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.
I have no idea why people not running businesses use banks when credit unions are right there and so much friendlier towards their members.
My credit union pays me back when I use an out of network ATM and get charged a fee, for instance. I assume there is some limit on it but I have never hit it.
Still weird
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.
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.
my credit unions don’t charge me fees and one even pays any ATM fees i incur using out of network ATM’s. I never have had more than a couple thousand dollars in my checking accounts at once.
What sort of activity would they charge a fee for like even money orders are free.
They have an interest bearing checking account that has fees ($7/mo) if you don’t keep a $500/mo average balance but the interest isn’t very good so I dunno why anyone would use it if they didn’t keep the balance high enough to avoid the fees.
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.
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?
Better be, but don’t be optimistic as they are called capitalist. You know what they love and hate.
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.
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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.
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.
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
My understanding is that they don’t split your subscription fee up to the people you listen to. They base it on who all of their subscribers are listening to. So even if you listened to your favorite obscure artists 24/7, they might not get a dime if nobody else is listening. However, a sizeable chunk of your subscription will go to whoever is most popular on the platform even if you didn’t listen to them at all.
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?
Okay but what shareholder committee is going to agree to giving your competitors equal advantage? Maybe you forget how companies work at this scale.
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.
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.
We’re totally screwing the artist, so we’ll give you a cut if we don’t pay any gees.
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.
Two of the largest music services in the world colluding to stay ahead of everybody else?
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.
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.
buy the cd and rip them into your phone
Just because you liked that in 2000 doesn’t mean that two decades later, it’s still ideal.
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.
much easier
For now, didn’t they just get bought out by another entity?
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
Yrp. These fucking companies need to stay in thier lanes.
😭
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.
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
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
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
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
Its not a bug, its a feature. The end game has lots of backdoor deals.
I’m doing great with xManager so I don’t give a flying fuck about this haha
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.
Pirated Spotify premium for Android.
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.
There are risks you have to deal with when you pirate stuff, not everything are beautiful sunsets yo know 😉😉.
Right now I’m using NewPipe x SponsorBlock and ViMusic and everything it’s going apparently fine, let’s see how the things evolve but right now are running smooth.
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.
Search for it in Google “xManager download”
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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Rare Epic W
