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A comment on Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing. Parent comment

Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing by grog454 on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @10:13PM (#30785769)
> For Google, though, the "pull factor" is because you literally cannot sell directly to users through the Play Store.

Couldn't you replace "Google" and "Play Store" with "Spotify"?

You can "sell" your app directly to users through your own site (see Fortnite) or dubious sites like https://en.uptodown.com/android/general-android but you have the same "pull factor" with the Play Store that you do with Spotify (the user base).

The Google + Play Store and Spotify (company) + Spotify (platforms) situations don't seem fundamentally different to me, just different by degrees. Google's monopoly on Android app distribution is unparalleled.

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Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing by sodality2 on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @11:02PM (#30785998)
Spotify is a service whereas GP is an application platform. You distribute apps (services like Spotify) through GP, whereas you distribute product (songs) through Spotify. GP is the only (reasonable) way to get apps on Android, whereas there are dozens of legal licensed alternatives for Spotify.

You can try to find alternatives for an app store, but that doesn't change the fact that inherently within Android, there are certain roadblocks that simply don't exist for a Spotify competitor, for example.

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