I’m not a big fan of the high fees, but I’m even less of a fan of big developers being treated differently than the little guy.
Some banks do this *** too. The more money you deposit, the less fees you pay. Because ‘premium customer’ and all this.
Yep Chase for instance: over 75k on deposit, no ATM withdrawal fees anywhere! You know, helping the people who need it the least.
Sorry for the ignorance, but you have to pay to withdraw money from your bank in the US?
From your bank in person, no. From your bank’s own ATM, no. From an ATM run by another bank out of network, yes, there are often fees and your bank will waive them under certain circumstances.
Not necessarily. Usually your bank will have ATMs you can use fee-free. And often partner bank ATMs as well.
Out of network ATMs can charge fees, which you will prompted to accept before withdrawing, but that’s not from your bank. That’s the company running the ATM. Generally $3-5
I guess some shitty banks could charge fees on top of that…
Mine charges no fees and actually reimburses ATM fees (a certain amount per month)
And charge you a monthly service fee unless you have a job (regular transaction into the account per billing cycle), which isn’t a thing in other places.
Ripping off poor and jobless people. Yes.
Not sure if it’s still a thing, but PNC would charge you a few for their Personal Wallet if you don’t have direct deposit of a certain amount each month.
I mean I can’t believe I’m about to defend a bank, but it makes sense no?
Banks want people to deposit money, rich people have more money. So it tracks that you would offer better incentives to get those people to be your customers.
Nobody is saying it doesn’t make financial sense, but that it’s a dick move.
Saying corporations are making dick moves under capitalism is like saying when rains things get wet.
Like do we expect anything different at this point.
The world is run by greedy self serving asshole, more news right after these dystopian ads.
Sooo, we’ll call me an optimist, I believe people can be, and for the most part ARE better than that.
My concern is that the psychopaths always win. At the top of the companies and countries, we mostly have psychopath leaders. These are people that treat society as a game to be won. To the best of my ability and reasoning, I can’t find a way to avoid that. Socialism, communism, capitalism, etc….
There’s no system they won’t exploit because they all have exploitable holes. Normal people won’t sacrifice what’s needed to be a CEO, because it’s not worth it to them. They value their own life and family more than the power and money. They want enough control to feel like they can run their own life and enough money to eat and sleep. That’s a reasonable life.
But in order to get ahead, you have to want that money and control almost as much as breathing. The system BREEDS psychopaths. They ALL do, because as time goes on, the requirements to get elected or promoted get harder and slimmer and require greater sacrifice. So only the people who care about NOTHING but getting that power will make it through eventually.
…… and I can’t solve that riddle.
I agree with every word.
I too have no idea how to fix it. It is what it is.
capitalism is a compilation of dick moves
If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem
Some banks? No. All banks.
Even credit unions do this. They may not have as many or as expensive fees as regular commercial banks but they still have fees and certain features aren’t free. If you deposit $100,000 (or more) you’ll find that a lot of those fees get waived, your interest rates will be better, and they will generally treat you better than the peasants with like $5,000 in their savings.
It’s just another advantage that the rich have over every day people. Most of them take these things for granted or don’t think they matter in the slightest. It never occurs to them that regular $3 fees or occasional $25 fees can have a huge impact on the poor and the middle class.
Full Disclosure: I work for a bank.
Yes. I know a bank where you’re trading fees are lower or even zero, depending on the size of your share portfolio.
And Spotify pass these savings onto the artists, right?
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.
Nah the savings are probably being mostly passed on to stock buybacks and executive salaries
…I mean, 30% of the savings go to Spotify, so some part of it will indeed go to stock buybacks and executive salaries. Some of it will go to regular employee salaries, and some of it will go to pay for technical infrastructure, and some of it will go to pay for offices. Some of it will be spent on marketing, even.
70% of it will go to rights holders, though.
Spotify announced stock buybacks in 2021 that were greater in total that they most likely will pay artists in that same timeframe. Doing so artificially depresses the the amount of their revenue that’s counted as profit, which is what they use to calculate artist royalties.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/20/spotify-to-spend-1b-buying-its-own-stock/
Again, not true - the royalty payments are based on revenue, not profit.
To understand how absurd the claim that royalty payments are based on profits is, consider that Spotify has had a grand total of two profitable quarters throughout its whole existence - are you seriously claiming that no artist ever got paid outside those two quarters?
Better be, but don’t be optimistic as they are called capitalist. You know what they love and hate.
Spotify pays around 70% to artists, and barely make money in the best quarters. If google was taking 30% it would not be feasible, so there had to be a deal. I’m surprised the deal is 0%, but it had to be much lower than 30%.
Spotify pays 70% of its profits to artists. Not revenue. Almost all your subscription money and ad revenue goes to spotify. They just at some point decide that’s enough to take to spend on spotify, then give a tiny tiny amount to artists.
Not strictly correct. Spotify pays out from its net revenues (revenues when billing costs and tax are removed) and it pays to the various industry rights holders who then distribute the money. There are lots of complex deals in place and big rights holders are likely to have better deals than ad hoc users, plus it’s different in different countries.
The 70% figure is a PR thing Spotify pushes about as part of its constant battles with rights holders on exactly how much it will pay them. It’s trying to claim most of the money goes to artists but it’s opaque how much goes where.
70% of Spotify profits is a ‘tiny tiny amount’?
Their last quarterly financial statements shows $65 million profit on $3.36 billion in revenue. So, yes.
70% of profits would be miniscule, but the figure is not true so you can safely disregard everything they said.
Say they have 1 billion in potential profits.
Wow heey look at all those CEOs, let’s use 900.000.000 to raise their salaries, or use it to buy up some competitor!
Uh oh, nothing left for the artists… except some well known ones who’ll get a sweet deal.
That’s patently false, it’s 70% of revenue that goes to rights holders.
Seriously, why lie like this?
I like how in a thread discussing how Spotify had been lying about their cost structures you’re continuing to take their word for how fairly they compensate artists.
They’re a public company, they’re required by law to share financial info.
Do you perhaps have better data though?
From what I understand that 70% they’re paying artists is from “profit.”
And from another comment in this thread:
Their last quarterly financial statements shows $65 million profit on $3.36 billion in revenue.
And then you have stuff like this:
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/20/spotify-to-spend-1b-buying-its-own-stock/
So lets assume they make $65 million in profit every quarter between when that article came out and April 21 2026 (the period the article states they were doing buybacks). I count 18 quarters in that period. So if my math is correct that is $1.17 billion in “profit” in the same period of time they plan to do $1 billion in stock buybacks. But artists are only getting 70% of said profits. So that’s about $819 million to artists in the same period of time Spotify is doing $1 billion in stock buybacks.
So we have a mega corporation playing creative accounting and doing stock buybacks instead of paying artists more. Classic.
lets assume they make $65 million in profit every quarter
Where do you get this number from?
Hasn’t Spotify been operating at a loss for most of its existence? Wouldn’t that mean they paid 0€ to its creators most quaters (if it was actually calculated off profit)?
The real problem with the way Spotify distributes the money, is that they distribute it per play. This seems reasonable on the surface, but I think it’s pretty shit. I want my subscription fee to go to the artists I listen to. Right now they’re going to what most people listen to. This effect is worsened by the per-label deals: imagine if Beyonce wasn’t on Spotify, that would be bad for Spotify right? This gives her label (and by extension all major labels) massive leverage over how this works. It massively favors big artists.
The per-play model also enables playfarming as an economically viable scam.
While sure, there is leverage, but it’s not like Spotify is being arbitrary about their content. I can listen to obscure stuff, and I do. Also don’t forget that big artists are often big for a reason and it’s usually not for a lack of talent, taste just varies but certainly there always is a market for ‘pop music’.
The game is rigged
And we’re the pawns
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
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.
Its not a bug, its a feature. The end game has lots of backdoor deals.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The details surfaced today after Google requested the court to keep the specifics of its deal with Spotify sealed earlier in the month.
This fee could be reduced to 11% due to programs like user choice billing, which allows developers to use their own or third-party payment solutions.
Earlier this month, The Verge reported that the search giant offered Netflix a deal in 2017 to just pay a 10% fee on Play Store for subscriptions.
Last month, the Mountain View-based company reached a settlement with Match Group to let the dating app giant use third-party billing solutions on the Play Store.
Match Group’s rival Bumble was part of the user choice billing program pilot started in November 2022.
Epic, however, rejected Google’s offers to adopt user choice billing and went to trial earlier this month.
The original article contains 382 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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?
Were owned by Epic then sold to Songtradr last month
Thanks. Did you hear how it affects users like us?
As far as we know it’s business as usual but I would make sure to have a copy of everything I’ve bought if I were you, when a business gets passed around like that (and sold at a loss) it doesn’t bode well…
Yeah, right. Thanks to BC it’s so easy.
Rare Epic W
