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Spotify Pens Joint Letter Calling Apple 'Harmful' and 'Anti-Competitive,' Claims App Store Ruins Business
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You could argue that the first mainstream music on demand application was Napster, and that pre-dates Apple's resurgence and the iPhone by quite a few years.
Apple doesn't provide anything special, except to force users to use the app store instead of allowing downloads from anywhere.
I don't respect Spotify as a company because of their moves in the podcasting world, but they are absolutely correct about Apple's in-platform monopoly. I hope they persuade the EU regulators to take decisive action.
You only quoted half of my argument there, though. The Amazon app is an interesting case study because I can go there and use it to buy a physical book, pay for it through Amazon's system right there and then within the app and Apple doesn't get a cut. If I want to buy a digital copy of the same book for my Kindle I can't because Apple insists that this would require using their payment systems and a cut?
Why? I'm not downloading the book through Apple's servers. Apple doesn't have any costs associated with Amazon selling me a book and they've certainly not done any marketing for it.
But you know what, fair enough. If those are the App Store rules, so be it, but it is then slightly uncompetitive that the only way for a company to offer a service that is equal to what Apple can offer (ie without customers having to put in extra steps) is to pay Apple part of their revenue.
That's not to say that the App Store is a bad service, I'm sure many developers see value in it, but let it stand on its own merit then. If it's such a good service, why does it need to be protected from competition at all cost?
Probably not, but Spotify is not asking to sell their services in Apple Music. The App Store is not the iPhone.
Currently that isn’t possible. iOS will run apps only if signed by Apple. To develop for iOS the developer would need access to development tools. AFAIK Apple doesn’t have to make these tools free.
Right now I think it’s a yearly subscription, but what if Apple goes to a model where developer fees are shifted to number of apps sold. A developer can host their own apps (and support their own users entirely and payment processing) but still would have to pay X percentage per app sold. This looks like a wash. A whole lot of effort for not much gain. This looks more like the console model where I can buy my games from multiple places but the console manufacturer (SONY in my case) still gets a percentage of every game sold.
A company can be declared a monopoly (which itself is not necessarily illegal) even if there are alternatives in the market. For example, the U.S. government declared Microsoft (Windows) a monopoly in the late 1990s even though there were alternative desktop operating systems.
You are correct, the data I could find says that Apple Music is at 78 million and Spotify is 180 Million (paid subscribers) both are worldwide so Spotify has 2.3x more paying subscribers than Apple music which I suppose in a way breaks even those numbers for the most part since Apple pays around that much more than Spotify to the artists
If someone wants to acquire an Xbox or Playstation game, there are numerous stores and websites they can easily go to and ways they can pay. They can also buy privately ("used").
By comparison, Apple is far more restrictive with the iPhone/iOS.
Ok here is a simple solution, Apple has to charge itself 30% per subscription to Apple Music to be paid to the Apple App Store, this way the playing field is level.
Kind of. Notice in that 1983 quote he doesn’t say anything about software distribution.
It doesn’t have to be as locked down as it is. And yes there are security risks, there are inherent risks in anything that is powerful.
Certainly Apple deserves some compensation, but they receive that through enrichment of their platform. Microsoft didn’t have to charge 30% of all commerce on Windows to be successful, nor did they have to control all software distribution.
But they’re trying that today because Apple showed them they could.
Nope that's ridiculous. Apple never fed Spotify a thing. Just because people happen to use iPhones does not mean Apple has "fed" them or made them in any way.
Paying by number of global streams out of general revenue isn't exactly fair though is it?
Let's say I join Spotify and only listen to two artists. Independent A and Independent B. I pay $10/month (for example)
But because other people listen to Drake, part of my $10 is going to Drake. Why should it? I didn't listen to Drake. I listed to A and B. My money should be going to them.
In the old days when people bought music, they actually supported the artists they like. These days, you're money is put in a pool and you have no say of where your money goes - it's skewed towards rewarding the popular artists.
I like how everyone is only picking on Spotify, is that because it's the market leader and you all want Appleto be that?
Not a single comment against Basecamp, Deezer, Proton, Schibsted... yet their CEO's have also signed this letter.
As for the excuse well Apple runs the part to collect money and handle taxes and debit and credit cards, well so do all these other companies if you subscribe to them through their websites. They have to do the exact same thing as Apple, in fact if Apple let you subscribe to these apps directly then all Apple would literally need to do is host the app, nothing else. Everything to do with payment could be done by the company behind the app then.
Only of course Apple doesn't get its 30% cut then does it. I can certainly understand the complaint against Apple, and the EU will come for them I think.
Not a single comment against Basecamp, Deezer, Proton, Schibsted... yet their CEO's have also signed this letter.
As for the excuse well Apple runs the part to collect money and handle taxes and debit and credit cards, well so do all these other companies if you subscribe to them through their websites. They have to do the exact same thing as Apple, in fact if Apple let you subscribe to these apps directly then all Apple would literally need to do is host the app, nothing else. Everything to do with payment could be done by the company behind the app then.
Only of course Apple doesn't get its 30% cut then does it. I can certainly understand the complaint against Apple, and the EU will come for them I think.
Side load what? Apps that let you pirate games? You have a plethora of options to buy games. Both digital and physical, you can buy game codes from retail and websites and disks too. It's a MUCH more free and open market compared to Apples App Store.
First, I said "access", not "carry". Second, my music library is 90GB. How shall I "carry" that around?
It's simply easier with Apple Music -- they match my tunes and stick it in my library. Accessible on any of my 5 Apple TV's, various SONOS devices with AM integration, iPad, Mac, etc.
I've no desire to "carry" that around.
Uhhhh….no. It’s not more than 30%. Ir it was, Apple wouldn’t make any money off the App Store. They make a tremendous profit from the App Store. Clearly it does not cost them more than they make.
Fair enough. I assumed access = carry but not everyone agrees on interchangeable words. Considering I rip all my own music to have accessible offline is why I suggested the same. Besides, 90GB isn't really that much today as you can bump an iPhone up to a TB now.
Seeing that you want all of that music across all of your devices, then yeah it makes sense to have it cloud based rather than a local copy. Again, I'm not accessing my iPad, aTV, or MacBook when I'm deep in the woods or hiking so I'd rather have it local. To each their own.
I am more than happy to let App Store model die. I want ability to side-load and let me install whatever I want.
In the same time, I want the stupid iOS signing die as well and provide me ability to unlock boot loader.
Unfortunately that’s still a duopoly and if there’s any collusion or price fixing, it becomes anticompetitive. At least that’s my understanding of why EU is coming after the app stores.
Good thing Apple Music has both quality and quantity. Spotify and Apple have about the same size catalogue of music (Apple Music might be higher, although I haven't seen 2023 figures).
Apple Music is not an anti-competitive monopoly... Spotify still captures most of the music industry.
