I’d say that they’re “cooking the books” as in: making it look like they’re in better shape than they are by cutting costs, but causing irreparable damage to themselves that will manifest in the long run.
I’ve survived 3 layoffs at Spotify last year alone. Once I started working there It didn’t take long to be proud and feel happy about it. Now, although people still find it cool when I tell them and I still do the same job (no workload increase), I know it is just like any other greedy corpo and I feel compelled to care less and less.
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
Not even that, it is the Unicode Character “𝕏” (U+1D54F).
L. O. L.
Seriously though, reasonable discussion of its usefulness aside, how can’t people see that outrageous statements like that without any scientific or practical backing, clearly made to inspire devotion and/or fear, keeping the hype and the money and resources drain on, are the telltale of a tech hype?