Depends if you consider the app just an extension of the Apple App Store or a separate thing.
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Spotify Subscribers No Longer Allowed to Pay Through App Store
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Apple ask less than other app stores, for most devs it takes 15% and subs are at 10%. Server, payments and many other things costs. I'm asking if you would work for a 5% less taxes and if you point your "rage" to all others app stores.
Plus anyone offering a commission below market price is probably doing so as a loss-leader to gain market share and increase the commission at a later date once they have captured a large chunk of the market.
What? That is not how monopolies behave. We have this discussion here every time this topic comes up. Apple has a market cap that makes them a predator of competition. There is absolutely nothing to like about that as a consumer. Stop protecting big businesses who don't care about you if your wallet does not belong to them. Your standpoint is anti-consumer in my eyes.
You could get your app banned if you do that. Apple is relaxing the rules now, but they were tougher years ago. Developers are not unreasonable or stupid, they have every right to complain about Apple’s stronghold, greed, and overreach.
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Your app would not be banned if the user signed up on your website rather than via the app. In fact Spotify is a good example of that; the vast majority of Spotify subscribers signed up outside the iOS app yet the app still exists on the iOS App Store.
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Everyone forgets the app store and developers bring people to the ios platform and buy iphones
Apple is double dipping charging such outrageous fees very much like Reddit screwing over its mods
Apple is double dipping charging such outrageous fees very much like Reddit screwing over its mods
I'm just happy they finally have the Classical Music app. Could barely read the huge track names on the old ones, couldn't easily see who wrote the words for musicals and who composed the music. And it split musicals as if they were CDs instead of a by acts.
Likewise the App Store brings people to apps and developers, so it’s not a one way relationship. Apple needs to be recompensed by those developers for the value the App Store brings to them. The argument is over how much they should be recompensed.
Apple will always looks to make money from the App Store. Any other App Store available to iOS users will also have to make money, so developers will nearly always need to pay a commission to someone.
The Apple App Store will likely remain the largest iOS App Store so will probably command a premium price over other app stores that users will be less familiar with/less likely to use. A developer would need to balance paying a reduced commission with the amount of exposure they are likely to receive. This balance is easy to ascertain for big companies that are household names (like Spotify) but will be much trickier for one man bands or other small developers.
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There literally MUST be something consumers like about it because if consumers didn’t like it, they wouldn’t be buying Apple products.
In the real world, I have never heard anyone complain about the iOS App Store. The vast majority of complaints come from other huge technology companies that want to remove friction from the purchasing process, but don’t want to pay a commission to Apple for the privilege. They want to completely remove Apple as the middle-man from all purchasing options, not just some.
Probably very little. Isn’t Spotify towards the bottom in terms of how much money goes to the artists?
There’s so little revenue to come from these potential customers that it’s not going to have any meaningful impact on Spotify’s financials. Spotify demand has effectively saturated and the only real way to become profitable is to increase prices, or be forever bailed out by investors (for what purpose I’ve no idea! If you’re being bailed out year after year, you might as well just shut down the business).
Apple and it's app store reminds me of a famous quote from car maker Henry Ford on the Model T ford "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black." because the car only came in black. The same could be said for Apple and the pay provider allowed to be used in the app store which happens to be Apple's own pay provider 'Any dev can have any payment provider they want so long as it's Apple's pay provider', because that is the only one allowed to be used.
The difference is that Apple’s payment service is not the only option for developers (it’s the only option available from the Apple App Store, but not the only option).
Apple does not allow any other payment provider to be used in it's store other than it's own and the crux of that decision is that dev's have to pay for it's use if they want their app to have in-app purchases hence 'dev's can use any payment provider they want so long as it's Apples one.'
Apple is the only payment provider they can use if they want to offer in-app purchases, but that’s not the only way a developer can facilitate a purchase. It’s probably the easiest with the least friction, but that’s precisely why it’s behind a paywall as there’s value to that process.
Dev here, it's not unreasonable at all. Too many people forget what selling apps was like before things like the App Store existed. It was stupid expensive, you were on the hook for any security breaches, you had to have a website set up that could handle payments, pay merchant processing fees, was secure, and you had to convince people to go to it and put in their credit card info.
Sure, you could go through a publisher, but the publisher often took over 75% of your apps revenue, many times much higher.
Apple got rid of all of that. Their cut is small compared to past fees, you have a secure storefront people can purchase from with ease, you get promoted if your app is decent, you can link to it via social media, and all the payment/security crap is handled for you.
The App Store isn't some free thing to run, it's stupidly expensive to run. These cuts are what keep the App Store funded and running.
That's actually reasonable.
If someone discovered your service/app via App Store and turned into a paying customer, Apple deserves a finders fee because they built all the services and tools around it to the point where someone discovered you.
If someone discovered your service/app via your ads, your ads should direct them to the web to which they will sign up there.
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