What's the conceptual difference between Apple charging 30% for Patreon subcribers vs. charging 30% for purchases on Temu or the Amazon app? This distinction seems completely arbitrary to me. I suspect the only reason it exists is that adding a 30% Apple surcharge to every Amazon purchase would cause too much outrage.
Disclaimer:
I've never used Temu or the Amazon app, but I'm assuming they don't apply a 30% surcharge on physical goods on iOS.
App Store policy (written or otherwise? It's hard to say.) only levies the 30% on digital goods delivered in the app. Uber, for example, doesn't pay 30% of rider fees to Apple.
Patreon is in this weird gray area because you kinda-sorta are getting digital goods delivered via the Patreon app, depending on how you look at it. And obviously if there's a way that Apple can squint and say it falls under their purview, they will...
Playing the devil's advocate here,
I believe the rational to take 30% cut for only digital goods is that, usually digital goods have zero marginal cost. To 'manufacture' an additional digital asset, the company doesn't need to spend anything extra.
This assumption starts breaking as internet becomes more ubiquitous and for anything really outside gaming coins. Example, for every additional Spotify subscriber, Spotify needs to pay music producers as well. The economics is now very close to physical goods being sold in Temu or Amazon.
This doesn't work for Patreon, which often isn't merely about "digital assets": while some people on Patreon might be using it to merely sell access to some digital portfolio, many (I'd even say "most") use it as a form of VIP club system, with direct access to the artist, custom work products, physical swag that you receive in the mail, shoutouts during live shows... Patreon isn't a system that inherently scales with anything close to zero marginal cost, at least for most of the tiers of most of the artists I've seen on the platform.
Digital goods and tips are required to use IAPs and pay the fee. Patreon is either one or the other, or maybe a mix of both. I suspect this has been published more than they anticipated, and they’ll have to allow tips to use external payment systems.
Depending upon how you look at it, there is more than one competitor to Apple. It kinda sucks that most of the competition to iOS runs one operating system, yet that one operating system is supported by multiple hardware vendors and multiple online storefronts.
Yet there is also another competitor to Apple on iOS devices. It is called the web. Patreon in no way owes money to Apple if the end user fires up a web browser on their phone and makes their contribution through the website. Argue all that you want about convenience, and you're probably right on that front, but it is a way to circumvent Apple to have more of your contribution delivered to the intended recipient.
In the end, the decision of iOS users to support Apple's practices are at issue here. Sometimes you just have to say no using whatever means are at your disposal.
Of course, but I don't use shopping apps so I don't know who does or does not have an app. Temu just comes to mind because of their dismal reputation and obnoxious marketing.
I don't think you get it because you wouldn't have asked the question in the first place if you did.
If there is actual competition in a market, the surplus generated by economic transactions is more fairly distributed by the participants in the transaction. When there is competition, businesses also need to compete and improve their products to drive efficiencies (for better margins) and to make the product more attractive to buyers.
Because Apple is in a monopoly position, the only way to sell to Apple device users is via their app store. If you want to sell on their App store you need to give apple 30% of revenue. To be clear, Apple does not provide 30% of the value here. This 30% is pure rent seeking, once the app is installed Apple provides 0 value.
If you really wanted to equate Apple and Amazon, it would be like Amazon taking 30% of the initial transaction then forcing all revenue generated from products sold on Amazon to give 30% of revenue in perpetuity to them.
At no point was I equating Apple and Amazon. I was asking why Apple doesn't collect 30% from Amazon (which Amazon would naturally pass on to consumers) when people buy goods from Amazon's iOS app.
My entire point is that this distinction seems increasingly arbitrary on Apple's part and is perhaps driven by the expected outrage if they tried to pull the same stunt with retailers like Amazon or Temu.
> driven by the expected outrage if they tried to pull the same stunt with retailers
which is pretty good evidence that society should pass a law to disallow apple from doing it (rather than let them pick and choose to charge a subset small enough to bypass public outrage, but still rake in an undeserved tax on apple device users)!
While the blog post stresses the 30% fee, I read the Patreon post that it was responding to. I am subscribed to a couple infrequent but high-quality creators on Patreon who charge by deliverable instead of as a monthly subscription that won't make sense since months may go by without a deliverable. This will make monetization via Patreon unviable for them.
So it sounds like someone should make a Patreon page that renders a video of someone ordering what you want on Amazon, that will help Apple get a 30% markup on Amazon purchases.
Disclaimer:
I've never used Temu or the Amazon app, but I'm assuming they don't apply a 30% surcharge on physical goods on iOS.