11 mo. ago • 96%

Spotify starts 'disinvesting' in France in response to new music-streaming tax

techcrunch.com Spotify starts 'disinvesting' in France in response to new music-streaming tax | TechCrunch

Spotify is pulling support for two music festivals in protest against a new tax directed at music-streaming platforms operating in France.

Hacker News @derp.foo Spotify starts divesting from France in response to new music-streaming tax

Technology @lemmy.zip Spotify starts ‘disinvesting’ in France in response to new music-streaming tax

34 comments

Spotify is saying it's "a real blow to innovation".

Honestly wtf they on about. 1-2% tax on their massive multi million platform, and the tax goes directly to support music in the country.

Fuck Spotify.

151
- Spotify still can’t figure out how to make a profit even with all their subscribers. Theo the 1% tax adds to their loss. Still fuck Spotify.
  
  64
  
  I have a good idea of where they could have found about $200M.
  
  21
- Oh yeah. Innovation from Spotify. Like their great recent one, copying TikTok for a few weeks.
  
  27
  
  What are you on about?! Spotify innovates all the time. Almost every week I'm greeted with a new way to fuck up their app and/or service. That's impressive! 😐
  
  37
- Innovation? The fuck have they innovated? They're stupid Bluetooth spotify only car thing that they bailed on?
  
  Spotify wrapped .. yeah no shit I played my favourite song the most this year.... Such an inovating feature of useless information...
  
  They did innovate underpaying artists tho.
  
  19
  
  Well you know how before Spotify, people used to listen to music from their favorite artists? Spotify made it so that you could listen to music from your favorite artists via a middleman.
  
  🫲innovation🫱
  
  6
  
  https://youtu.be/MXudOLStaXA?si=Jog8AWkBNPWQniHs
  
  https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU?si=SbFyIPRWzFf3iM0y
  
  https://youtu.be/-9qUfJme4eU?si=x5QQOayMt2cZ-TBB
  
  https://youtu.be/et8R5i5UEjY?si=YItE_cfFqkul9QC1
  
  All worth the watch about how Spotify underpays artists and etc.
  
  6
- Innovation my ass. Their UI has been as a disaster as ever. Major reason why I stopped paying for their crappy service years ago
  
  19
- Wait, what does "to support music in the country" mean? Spotify already pays the majority of their revenue to record labels. That is funding for the music industry. Aren't French labels a part of this scheme?
  
  Not a Spotify fan, just thinking about this on the basis of some facts I'm aware of.
  
  17
  
  Its not unusual for countries outside the biggest media producers (like the US for instance) to have rules in place to make sure there is continued local cultural output.
  
  17
- What have they ever innovated?
  
  4
  
  It "starts instantly" or some shit.
  
  3
When a huge company pulls out if a country due to its laws affecting their ability to make money, it should tell you that the company in question only has its status due to exploiting something that should be being regulated.

44
- Or that a quant figured out it would be cheaper to cut staff and stop operating in a specific region vs pay extra fees to continue operating in that region.
  
  10
- Like Twitch and South Korea huh?
  
  3
  
  Well in this case the companies that should be regulated are the Internet companies in SK. 😂 Good counterpoint (not /s)
  
  4
- Well yes... Or that the government has enacted laws to extract rent from international companies.
  
  1
I'm in the UK. Spotify family subscription is £17.99/month (US$ 22.84). Same price as Netflix premium, although I have Netflix standard at £10.99 (US$ 13.96). Now, I know that they give a high percentage to the record companies, source says 70% but really? What are they doing over there? They seem to have some fundamental problems. With Netflix, my history, watchlist, search results, etc. are consistent across sessions and devices. Spotify can't manage this. Netflix of course produce a significant quantity of original content. Spotify do a few live music sessions. I don't think that the user experience with Spotify has changed significantly in the last 6 years that I have been a customer.

So they're not making money. They're not improving the user experience or meeting the market standard for it. They're not producing original content and they seem unable to comply with local laws. Why have they not been disrupted by one of their competitors?

26
- What you are missing is that they are majority owned by the same record companies they are paying out 70% to. They even specifically structured the deals between Spotify and labels so that they pay labels in a way that allows labels not to credit artists for nearly 50% of all streams meaning the label gets to keep it.
  
  Chokepoint capitalism by Cory Doctorow is a great book that goes into detail about how it works
  
  27
- Tbh I prefer the different play sessions between devices of device A is offline.
  That way I have my work playlist at work and my home playlist at home ready to play.
  
  2
- Anecdotally, about 25% of my circle have moved to various other services, so maybe not a huge disruption but they're definitely losing some customers to competitors at least
  
  2
  
  What other services?
  
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- Permanently Deleted
  
  1
Innovating ways to pay less the artists.

18
Also known as divesting, smdh

18

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