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GenEcon

@GenEcon@lemm.ee

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Spotify is raising the cost of Premium subscriptions, again (www.engadget.com)

Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year's $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan...

GenEcon ,

How does this work? Spotify has a deal with the music publishers, where they give 70 % of all subscription income to the music companies. The music companies (Sony, Warner, etc) then split the money based on the share of streams.

How can Apple pay out 2.5x70 %, so 175 %? Are thes losing with every subscription?

GenEcon , (edited )

The problem is that Spotify is losing money each year. They aren't profitable. And if they are keep focusing on music, they never will. Their deal with the music labels says that they need to give 70 % of each subscription to the music labels. So by getting more people to signup, they only marginally increase their revenue. Same goes for raising their prices.

Thats why they tried focusing on Podcasts and Audiobooks. Those are a lot more profitable, either by adding ads (Podcasts) or by charging a premium (audiobooks).

GenEcon ,

They pay less than Tidal claims it pays. So far Tidal has a really bad history of publishing correct numbers.

GenEcon ,

That whole article is BS, they even say it themselves:

Rates are rarely paid at a flat rate per stream

There is no payout per stream. Instead a fixed percentage of the subscription price is shared among each streamed song. So why does Tidal pay more then? Either their subscriber numbers are still incorrect (they have a history of publishing way higher numbers than in reality), their subscriber listen to less music (which is the main reason Apple Music pays more per stream on paper, since its often bundled) or their audience focuses more on a single artist (or a genre).

GenEcon ,

From the 10 Dollar, taxes will be deducted. Afterwards Apple or Google take their share (if you subscribe using the App). Of the remaining money the Music labels take 70 %, and Spotify keeps 30 %. The music labels pay a fraction of the 70 % to the artists, depending on the contract and the artist's share of streams reported by Spotify.

GenEcon ,

And still Mercedes is the car company with the highest autonomy level of any car manufacturer. And no one talks about that.

GenEcon ,

Capitalism also works without growth.

GenEcon ,

Its not even close. For example, end-to-end encryption is standard in the west. In China its heavily restricted and basically non-existant.

GenEcon ,

I did say the exact opposite...

GenEcon ,

Its actually also a media problem. For example, the largest Tiktok account of a german politician belongs to Maximilian Krah, of the far right party AFD. Just yesterday it was revealed that his personal assistant is actually a Chinese spy. Krah himself voiced a lot of pro-Chinese opinions before, like being pro annexation of Taiwan and denying the genocide on the uigyurs.

This begs the question if his Tiktok popularity is based on a non-biased algorithm or if the CCP made a deal with him, boosting his Tiktok popularity in exchange for being pro-China.

GenEcon ,

As someone using android/windows in private life and MacOS for work, I can confirm. As long as its Apple, it works. But as soon as you use any third party software or hardware, its completly bugged.

GenEcon ,

Talk to families of unjustified imprisoned people or to the people itself. His 'fixing' was done by basically imprisoning everyone, which just happened to be close to any suspect gang member. There where even cases where a mailman was imprisoned because he just happenend to deliver a parcel during a raid.

Yes, he fixed the gang problem for now. But at a high price – the loss of a fair justice system. He imprisoned 1.2 % of the total population in just 2 years.

I know that freedom vs security is a fine balance and once security suffers significantly, you are willing to give up quiet a lot of freedom. But since he just imprisoned everyone and their relatives, its only a temporary fix – unless he wants to imprison them for life.

GenEcon ,

Thats what I meant with 'if security gets really low, you are willing to sacrifice a lot of freedom'

My major complaint is, that he doesnt have a plan for the time after they will eventually get out of prison.

GenEcon ,

It also infuriates me if the use 'improving the optimum' or claim something is optimal without the proof, for example 'this is the optimal configuration of a production system' after a comparison of 2–3 different variants.

GenEcon ,

Its mainly touchscreen due to two reasons: 1. Touchscreens are significantly cheaper than analog controls. 2. Touchscreens support the 'publish now, debug later' approach of Tesla and a lot of Chinese car manufacturers.

EU Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers (ec.europa.eu)

The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps to iPhone and iPad users (‘iOS users') through its App Store. In particular, the Commission found that Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from...

GenEcon ,

Either that or just don't directly compete with them. Without Apple Music no one would have complained about it.

But you can't establish a monopoly and leverage it to charge your direct competitors a high fee.

GenEcon ,

To be honest: I am not so worried about the app store – the majority doesnt care anyways. Its in my opinion far more important that Apple and Google aren't able to leverage their monopoly into other areas, similar how Microsoft did so with Windows and Internet explorer.

Either ditch iMessage Apple Music, apple TV, etc completly or force apple to give their competitors an equal paying field, meaning no costs to use the app store, no default App and no free promotion.

GenEcon ,

Its not about not paying Huawei. Its about the way the CCP uses Huawei to spy.

GenEcon ,

There is a difference between a democratic, allied government spying and an authoritarian government spying.

GenEcon ,

I just double checked, because I couldn't believe this, but you are right. If you ask about estimates of the Sudanese war (starting in 2023) it reports estimates between 5.000–15.000.

Its seems like Gemini is highly politically biased.

GenEcon ,

Economists of course know of these flaws and use GDP accordingly. Its for example a great measure how complex the economic flows are.

Of course its known, that countries can easily manipulate the data, for example China, who retrospectively changed their measuring of the economic data of 2022 and increased their GDP growth 2023 that way to 5.2 %. Or Russia, who spent an enormous sum for arms production, financed by debt, which of course led to a higher GDP at the cost of debt.

Nevertheless, if you consider these kind of 'tricks', its a good measure for growth year on year. But this growth can mean two things: higher living standards for its population or a more complex economy.

Its the same with the BMI. Its a good measure in general, but looking at a specific individual, its a highly deceptive measurement.

GenEcon ,

More complex means that you focus on what you can do best and pay others to do what they can do best. Instead of growing your own wheat and pottery, you and others pay a third person to get a tractor and you can instead focus on doing pottery and sell them and buy wheat. This way more gets produced.

And while the wheat you grow yourself isnt part of the GDP, the wheat the third person grows for you, is. Therefore a more complex economy significantly boosts the GDP more than increased productivity. So if you produce your own wheat and your own pottery and your neighbor does the same, the GDP is 0. If you sell your pottery and your neighbor his wheat, both get added to the GDP.

GenEcon ,

Because they don't sell.

GenEcon ,

Thank you! I don't get why they use such weird measurements. Why not use %?

GenEcon ,

Generally one of the best tech channels!

GenEcon ,

Of course its a hype right now. But at the same time AI improved my daily working live in the past year so much! I can outsource a lot of annoying tasks to AI and focus on the more creative tasks and everything strategic.

GenEcon ,

  1. Githubs Copilot

  2. ChatGPT for larger coding tasks (its better at explaining what it does)

  3. Deepl.com/write for proofreading and better texts.

GenEcon ,

MacOS is even worse than iOS. Have to use it for work. And while the hardware is the best I've ever used, the software is complete garbage.

AMD removes Taiwan branding from CPUs, says change wasn't made to appease China | The 'Made in Malaysia' markings will remain, though. (www.tomshardware.com)

AMD removes Taiwan branding from CPUs, says change wasn't made to appease China | The 'Made in Malaysia' markings will remain, though.::AMD will no longer mark its chips as made in Taiwan, a change that many theorize was made at the behest of China.

GenEcon ,

That will be 100 % vetoed. Most nations have a veto right for selling of companies of strategic value, for example Germany has vetoed a lot of sales after the selling of Kuka hugely backfired.

Germany is world class in producing production facilities and Kuka has been one of the most successful companies. These robots you see assembling cars? There has been a time where they were almost all manufactured by Kuka – a german so called 'Mittelstand' company. From 2016 to 2021 Midea – a Chinese company bought Kuka and ultimately decided to make them privately owned again instead of publicly traded. Relatively shortly after this, all patents where transferred to China and a lot of European Companies decided to ditch Kuka due to their strategic dependency and fear of technology theft of China. Since then, the EU has decided to block a lot more sales of European companies of strategic importance to China – especially since its not an even playing field, due to European companies not being allowed to buy Chinese companies in the same way.

I am pretty sure some similar Veto will happen with AMD.

GenEcon ,

Thats simply incorrect. For example 'Deutschlandfunk Der Tag' did a long series (~5 hours) about the impact of the war on Palestinians living under Hamas occupation during the war and their feelings towards Israel. They even did a Meta-report 'How much attention does the dying in Gaza get in german media' where they interviewed Salma Abuzaina, a Palestine activist in germany.

Maybe you just don't consume public funded media if you haven't heard any report about it. The conflict between reporting on Palestinian deaths and Isreali deaths without negating the suffering of any of the parties is a huge topic in german media.

GenEcon ,

I use Typewise. A swiss company, by far the best keyboard layout and they don't use any data from what you type.

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