Dolby Atmos has been present on Spotify for a very long time as longa as you got the phone that supported Dolby Atmos.
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Spotify Legal Chief: 'Apple's Ability to Strangle its Competitors is Unprecedented'
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Dolby Atmos has been present on Spotify for a very long time as longa as you got the phone that supported Dolby Atmos.
I don't think that's the point. Point is that Apple is using it's position to create services that are in direct competition what's already in their App Store. If Apple Music comes preinstalled with 1 year trial they are already abusing their position in order to gain customers.
I don’t know. When I subscribed to free Spotify 4 years ago they seem to know my email and send mail to me explicitly saying if I want to upgrade to premium, doing it on their website would be best (link included of course). They definitely tried to direct me to their website.
Simply pure greed of trying to cut their own cost by pretending to be the little guy.
I find it amazing how many people blindly side with Apple on everything. A fair playing field and fair competition is what drives innovation. Surely nobody wants Apple to be the Walmart superstore in a small town that has driven out all alternatives.
Kind of like what Apple pays for their manufacturing labor of the best selling phone on the planet.
Spotify has deals with carriers in my country that their usage don’t take up the main data quota, or you can buy a cheaper data quota just for Spotify. Also, Spotify comes pre-installed on many Android phones, and consider that Spotify offers free tier, while Apple Music doesn’t.
So to me, both services have their own business strategy, and apparently it works for Spotify as they’re the market leader. This pretense of crying as if they’re the small guy is pathetic. Spotify should stop wasting money on lawyers and focus in supporting more artists and improving their service.
Check on iOS market share and see if they’re the “Walmart”.
I think that's why Apple have AppleTV+, Apple Music, etc. To prevent others having a leverage in harming the iOS platform.
Wow! Even if the revenue per month is halved and the amount paid to Apple remains the same, it's still a drop in the ocean, albeit a smaller ocean. Really puts into perspective the greed of Spotify.
I mean I'm OK for Spotify to be greedy for more profit, as that's the objective of all businesses, but demanding others to give them a free ride just because they are too greedy is unacceptable!
I bet EPIC is the same story here.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Why do you think this is abusing their position? This is done all the time.
Apple offers their customers who bought new iPhones limited free trial of Apple TV+, Apple Arcade. Nothing is stopping Spotify from offering the same thing. I'm sure if Spotify were to ask Apple for help in offering this freebie, I'm very sure Apple would willingly work with Spotify, as this creates a feeling of goodwill for all parties involved.
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This is true.
The flip side of the coin is that Apple spent decades and billions of dollars to build their platforms. Allowing other companies to leverage those platforms for free to make profit also doesn't seem fair.
It's a difficult problem to resolve, because it's easy to see the validity of each argument.
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You need to look at the people living in the Apple ecosystem as the town.
How much can Apple drive out competition while still pretending it has more than money in mind before people look around and realise they’re paying $50 a month for Apple One Premier and the experience as whole is worse than a few years ago.
look what Apple did a few years ago when sales of iPhones slowed. Suddenly all phones went up a third in price.
How exactly is Apple's closed ecosystem "becoming" a monopoly?
There are more apps and competitors than ever before on Apple's platforms. Just think about all the messaging, photo, email, file sharing, and browser apps out there.
How could anyone in their right mind say that this is becoming a monopoly??
Now, you may say Apple has an unfair advantage, but it's not like anything was ever given to Apple. They literally spent years and tens of billions to create their platforms. They built this machine by playing the long game, by taking the risk, by having a vision, and executing the hell out of that vision.
Now, is the App Store perfect? Hell no.
Is 30% too high? Quite possibly.
Could Apple do better? Hell yes.
But none of this makes Apple a monopoly, only a company that - unlike others - is willing and able to build great platforms over the years.
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By this logic, Apple wouldn't be able to create any new apps or services ever because chances are that there would already be an app in the App Store that did something similar.
If anything, I would make the argument that Apple needs to continue to "copy" and offer as many of their own competing services as possible, to give users the choice of opting for an alternative that shares Apple's values of curation and privacy.
For example, the Apple Card addresses the issue of banks selling user data to third parties.
Apple Arcade helps surface games that would otherwise be lost in a sea of freemium games with IAPs.
Maps gives users a pro-privacy choice over Google Maps.
Apple is able to integrate Apple Music more tightly with their ecosystem than Spotify ever can.
In many cases, I as a consumer am getting choices that the competition simply cannot or will not offer me.
Perhaps there really are some things that only the devil can offer.
Spotify’s popularity has exploded over the last couple of years and has pretty much doubled in many regions. I think with Mac rumours being a primarily American used forum, many don’t realise Apple Music isn’t as popular in other parts of the world, yet. Spotify’s user percentage for North America is 23.9% and globally Spotify still has more than double the subscribers of Apple Music.
Apple are keen to stifle their nearest competition which is a natural seeing as these two companies are going head to head in the market. However, anti monopoly rules are in effect in Europe and the likes of Sky TV learned than hiding their services behind huge paywalls breached these rules in recent years. The only people who win when these companies are held accountable are us, the consumer. I don’t see why so many here are against Spotify getting a fairer subscription cost on iOS when we ultimately get the product cheaper!! I’m sure Spotify have most of their customer base on Android as it’s the most widely used OS for mobile, but getting a better deal as iPhone customers can only be a good thing can’t it?
Apple are keen to stifle their nearest competition which is a natural seeing as these two companies are going head to head in the market. However, anti monopoly rules are in effect in Europe and the likes of Sky TV learned than hiding their services behind huge paywalls breached these rules in recent years. The only people who win when these companies are held accountable are us, the consumer. I don’t see why so many here are against Spotify getting a fairer subscription cost on iOS when we ultimately get the product cheaper!! I’m sure Spotify have most of their customer base on Android as it’s the most widely used OS for mobile, but getting a better deal as iPhone customers can only be a good thing can’t it?
What a bunch of crybabies. Both Epic and now Spotify. If you don't like how it is, don't use Apple's platform, it's as simple as that.
It is time to finally head over to Spotify's website and cancel that subscription.
I thought this was about the Lossless thing lmao. Spotify should pay artists better before complaining about Apple.
What happened to all the artists being upset with Spotify and their minimal payout / payment to artists as opposed to Apple Music?
There was an outcry from Taylor Swift and a bunch more. Didn't they remove their music from Spotify at one point too?
Now their music is back on there.
With all this I mean, something has got to be done on Spotify's side. There's a way out of this..(probably not)
1) have paid plans only (ads suck donkey tail anyway)
2) pay artists more - on par with Apple Music
3) take off the Spotify app from the iOS App Store and perhaps enable browser login only. Would that even work for all this debacle?
4) spruce up Spotify's image with better applications across the platforms they support and adhere to the UI and UX of each platform.
it's "too easy" just slamming together and Electron app and claim that the end goal.
I happen to like Spotify's curation and somehow, despite my above rant, the interface for Spotify is rather good. Their API for music players on the desktop is stellar too.
I only would like to see this wrapped in a better design - using actual macOS frameworks and what have you. I loathe dark interface for everything(I often use spicetify btw) - and the settings tucked away like that.
Since the beginning I thought this was all just a baby pointing to its mouth for more food and no matter how much food it was to be had - it cries. Because; baby.
There's something to be said about those that provide a platform ought to have standards and rules for being on said platform. iOS and what else.
Stand your ground, Apple.
ps. I'm just a layman with no apparent intelligence other than the ability to but on his pants one leg at a time - and even that slips sometimes.
There was an outcry from Taylor Swift and a bunch more. Didn't they remove their music from Spotify at one point too?
Now their music is back on there.
With all this I mean, something has got to be done on Spotify's side. There's a way out of this..(probably not)
1) have paid plans only (ads suck donkey tail anyway)
2) pay artists more - on par with Apple Music
3) take off the Spotify app from the iOS App Store and perhaps enable browser login only. Would that even work for all this debacle?
4) spruce up Spotify's image with better applications across the platforms they support and adhere to the UI and UX of each platform.
it's "too easy" just slamming together and Electron app and claim that the end goal.
I happen to like Spotify's curation and somehow, despite my above rant, the interface for Spotify is rather good. Their API for music players on the desktop is stellar too.
I only would like to see this wrapped in a better design - using actual macOS frameworks and what have you. I loathe dark interface for everything(I often use spicetify btw) - and the settings tucked away like that.
Since the beginning I thought this was all just a baby pointing to its mouth for more food and no matter how much food it was to be had - it cries. Because; baby.
There's something to be said about those that provide a platform ought to have standards and rules for being on said platform. iOS and what else.
Stand your ground, Apple.
ps. I'm just a layman with no apparent intelligence other than the ability to but on his pants one leg at a time - and even that slips sometimes.
That is wrong. In the age of the internet there is no excuse to claim you are uninformed. People need to do their research and they would figure out how to pay for things. Fact is though it is easier safer and requires less details to be given to companies doing it through Apple.
I always like that argument... It always assumes everyone except Apple is a shady and scummy company that you cannot trust with your payment details.
When you pay by card (CC, Debit, whatever) in a local store, the payment processor they use also gets your payment data (obviously). If you don't trust a company with that, you shouldn't do business with them in any form. Even not through Apple.
That Apple takes a cut for payments through their AppStore is fine. But that they forbid the link to their own websites is kinda ********.
99% of customers are apparently not capable of finding the website. Most people don't even realize that it's the same. People really think they must pay through iOS to use the service on their iPhone and don't realize it's account based and works on all platforms.
If everyone knew that, there wouldn't be such a problem. Spotify could just add the 30% on top for the IAP to get the same output and the regular price on their website and people would find out. But people either don't or just don't care.
The other thing is, how Apple makes exemptions for certain companies and services (like Amazon video), but not for others.
IAPs also cannot give customers discounts... well.. they could. But it's weird to implement as you would need different SKUs for every discount level and each new IAP has to be "approved" by Apple.
For example: Student discount is not possible through IAP. You can only gather it through Spotify's website. And then, they're not even allowed to tell you in the App, because they're not allowed to link to their website for purchases.
You do realise it’s us that have the cost passed onto us, right? Spotify do use other platforms like Android so if they follow your advice and not offer a service on iOS, again it is is that lose out and are stuck with less options for music streaming. It seems completely counterproductive from a consumer point of view to not support lower costs for services IMO.
By many legal definitions, Apple is a monopoly. e.g. the UK legal defintion of a monopoly is any business with a 25% market share. It is clear folks around here think a monopoly is someone with > 50% share, which is not the case; it is rather moot however, in that Apple has 100% share of the distribution of iOS apps plus 100% share of payment systems of said apps. Even by the incorrect definition of a monopoly, in some countries Apple does have a > 50% share in any event, e.g. the US.
You do know that Spotify can charge whatever subscription cost they like for their users and that they are not forced to use the iOS IAP API for subscription right? Apple's rules is that if the subscription is done via the iOS app, it must be done via the IAP API. Otherwise Spotify can get the users to subscribe and pay thru. Spotify's website, just like what Netflix is doing.
Spotify has a choice.
Spotify can then spend the 30/15% cut to advertise this to their iOS customers. I think this is fair. I don't see why any government has an issue with this unless it is a cash grab opportunity for them.