Spotify Files Complaint Against Apple With European Regulators Over 'Unfair' App Store Practices

[macfacts]

There is an easy fix for Spotify. Make their app available in their own App Store that they run and develop.

But apple doesn't let others run iOS app stores. Apple has a monopoly on them.
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• "First, apps should be able to compete fairly on the merits, and not based on who owns the App Store. We should all be subject to the same fair set of rules and restrictions—including Apple"

Everyone has to pay 30%, not only Spotify. It's literally the same rule for everybody. But sure, Apple can pay itself 30% of the Apple Music revenue
If you want your service to be on iOS you have to play by App Store rules. It's just that simple. If they don't like it they should become an Android exclusive or just stop offering the subscription via IAP - I personally wouldn't care.

Apple's iOS app store rules do not override the laws of europe. If apple wants to sell apps in Europe, they have play by the rules of that country.

 

[Rogifan]

Because they can't charge their apple tax for external services

Spotify isn’t an external service?
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Because the service you are purchasing exists outside of the app. The service you are buying is car service. It’s the same reason you can use Amazon or whatever retailers app to buy a pair of socks. The product you’re buying exists outside of the app. In Spotify’s case the service you are buying exists inside the app on Apple’s platform.

So? Why does that matter? Also when I get an Uber I’m paying for it inside the app on my iPhone. What does it matter whether what I’m paying for exists within the app or not?

 

[bollman]

What people here seems unable to grasp is that Spotify would love to take the "burden" from Apple of payment processing. Spotify can do that themselves just as well. But, Apple makes sure that Spotify in no way makes it known within the app that a purchase can be done without an in-app purchase.

Google charges the same 30% for IAPs, but they allow Spotify to direct customers to sign up on their website instead, avoiding the "tax".

A small developer can take advantage of Googles and Apples great infrastructure for payments and I for one would be happy to give 30% of my earnings for avoiding to process payments, win-win for developer and Apple/Google.
But, for a big company perfectly able to process the payments themselves, the 30% tax that is unavoidable on Apples App Store becomes a real problem.

The easy solution is that Apple allows subscriptions to made outside of the app store for "service-apps" like spotify, netflix and so on.

 

[Rob_2811]

Spotify isn’t an external service?
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So? Why does that matter? Also when I get an Uber I’m paying for it inside the app on my iPhone. What does it matter whether what I’m paying for exists within the app or not?

If Apple took a 30% cut of every (non digital) transaction made on an iOS app they wouldn't have anybody on the platform.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Daniel Ek and Spotify have no business even using the word "fair". Their business from the beginning has been based on ripping off the very musicians that provide them with the product they sell, and it's only getting worse:

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide....U0fkiDFyc4joomV4VyhCetZHcxaLVvi9i8S6k6zavdGxk

I've cancelled my Spotify subscription but I'm staying with Apple Music. I hope Tim goes right ahead and kicks them out of his App Store.

You know almost all "songwriter royalties" go entirely to the labels, right? Songwriter rights are almost always signed over to the labels, except for the top artists that have big negotiating power. Songwriter rights are also entirely different from the rights an artist retains in their recorded performance, which are not seeing a rate increase. This rate hike is pretty much just a cash grab by the labels, and isn't that good for individual artists.

 

[mrow]

That may be a good point, but whereas I used to find Apple intuitive, I am now baffled by a lot of their software. I would have an easier time keeping MP3s on onedrive and playing them than I would figuring this out.

They just sent me another 3 month free trial to Apple Music.

I can't even add a song to a playlist. When I tap on Add to Playlist, it says "This requires iCloud Music Library."

I can choose not now or Turn On.

So far I have chosen Not Now.

Why? Because it says absolutely nothing about what it does.

I don't know if it's going to do something whacky to my iTunes library on my Mac (which has happened before when I've tapped on things I wish I hadn't).

I already have "iTunes in the Cloud." Now there's iCloud Music Library in addition to iTunes in the Cloud? And in addition to iTunes Match?

That's three cloud services! In addition to Apple Music which is itself a cloud service. That's too many clouds.

I guess Spotify doesn't have this feature (although it automatically adds local files), but if they ever had a feature like this I think it would be much less confusing.

I just don't trust Apple and cloud things. I say that as a very long-term Apple online service user, going back to eWorld in the 90s. I have stuff still hosted on freeservers and tripod from the mid 1990s.

But all my dotMac and MobileMe galleries are gone. I know they gave me time to download (and I did), but the idea of a cloud service is that you upload it and could be lost at sea for 10 years and come back and your stuff is still there. Not if you used iTools, or dotMac, or MobileMe! Don't count on getting lost at sea.

I don't remember if it was the transition from dotmac to mobileme or mobileme to iCloud, but they had to send out CD-ROMs just to get people on a certain OS to not lose access to their e-mail and other cloud data. They're just clunky when it comes to the cloud.

They just have an insane way of dealing with the cloud, and I will absolutely never trust it. I trust Google Drive, Google Photos, OneDrive, DropBox, etc, because they make sense. It's a folder where you put stuff, like FTP but simpler.

Apple had the right idea with iDisk (though it was painfully slow), but their app based storage ever since iCloud is just confounding to me.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant. It just happened.

iCloud Drive is just a folder where you put stuff, FYI. It works the same way as Dropbox or OneDrive or whatever. It uses whatever space you have whether it’s the free space or more if you pay for it. You can access it from an app on your iPhone/iPad, a folder on your Mac and a web browser from any computer. You really should give it another shot. Apple has some of the best pricing for cloud storage of any of the big cloud storage providers.

 

[bluecoast]

Sad to say that Apple are starting to behave like the Microsoft of 15-20 years ago i.e. the Microsoft that strangled Netscape.

Spotify is the better service as well - and I say that as someone who was an Apple Music subscriber for just over 2 years.

Spotify’s music discovery is better and they’re constantly trying to make their product better.

Compare with Apple Music - they offered me a free month’s trial a few days ago, I took them up on their offer and the service seemed exactly the same as it did a year ago when I was last on it (and was feeling tired then).

I love Apple products but it feels like there’s a rot starting to creep in.

Maybe they need to take a fall, like Microsoft did - it seems that the old adage ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ still stands.
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Spotify has a point here. And I bet they are not targeting the App Store guidelines in general. They clearly have Apple Music in mind, a direct competitor where the 30% fee on subscriptions is not applied.

I remember the 30% thing being an issue for Netflix as well and they removed the subscription option from their iOS app. As Apple does not have a competitor product for Netflix they did not interfere. With Spotify however they deliberately make it harder for them to offer a great user experience and ignore complaints, because they probably could move many iOS-Spotify-Users to Apple Music if they locked out Spotify.

Oh, and this one is for the fanboys:
- Spotify was there first, duh.
- Apple Music sucked when it came out (the UI!)
- Spotify is more diverse with a lot of K-Pop, Video Game Soundtracks and Indie Artists
- I have my playlists there that took hours of work and I am not going to do this again on Apple Music.

So please let's just not get down the "Apple Music is better anyways, lol"-road here, shall we?

It’s going to be interesting how Netflix will react when Apple DOES have a competing video service in a few weeks time.

 

[mrow]

Spotify isn’t an external service?
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So? Why does that matter? Also when I get an Uber I’m paying for it inside the app on my iPhone. What does it matter whether what I’m paying for exists within the app or not?

That is the distinction Apple makes which is the answer to the question you asked.

 

[mike2q]

Apple doesn't prohibit Spotify from selling subscriptions outside the App Store, so this will go nowhere.
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Kind of like McDonald's is rigged because I can't buy a Sonic hot dog there?

No, that's a bad analogy. It would be more like if you could only have one bank account and that card only worked at one restaurant. That one store would sell most everything but only items your bank approved would be available. Your bank would also be able to control what you see on the menu.
It would be different if you could load more than one store on iOS as you can with Android but one store is bad for everyone. It's not like most people will buy a second phone because an app they want is cheaper from a different outlet.

 

[mrow]

Sad to say that Apple are starting to behave like the Microsoft of 15-20 years ago i.e. the Microsoft that strangled Netscape.

Spotify is the better service as well - and I say that as someone who was an Apple Music subscriber for just over 2 years.

Spotify’s music discovery is better and they’re constantly trying to make their product better.

Compare with Apple Music - they offered me a free month’s trial a few days ago, I took them up on their offer and the service seemed exactly the same as it did a year ago when I was last on it (and was feeling tired then).

I love Apple products but it feels like there’s a rot starting to creep in.

Maybe they need to take a fall, like Microsoft did - it seems that the old adage ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ still stands.
[doublepost=1552505402][/doublepost]

It’s going to be interesting how Netflix will react when Apple DOES have a competing video service in a few weeks time.

Apple Music isn’t for everybody just like any given Apple product isn’t for everybody. Apple is not strangling competition. Apple isn’t giving a product away for free that the competition charges money for (a la your Microsoft and Netscape example) nor are they forcing Spotify to only allow people who signed up with an in app purchase to use the app. Anyone can go sign up on the Spotify website and pay the fee Spotify themselves sets, just like they can sign up with in app purchase that Spotify themselves sets.
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No, that's a bad analogy. It would be more like if you could only have one bank account and that card only worked at one restaurant. That one store would sell most everything but only items your bank approved would be available. Your bank would also be able to control what you see on the menu.
It would be different if you could load more than one store on iOS as you can with Android but one store is bad for everyone. It's not like most people will buy a second phone because an app they want is cheaper from a different outlet.

Yes, but you as a consumer know going into your purchase that Apple only allows apps from their official App Store. If you don’t agree with that, or don’t want that, you are free to buy an Android phone.

You want the government to force Apple to allow other app stores because you like iPhones better than Android. You have choice as a consumer. You just don’t like the choices you have so you want the government to force your preferences on someone else.

 

[Rob_2811]

Sad to say that Apple are starting to behave like the Microsoft of 15-20 years ago i.e. the Microsoft that strangled Netscape.

Spotify is the better service as well - and I say that as someone who was an Apple Music subscriber for just over 2 years.

Spotify’s music discovery is better and they’re constantly trying to make their product better

Compare with Apple Music - they offered me a free month’s trial a few days ago, I took them up on their offer and the service seemed exactly the same as it did a year ago when I was last on it (and was feeling tired then).

I love Apple products but it feels like there’s a rot starting to creep in.

Maybe they need to take a fall, like Microsoft did - it seems that the old adage ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ still stands.
[doublepost=1552505402][/doublepost]

It’s going to be interesting how Netflix will react when Apple DOES have a competing video service in a few weeks time.

They just pulled the IAP option and carried on as usual.

 

[bluecoast]

Apple Music isn’t for everybody just like any given Apple product isn’t for everybody. Apple is not strangling competition. Apple isn’t giving a product away for free that the competition charges money for (a la your Microsoft and Netscape example) nor are they forcing Spotify to only allow people who signed up with an in app purchase to use the app. Anyone can go sign up on the Spotify website and pay the fee Spotify themselves sets, just like they can sign up with in app purchase that Spotify themselves sets.

You sidestep the point that Spotify is making that Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% App Store ‘tax’ and that Apple Music is price matching Spotify (and always has done).

Again, that Spotify claim that they had a streaming app ready for the Apple Watch (we’ll have to take them at their word) is not a good look for Apple if true.

That Spotify isn’t allowed to integrate with Siri or the HomePod, again is is suspicious behaviour on behalf of Apple.

Presumably the APIs are there to allow music services to integrate with these two services - Apple are just keeping them private. If it’s good enough for Apple Music why won’t it share the APIs with others?

 

[LuckyBubba]

Spotify has more paid subscribers than Apple Music. This is a well known fact.

If Apple were to cancel all subscription payments paid via the App Store, they would be open to class action lawsuits and a host of other legal issues.

Spotify has a point here.
Apple is not only the owner of the App Store, they are also a competitor offering the exact same type of service.
Having a built in 30% “fee” is the epitome of an unfair advantage.
They are simply acting as a card processor in the transaction. The average processing fee is 5% or less literally everywhere else.
That would be fair.

Spotify made the choice to ask apple to handle a subscription - Spotify could ask their customers to pay outside of apple store and then log in using the app - that's what i do with other subscriptions.
When we make a purchase at amazing, it's not using apple to make the purchase - Match dot com offers discounts if you pay at their website and then we can log in via the app.

It's time for spotify to educate their staff so that they can educate their customers. Besides, everyone receives a cut for apps and services - just because stores have turned to virtual stores doesn't mean stores shouldn't make money. If a customer goes to best buy, do people really feel that Best Buy is not making money on software and services?

 

[Piggie]

And if that happens, you would then have tons of rogue apps that Apple has ZERO way of vetting for security, compatibility, etc etc. Theres a reason the iPhone and Apple are huge. Yes they tightly control things but that control leads to a far superior product for THE AVERAGE CONSUMER (spare me the android geekery please).

Like on a MacBook or iMac you mean?

 

[Oohara]

You know almost all "songwriter royalties" go entirely to the labels, right? Songwriter rights are almost always signed over to the labels, except for the top artists that have big negotiating power. Songwriter rights are also entirely different from the rights an artist retains in their recorded performance, which are not seeing a rate increase. This rate hike is pretty much just a cash grab by the labels, and isn't that good for individual artists.

Yes, which is in itself a regrettable default that needs to change. Nevertheless, depriving those who have managed to retain their own songwriter rights of a rightfully larger piece of the cake is still a very real step in the wrong direction.

Then there is also such a thing as labels who actually treat their artists well. And those getting a larger piece of the cake isn't a bad thing either.

In principle, the closer to the musician the income from their own creative work ends up, the better. So better that some musicians have less of their rightful income torn out of their hands than none.

Spotify et al are working as hard as they can to make it accepted standard practice that a streaming service pays an unacceptably small part of the income from a song to its actual creator. By supporting any development in that direction we're simply put making it harder for music to enter our lives.

 

[macfacts]

....
I hate whiners. And I have no patience for sniveling losers who want to ride the coat tails of the successful and complain that the road is bumpy.
...

Exactly how I feel about apple v. Qualcomm. Constant whining from Tim Apple about Qualcomm. Tim contributed nothing to LTE tech and is just riding on the coattails of the the giants of the industry.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Yes, which is in itself a regrettable default that needs to change. Nevertheless, depriving those who have managed to retain their own songwriter rights of a rightfully larger piece of the cake is still a very real step in the wrong direction.

I would argue refusing to reward record labels with more profits that they've done little to earn is a step in the right direction. Either way, Spotify has had very little to do with this legislation, so it seems that cancelling your subscription for that reason is silly and misplaced. If you wanted to cancel for other reasons, no problem. But the reason you stated a few posts up is not well-thought-out reason.

Then there is also such a thing as labels who actually treat their artists well. And those getting a larger piece of the cake isn't a bad thing either.

In principle, the closer to the musician the income from their own creative work ends up, the better. So better that some musicians have less of their rightful income torn out of their hands than none.

The fact is labels aren't really needed today at all. I know quite a few musicians, and most of them just distribute on their own. If anything, Spotify, Pandora, and the rest have democratized this process a lot. It's pretty easy to upload your music and publish it to every streaming service out there with a single click of a button. That exists in spite of labels, not because of them.

Spotify et al are working as hard as they can to make it accepted standard practice that a streaming service pays an unacceptably small part of the income from a song to its actual creator. By supporting any development in that direction we're simply put making it harder for music to enter our lives.

I think Spotify et al are working as hard as they can to ensure legal streaming services remain a compelling competitor to piracy. This is shown in the data, as music piracy has significantly declined since the introduction of streaming services.

The reason Spotify took off is because it had almost no barriers to use; in other words it was super simple. The only barrier is cost. Compared to piracy, where there are a few technical barriers such as searching, downloading, organizing, and syncing; but nearly no financial cost. Spotify proved that people would be willing to pay a reasonable fee to avoid the barriers associated with piracy. But Spotify also understands that this is fragile, and at certain costs, a whole bunch of people would just go back to pirating. Not everyone has the same threshold, but people have a threshold. For each additional dollar charged by Spotify, some percent of former pirates turned customers will go back to pirating. That is bad for artists, and it's bad for Spotify.

 

[mrow]

You sidestep the point that Spotify is making that Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% App Store ‘tax’ and that Apple Music is price matching Spotify (and always has done).

Again, that Spotify claim that they had a streaming app ready for the Apple Watch (we’ll have to take them at their word) is not a good look for Apple if true.

That Spotify isn’t allowed to integrate with Siri or the HomePod, again is is suspicious behaviour on behalf of Apple.

Presumably the APIs are there to allow music services to integrate with these two services - Apple are just keeping them private. If it’s good enough for Apple Music why won’t it share the APIs with others?

I’m not sidestepping it. If Spotify doesn’t like Apple’s terms for the App Store they are free not to support Apple’s platform. But just because they don’t like the terms of a platform, which is not market dominant, doesn’t mean they get to dictate their own.

I don’t know what their issue with the Apple Watch is.

No third party apps have HomePod support right now. The only work around for it right now is Siri Shortcuts you create can work with HomePod. As far as I know Spotify doesn’t support Siri Shortcuts.

 

[bluecoast]

I’m not sidestepping it. If Spotify doesn’t like Apple’s terms for the App Store they are free not to support Apple’s platform. But just because they don’t like the terms of a platform, which is not market dominant, doesn’t mean they get to dictate their own.

I don’t know what their issue with the Apple Watch is.

No third party apps have HomePod support right now. The only work around for it right now is Siri Shortcuts you create can work with HomePod. As far as I know Spotify doesn’t support Siri Shortcuts.

Come now, you must admit that some of Apple’s behaviour is slightly suspect. It’ll be interesting to see how they - and their competitors - react when Apple release their video and news subscription services.

By the way, I don’t think that Spotify are the ‘good guy’ - they’re acting in their own interests, I just think that they have a point.

And I’m saying this about Apple as someone who has bought two iPods (first in 2003), 4 iPhones, 3 macs (and uses an iPhone 7 and MBP 2017 right now) - and 2 years of Apple Music!

 

[Kabeyun]

"Finally, app stores should not be allowed to control the communications between services and users, including placing unfair restrictions on marketing and promotions that benefit consumers."

Marketing and promotions that benefit whom?

 

[BuffaloTF]

I can't even add a song to a playlist. When I tap on Add to Playlist, it says "This requires iCloud Music Library."

I can choose not now or Turn On.

So far I have chosen Not Now.

Why? Because it says absolutely nothing about what it does.

I don't know if it's going to do something whacky to my iTunes library on my Mac (which has happened before when I've tapped on things I wish I hadn't).

I already have "iTunes in the Cloud." Now there's iCloud Music Library in addition to iTunes in the Cloud? And in addition to iTunes Match?

That's three cloud services! In addition to Apple Music which is itself a cloud service. That's too many clouds.

If it did say something about what it does, based on this description I'd imagine you wouldn't have read it anyway...

...why do I say that? Because "iTunes in the Cloud" says exactly what it does... and that's making your iTunes purchases available to you on any device you log in on so you can download those purchases from the cloud, rather than hook that new device up to iTunes. This is a legacy name, going back to when they divorced the iPhone (and iPod Touch and iPad) from ever needing iTunes.

Kinda like how iCloud Music Library says it lets you manage your streaming and matched music and playlists in the cloud and share them across devices.

And the only cloud service is iCloud. 1 of them. Different interactions for different services for iCloud. We don't go around saying Office 365 is 27 cloud services.
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You sidestep the point that Spotify is making that Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% App Store ‘tax’ and that Apple Music is price matching Spotify (and always has done).

Sure they do. Departments within a corporation charge other departments for their services, they don't come for free -- each has a budget, costs, and revenues -- they're called Cost Centers and Profit Centers. I'm typing this on my work laptop that my department *purchased* from within this same very company - and I work at a bank, so no we didn't make this computer; it too was purchased. Cash didn't change hands for this transaction, but money on the ledgers sure as hell did.

 

[sidewinder3000]

Netflix removed IAP recently, right?
Isn't it 85/15 after the first year anyway?

This is what I thought the case was for subscriptions as well. Anyone know the truth about the Spotify fee?

 

[shplock]

Spotify has more paid subscribers than Apple Music. This is a well known fact.

If Apple were to cancel all subscription payments paid via the App Store, they would be open to class action lawsuits and a host of other legal issues.

Spotify has a point here.
Apple is not only the owner of the App Store, they are also a competitor offering the exact same type of service.
Having a built in 30% “fee” is the epitome of an unfair advantage.
They are simply acting as a card processor in the transaction. The average processing fee is 5% or less literally everywhere else.
That would be fair.

There is nothing unfair about this at all.
Apple owns the App store and the OS and the hardware so they get to decide what happens so if Spotify can not accept it and adapt to find a way round it then tough luck.
In other words using your logic it is like Samsung! Samsun has many different parts to the company from batteries to screens to phones etc.
So one part of Samsung makes OLED screens and can sell them at cost to another part of Samsung whereas a competitor wanting the same product/service (the OLED screens) such as Apple has to pay extra.
That is not unfair to Apple, that is just business and not the fault of Samsung.

 

[TheDauterive]

Of course, the Apple store is rigged. But Tim Apple owns the hardware, the OS, the content and the infrastructure. He calls the shots. If you don't like it go someplace else. Oh right.

They did go somewhere else. To court, with an anti-trust complaint. Fingers-crossed they win.

 

[mrow]

Come now, you must admit that some of Apple’s behaviour is slightly suspect. It’ll be interesting to see how they - and their competitors - react when Apple release their video and news subscription services.

By the way, I don’t think that Spotify are the ‘good guy’ - they’re acting in their own interests, I just think that they have a point.

And I’m saying this about Apple as someone who has bought two iPods (first in 2003), 4 iPhones, 3 macs (and uses an iPhone 7 and MBP 2017 right now) - and 2 years of Apple Music!

Why is their behavior suspect? They have been consistent with their policy since subscriptions were created. They take a 30% from everyone no matter who you are. Apple has actually sweetened the deal since subscriptions were launched since they now cut their cut in half after year 1.