitalism!
If Spotify were to spend more money on RD to make their music streaming service the better choice than their competitors or on the RD to develop their own platform and their own devices, in order to be more competitive and attract more subscribers ..... that's Capitalism!
When CEO's like that of Epic, Match and Spotify must rely on the EU government ability to penalize companies for being more innovative and competitive, by crying like little kids about to lose a game of Checkers, on how it's not fair that they have to spend more of their own money to be more competitive ..... that's Socialism!
That must be why Spotify has more than twice the market share of its nearest competitor (Apple Music) in the United States… because SOCIALISM!
So Spotify has still managed to maintain twice the marketshare as Apple Music due to CAPITALISM, so why is the CEO of Spotify crying so much about how "unfair" Apple is and wants the EU government to do something about it? Why can't they just keep on competing the way they did, that got them to be the biggest music streaming service today? Could it be that Spotify didn't have any real competition until Apple, Amazon, Google and Tencent enter the market? Could it be that Spotify has never been profitable? What is the use of having twice the marketshare of your nearest competitor, if you're not profitable.
"Spotify has never posted a full-year net profit despite its success in the online music market."
Spotify been around for 16 years (2006). While Spotify nearest 3 competitors, Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and Tencent Music, only been around for about 6 years (2016). In 2016, with Apple Music only about half a year old, I bet Spotify had over twice the marketshare of their nearest 3 competitors .... combined. Now Spotify only has only 31% marketshare while the nearest 3 competitors have a combined marketshare of 41%.
I did read that Spotify free ad base subscription service actually does OK. But that's because they pay so little to the artist for those streams. It's a different business model, compared to paid subscriptions.
Spotify subscription music streaming service (and others) will never be highly profitable, if even profitable at all, from just streaming music. The music industry has seen to this. I think Steve Jobs will eventually be proven right. After over 16 years of streaming music subscriptions being available, there are only about 600M paying music streaming subscribers, while there are over 7B people in the World that owns smartphones. That is a far cry from how many paying music subscribers are needed to make music streaming service profitable, for as many streaming services as there are. But Apple, Amazon, Google, Tencent have other ways of making money and can afford to take the lost from their music streaming services. Which is why Spotify have invested heavily in PodCast. (That's using CAPITALISM to make their service better than their competitors.) And why they are trying to have the EU prevent "gatekeepers" like Apple, Amazon and Google from "unfairly" promoting their own streaming music service on their own platforms. That's Spotify using SOCIALISM in order to compete. But the real "unfair" advantage is that Apple, Amazon and Google can absorb any loss, for a very long time. AAPL, AMZN and GOOG will not move any significant amount with bad news concerning the music streaming service market. Not sure if the EU can do anything to prevent this type of "competition".
Nothing much has changed with paid subscription music streaming since this article in 2015, at the launch of Apple Music.
>"The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful." (Jobs)
Spotify, the world’s largest music subscription service earned $1.22 billion in revenue on 15 million subscribers last year yet still posted an operating loss of $183 million. Still, Sony Music CEO Doug Morris thinksthe second coming of iTunes has a shot at pushing the industry past the "tipping point" to its pre-Napster riches. But it won't be easy. In the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson:
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.<
Capitalism lobbying government entities to their advantage is “socialism”?
Words have meanings, you know. And just labelling everything involving government “socialism” because you happen to disagree just makes you look like a well-informed idiot.
But Spheric, if you put it in all-caps like a jump scare in a horror movie then it can't not be true, because scary things never manipulate us. To suggest otherwise is pure SOCIALISM.
Comments
The New Yorker has a great article that shows how the E.U. starts with different reasoning and methods, but for all practical purposes ends up with the same poor results the U.S. does.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/the-secretive-libyan-prisons-that-keep-migrants-out-of-europe
A quote for the “the E.U. is only doing the logical thing” gang (regarding large tech corps and supposed e-waste concerns**)
“The E.U. did something they carefully considered and planned for many years,” Salah Marghani, Libya’s Minister of Justice from 2012 to 2014, told me. “Create a hellhole in Libya, with the idea of deterring people from heading to Europe.”
** I say “supposed” because if you’re concerned about e-waste and other environmental concerns, you don’t do it by forcing companies to scrap the extensive tooling and manufacturing behind certain technologies for ones that arguably have greater breakage issues (and so are more disposable) and have a supply-chain with far less environmental oversight by the assembler and designer (not to mention rampant quality issues and a consumer unfriendly/confusing range of use-cases.) USB-C/USB3.2-4.0 is an obnoxious mess in so many ways. And, of course, artificially obsoleting existing accessories, thereby expanding e-waste by necessitating adapters or new purchases.
It’s akin to tearing down while blocks of housing to build new ones and declaring them “greener” (or “better”). [Those of you with familiarity with the issue will know all the manifold arguments that have evolved out of that industry.]
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2021/04/28/spotify-posts-rare-profit-as-paying-users-hit-158-million.html
Spotify been around for 16 years (2006). While Spotify nearest 3 competitors, Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and Tencent Music, only been around for about 6 years (2016). In 2016, with Apple Music only about half a year old, I bet Spotify had over twice the marketshare of their nearest 3 competitors .... combined. Now Spotify only has only 31% marketshare while the nearest 3 competitors have a combined marketshare of 41%.
I did read that Spotify free ad base subscription service actually does OK. But that's because they pay so little to the artist for those streams. It's a different business model, compared to paid subscriptions.
Spotify subscription music streaming service (and others) will never be highly profitable, if even profitable at all, from just streaming music. The music industry has seen to this. I think Steve Jobs will eventually be proven right. After over 16 years of streaming music subscriptions being available, there are only about 600M paying music streaming subscribers, while there are over 7B people in the World that owns smartphones. That is a far cry from how many paying music subscribers are needed to make music streaming service profitable, for as many streaming services as there are. But Apple, Amazon, Google, Tencent have other ways of making money and can afford to take the lost from their music streaming services. Which is why Spotify have invested heavily in PodCast. (That's using CAPITALISM to make their service better than their competitors.) And why they are trying to have the EU prevent "gatekeepers" like Apple, Amazon and Google from "unfairly" promoting their own streaming music service on their own platforms. That's Spotify using SOCIALISM in order to compete. But the real "unfair" advantage is that Apple, Amazon and Google can absorb any loss, for a very long time. AAPL, AMZN and GOOG will not move any significant amount with bad news concerning the music streaming service market. Not sure if the EU can do anything to prevent this type of "competition".
Nothing much has changed with paid subscription music streaming since this article in 2015, at the launch of Apple Music.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8744963/steve-jobs-jesus-people-dont-want-music-subscriptions
>"The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful." (Jobs)
Spotify, the world’s largest music subscription service earned $1.22 billion in revenue on 15 million subscribers last year yet still posted an operating loss of $183 million. Still, Sony Music CEO Doug Morris thinksthe second coming of iTunes has a shot at pushing the industry past the "tipping point" to its pre-Napster riches. But it won't be easy. In the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson:
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.<