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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.
If it’s run by another bank out of network, your bank cannot waive them. The fees are set by the owner of the ATM and that fee goes to them.
Your bank can just cover/refund the fees for you.
Yes, I understand that, since obviously they’re two separate entities. Often banks themselves have a fee, which they waive. Then they reimburse the fee the other party charged.
Not if you withdraw from a store. I forgot the exact term. Just grab a drink or snack and select the withdraw amount on the card reader.
Yes. Technically paid extra but at least I get something back. Not ideal but better than using an ATM and risk a out of network fee.
that’s true, there’s no fee withdrawing money at a debit point of sale.
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)
Chase absolutely charges you for using a non-network ATM. I have a friend that has Chase for their bank and will not withdraw from a non-chase ATM even if the ATM has no fees because Chase will just charge him after the fact.
Makes me wonder why he still bothers keeping Chase.
Same here. I have a bank that charged their own fee in addition to whatever the ATm owner charges, so any withdrawal ends up being $8-10.
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I agree with you, but discussions with someone who preferred a bank ended with them having the opinion that their bank got them better interest rates on loans, waived fees for things like wire transfers, and perks of some nature.
I was unconvinced.
Still weird
In the Netherlands as well, as well as when you buy stuff at a store. There’s always a small fee when you use a debit or credit card.
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.
capitalism is a compilation of dick moves
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.
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.
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If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem
Agreed, but at least that is an upfront rule that technically applies to anyone with X amount of money. This is some back room handshake shit.
I’d be better if Apple / Google lowered their fees based upon how many installs anyone hit. At least it would apply to everyone, not just a couple of billionaires scratching each other’s backs.
Yes. I know a bank where you’re trading fees are lower or even zero, depending on the size of your share portfolio.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I think this is done to prevent anticompetitive issues. If Google were to profit off of both its own product (youtube / yt music) and also require its competitors to pay it a % of revenue, it would potentially open them up to more anticompetitive lawsuits.
They don’t do the same for ebooks with Kindle, which is why Amazon has removed the ability to buy them from the app. I’d be surprised if that was the reason for Spotify.
That got turned back on for me? Did they change it only for a few markets?
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.
So, not exactly to the artists. I get the impression you seem to know quite a lot about the deal, can you try to analyze how this 70% gets divided?
https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/
It’s net revenue split to rights holders according to the share of streams. If you have 1% of all streams on Spotify in a given time period, you get 0.7% of net revenue for that period.
How the rights holders distribute the money onward to the artists is not exactly transparent though.
I suspected that much, it must be a complicated matter with many different cases, considering how music is produced. Thank you for your insight.
Any time.
To be clear, I don’t think this should be taken as a defense of Spotify. I just think that these misconceptions distract from more valid criticisms.
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?
70% of revenue goes to rights holders.
Thus could mean that 69% of revenues go to rights holders A and B and 1% of revenues are spread between holders C - Z.
According to this random site with no sources the ranking is: Napster, Tidal, Apple, YouTube Music, Deezer, YouTube, Spotify, Pandora.
Wonder where SoundCloud fits in.
Pretty sure no one uses that for exclusives only because it will get so few plays
Better be, but don’t be optimistic as they are called capitalist. You know what they love and hate.
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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.
That’s patently false, it’s 70% of revenue that goes to rights holders.
Seriously, why lie like this?
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.
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 $65 million in profit every quarter
Where do you get this number from?
Hasn’t Spotify been operating at a loss for most of its existence? Wouldn’t that mean they paid 0€ to its creators most quaters (if it was actually calculated off profit)?
The real problem with the way Spotify distributes the money, is that they distribute it per play. This seems reasonable on the surface, but I think it’s pretty shit. I want my subscription fee to go to the artists I listen to. Right now they’re going to what most people listen to. This effect is worsened by the per-label deals: imagine if Beyonce wasn’t on Spotify, that would be bad for Spotify right? This gives her label (and by extension all major labels) massive leverage over how this works. It massively favors big artists.
The per-play model also enables playfarming as an economically viable scam.
Huh? If you listen to obscure music, they are paid for that, if you don’t they don’t. They base it of what people listen to, in the exact same way it would work if it was watermarked like you want it to be
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No it wouldn’t. Imagine a hyper-small version of Spotify with two artists and two subscribers. The fee is 10$ per user, distributed fully to the artists (to make the math easy).
User A only listens to artist A, user B only listens to artist B. BUT: user A listens to artist A 30 times a month, while user b only listens to artist B 10 times a month. Artist A gets paid 15 of the 20 total dollars - user B is paying for some of artist A’s fee, even though they’ve never listened to them.
My Spotify subscription is paying for the artists most put on large playlists, the ones most played by fitness centers and cafes, and for botfarms. I want it to pay the artists I listen to.
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’.
There’s a reason I use Tidal
The site you linked says YouTube pays “$0.0.00069 per view” lol
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
4% is basically just the payment processing fee (averaged out, since it’s slightly different for every transaction). Spotify has to pay that regardless of how you pay.
Didn’t Spotify join Epic’s side in the Epic v Apple lawsuit over the app store?
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The game is rigged
And we’re the pawns
Bold of you to consider yourself a pawn in this game.
Pawns? I don’t know if we worth that much.
We’re totally screwing the artist, so we’ll give you a cut if we don’t pay any gees.
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.
Kind of weird, considering they’re a major competitor, but so what? Why is this something they need to “admit”?
Stuff like this will be used in the anti monopoly cases going on world wide.
I’m all for reigning in monopolies, but I actually don’t see how this is anticompetitive.
A business paying zero fees is not anticompetitive. One specific business paying zero fees when everyone else has to and doesn’t know about it is.
This old saying feels more relevant than ever in this context:
Mind your own business.
As I see it, there can be various good reasons for striking a “better” deal with some than others, depending on who benefits from who etc. Just like how a retailer wouldn’t just pay all the suppliers the same, since they’re supplying different amounts of different products that don’t all have the same value to the retailer nor customer.
Let’s ignore who are the parts in this specific case, but rather discuss the broader principles of free trade. Why would a business have any right to know what their competitors are paying/earning? They can definitely ask as a part of a negotiation process, but in no way can they expect to get an answer. Instead, they can decide not to do business with one who won’t share this information with them. This is a good thing.
They’ve rigged the system so that nobody can compete with them. YouTube music and Spotify pay nothing and everyone else has to pay, meaning smaller business attempting to compete is starting with a severe disadvantage.
This is not your uncle selling an old TV to your neighbour, this impacts lots of consumers and other businesses.
As a consumer I’m a part of the business , so you are actually advocating people to be involved, even though you are contradicting your self because I don’t think you understand the implications of “minding your own business”.
bro would be catching up on FTX news and their takeaway would be “damn rats snitched on SBF!”
If you want to start a competitor to Spotify or Google music, you will have to pay those fees making it almost impossible for you to compete.
A company giving special access to it’s competition on a platform they control is usually used as an indicator of not being anticompetitive.
I hadn’t considered it from a “collusion” angle.
it would be different if it was for all it’s competition.
Eh, when Microsoft was required to ask you which browser you wanted, they didn’t need to offer every browser, just theirs, firefox and Chrome.
This could definitely be collusion, but I don’t think that not extending it to all competitiors is what makes it that.
Microsoft didn’t make the other browsers pay for the privilege of being a browser though.
How? Special back door secret deals for one and only one company is the definition of anticompetitive.
Competition is defined as more than one lol
Edit: I’m special, I am first place! But if you knew it was 1st place of one… I sure hope you think me as noncompetitive…🤣 It’s strange to me to think I’m competitive if I have no competitors.
Two of the largest music services in the world colluding to stay ahead of everybody else?
The thing is that any other competitor music app (or other app in general) faces the monetary barrier that Spotify secretly doesn’t face in order to process subscription payments through Google Play is anticompetitive.
In this way, Google is also acting more like a market-maker than merely a competitive player or partner in a free market, where they can decide who the dominant music streamer could be.
Netflix makes heavy use of Amazon Web Services, specifically S3 Buckets. I’m sure there’s a special deal worked out with them as an anchor client.
Malls do the same thing. While they’re not in direct competition in the same sense as Google/Spotify or Amazon/Netflix, some stores don’t even pay rent in a mall because it’s expected that they’ll drive traffic to the rest of the stores. 90% sure Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, etc are some of these anchor stores that very often pay little or negative rent due to the sheer revenue generated by other avenues.
What alternatives do you guys use besides Bandcamp? I am open to paying a sub as long as the artist is getting a decent cut.
Pirate and buy official merch, they make more of that anyway. Also live shows
LiveNation has fixed the issue that artists got paid for playing live, not the companies can take that cut as well.
Are you sure “fixed” is the correct word?
buy the cd and rip them into your phone
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It’s pretty much one of the only ways to make sure the artist gets a half decent cut though.
Unless you want to use bandcamp, which is much easier.
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Bought out by EPIC, sadly… we’ll see where things go…
Not anymore, EPIC sold it to Songtradr
https://blog.bandcamp.com/2023/11/22/songtradr-acquires-bandcamp/
https://www.songtradr.com/blog/posts/songtradr-bandcamp-acquisition
I hate epic, but I also can’t tell if this is good or bad… my statement stands: we’ll see.
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the first CD i ripped was like 2 years ago
Not ideal but artists get paid proper. Just don’t share then you’re mostly fine.
P.S.: Subject to your local law which may prohibits ripping a CD. This is NOT a legal advise.
Edit: I don’t know if my statement is right or not given the downvotes. Can someone explain?
Tidal seems nice
Can confirm. Tidal has “lossless” audio, but app is horrendous, albeit better than Spotify’s.
Also tech support is absolutely useless, still would prefer over Spotify every time.
Honestly love its Daily Recommendations
Buying the music and selfhosting a streaming server is an option, though obviously not for everyone
It’s actually really easy if you just invest in a Synology NAS. You can install the music server package with a few clicks and copy music to the folder, then open a port on your firewall and the Synology music app streams it. Pretty nifty
Doesn’t even need to be Synology. Plenty of solutions that can be installed on your own “open” hardware (old PC, mini PC or just a more powerful server)
For sure. The Synology is just dead simple because it already has the package to install and there’s a mobile app it pairs with.
As a Spotify user, I’m not really ok with how much they pay artists… But I don’t use Spotify for “streaming” even though I stream a lot from them, I use it to discover new music, find obscure bands, their algorithm is amazing at that.
I could easily selfhost as you suggested, but then it would be my own music bubble.
I go to concerts and buy merchandise as much as possible when I want to support an artist.
7digital has a reasonable selection, but it’s not all available lossless, which would be almost incomprehensible in 2023 if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re talking about the music industry.
Im not really sure what cut 7digital gives to artists either
Apple Music pays more than Spotify. It’s probably still not “decent”, but it’s more.
NetEase Music. It’s a spotify clone from China, and the VIP version costs like $1.20 a month.
It doesn’t spy on your phone and requires zero permissions (I’ve tested this extensively), but you will need a VPN set to China, Hong Kong or Taiwan for it to work (assuming you don’t live in either place).
China and doesn’t spy on your phone, I’ll take things that don’t go together for 200 Alex
I’m in China and work as head of IT security for a European company. As such I monitor my phone religiously for any transgressions. Netease Music works with zero permissions (unless you want to use the downloader) and doesn’t try to exfiltrate any data whatsoever.
Install PCAPdroid and see for yourself, you can monitor all traffic on system level on a per app basis.
at the very least, I expect it to make requests for every song you’re streaming which are associated with your account and payment information.
they also get your music consuming habits, because they know the times you listen to music and to which music at each time.
that’s a hell lot of data to analyze and sell.
As if Spotify and other services don’t lmao.
Spotify even dug your bluetooth device name.
definitely. You’re absolutely right, Spotify is a privacy nightmare and I didn’t say otherwise.
The post I was replying to was arguing that the service they were using was private, I just told them that even if the app doesn’t need any permissions they still have the ability to spy on their users and most probably do so.
And how, prey tell, should a music streaming service that delivers suggestions based on your preferences deliver content if not by analyzing your listening behavior?
If you’re afraid of that, then there’s no music service whatsoever you can use.
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.
They got rid of a whole bunch of staff, so the service is effectively on life support.
Shit. Thanks you too for these news.
They are removing lots of the nice things they did like days when an the revenue goes to artists
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!
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What is xManager?
I wondered this myself, so Googled it, and found https://www.xmanagerapp.com/
… And I’m still none the wiser. All I learned that it’s for Android and does… something.
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I’ve used it for a few months, and every time after 60 days exactly spotify killed my account.
It’s nice if you just want to listen to adfree music, but not to actually build a library you can rely on.
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Yeah I’ve been using NewPipe x Sponsorblock for about 5 years, the main benefit with Spotify was that frequently accessed songs are stored locally, while newpipe streams them all over again, unless you explicitly download them. And the spotify algorithm was much better at suggesting related artists, my youtube algo is overwhelmed from all the non-music stuff I watch.
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As someone who have distributed on all platforms, Spotify is still the best. Sure it doesn’t pay that well, but it does enable your songs to get discovered and played
This is incredibly off topic here considering the fact we’re mostly talking about Google and the company giving a market advantage to companies that could cut them some “deals”
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