Why do you need ecosystem own by one company?
You can have Ubuntu laptop, Android phone, WebOS TV.  They all support Spotify and Netflix, you can cast videos from Android phone to your LG TV.

Sometimes I think so too. And then I look at the alternative ecosystems. Google? Amazon? Microsoft? Not even tempted...

Like others, this is why I could never buy a HomePod and exactly why I like Sonos. I prefer choice.

Seeing this makes me want to get even further away from Apple&#x27;s ecosystem.4 years ago, I was all in- Mac, iPad, iPhone. In the last 4 years, I&#x27;ve been driven away by Apple seeming contempt for professional users.Their contempt for other competition is even graver cause for concern.

The big labels aren&#x27;t important, they&#x27;re going to get their money anyway. This hurts the smaller labels, like my label, and countless others who never see a god damn dime from Spotify streaming.Meanwhile, Bandcamp streams the songs for free but they allow you to pay what you want. I&#x27;ve made at least 10x the profit from selling tracks on Bandcamp than I ever did in the streaming world.If Spotify wants to play fair, they need to pay artists more for streams. This site is just another instance of tech bros thinking they know better and meanwhile fucking over everyone else involved.

&gt; Spotify not playing fair with artistsSpotify is paying as much as music industry extorts from it. Where does the money go? Ask the big labels that are the ones paying artists.

While I was ready to leave a comment about Spotify not playing fair with artists, I have seen Apple&#x27;s unfair business practices first hand with developing apps and bluetooth devices.Unfortunately they are abusing their power, and are being flat out unfair if you want to develop a bluetooth device or app.
If you want to vet apps to ensure a safe environment, that&#x27;s fine, but these practices go beyond that and are unfair.

I believe this is their point: Apple deliberately leaves those features unbuilt in order to give itself a market position that others can&#x27;t compete with

Can iOS natively or iTunes stream music  through those devices?

Feels worse to me than what Google was heavily fined for.

Yes, every streaming music thing but Apple Music. Available in watchOS 4.1 (vs 5.0 a year later for spotify). And for HomePod since release AFAIK.

&gt; - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch &#x2F; HomePadBut they&#x27;ve blocked every streaming music thing, right? It wasn&#x27;t a vindictive campaign targetted at Spotify as this timeline is suggesting - no-one got to build streaming music apps for the Watch or HomePod IIRC.

If a random guy can make the app then Spotify could certainly have made an Apple Watch app.If anything it makes the case that if it were so simple for a single random dev that unless Apple itself were preventing it there is no reason the app wouldn&#x27;t have been released.

Counterargument: Apple&#x27;s review process is more likely to let &quot;some guy&#x27;s&quot; app slip through the cracks and make it in the App Store than the official app of one of its huge competitors with an install base of many, many, many millions of devices.

Spotify did not squash the random guy that made that app, they asked him to change the name and then hired him to work on the official app.

Spotify is available (on apple watch) now, for whatever that&#x27;s worth... Took me about 2 minutes from reading the complaint to playing Spotify (already had an account) on my watch. That includes downloading from the store and then to the watch (which has in the past, with other apps, taken a while)

I _believe_ the issue here is some app developers were invited to visit Apple and (perhaps) get access to certain APIs that weren&#x27;t going to be made available to normal app developers.- If you&#x27;re deep into iOS development you know that Apple apps - the ones shipped with the OS - sometimes do things that 3rd party apps aren&#x27;t able to. For example the Music app gets to be the _default_ app to live in the control panel even if you hardly ever use it and are using Spotify most of the time.- I believe - for the Apple Watch - some of the 3rd party apps which were already available on the day of the launch were a) invited to preview the Watch ahead of other developers and b) in some cases allowed to use undocumented APIs. Uber may be one example of this - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;05&#x2F;uber-removing-apple-granted-api&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;05&#x2F;uber-removing-apple-gra...</a>Apple has been inviting 3rd party developers to preview technologies for a while e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;appleinsider.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;16&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;apple-invites-developers-to-search-ads-beta-ahead-of-ios-10-launch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;appleinsider.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;16&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;apple-invites-dev...</a> so it seems to be standard practice.As I read this &quot;Time to Play Fair&quot; website, it looks to me like Spotify is complaining they weren&#x27;t invited to these preview sessions and thereby didn&#x27;t get to learn about &#x2F; get permission to use undocumented APIs.Of course IANAL

It&#x27;s one thing to make an app, it&#x27;s an entirely different thing to get it through the App Store review process.Did that guy&#x27;s app make it on the App Store? He could have easily built it with private APIs which would work but wouldn&#x27;t pass review (maybe, App Review is very inconsistent) or many other reasons why he could and Spotify couldn&#x27;t.

My read from the linked timeline is that Apple didn&#x27;t block Spotify from the Apple Watch, but rather wouldn&#x27;t provide the API necessary to Spotify for offline-mode.I inferred this from the vague wording in the earlier points and the clarifications in the later points.&gt; When Apple launches their new Apple Watch, they dismiss our proposals and won’t work with us to develop an app for it.Notice, they didn&#x27;t say they were blocked. Also why would building an app for the watch necessitate a proposal to Apple that requires Apple to work with them directly? Wouldn&#x27;t you instead build your app and submit it for approval? This is probably because the Apple Watch SDK didn&#x27;t provide all the functionality Spotify wanted, and so Spotify was trying to get Apple to add new functionality to the SDK.&gt; We submit a new proposal for a streaming app directly on the Apple Watch. Apple declines&gt; With WatchOS 4, Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple WatchAgain, doesn&#x27;t say they were blocked, just that proposals were rejected and the provided functionality made it difficult&#x2F;impossible to do what they wanted.&gt; With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionalityWas this the functionality Spotify was proposing for Apple to make possible all along? In other words, was this the missing part of the SDK that Spotify had kept proposing to Apple and having rejected (not the app itself, which they didn&#x27;t want to build without this functionality)?EDIT: I&#x27;m also not saying they didn&#x27;t build the app and submit it and have it rejected. They just never actually say that in the timeline.

&gt; Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple WatchI&#x27;m not sure this is 100% true. From browsing the spotify support forums many moons ago, some guy had built a spotify playing app for the apple watch, but spotify squashed it. Given that some random dev could do this, it doesn&#x27;t seem like apple prevented anything.

I don&#x27;t see how blocking a company actively trying to monopolize podcasts from using the Apple recommendation API is monopolistic. Apple podcasts (either intentionally or just from neglect) have always been backed by open RSS podcasting.

Unless &quot;everyone&quot; also includes Apple Music, then it&#x27;s anti-competitive.

&gt; Not really, it&#x27;s 30% for everyone, not just Spotify.As they mention on the website. That&#x27;s not true. It&#x27;s not 30% for Uber or Deliveroo. And most importantly, it&#x27;s not 30% for Apple Music.

Even if it&#x27;s for everyone, the point is: it&#x27;s egregious. Even more so when Apple competes in the same space.

&gt; The issue of the 30% cut alone is enough for further investigation,Not really, it&#x27;s 30% for everyone, not just Spotify.

There is a fine line between reading between the lines and fabricating things. Can you point to what exactly in that website substantiates your implication?

Ex-spotifier here. It&#x27;s most likely that they wanted to use functionality available to Apple Music, but not any other app.

If you read between the lines, it&#x27;s clear that Spotify was able to make a normal watch app. But they wanted to make one that had special functionality not yet allowed by Apple, for any app, not just Spotify.

Well Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world, Spotify may not be a white knight but they&#x27;re definitely an underdog.

&gt; - It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companiesInteresting one since it is Spotify that is trying to close the currently open podcasting universe.Let&#x27;s not pretend that Spotify is either the white knight or the underdog here. This is two big companies negotiating over pricing.

&gt; It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companiesIs this talking about the Apple Watch-Podcasting issue? Until recently, podcast apps on the watch had issues saving where you are in an episode because they couldn&#x27;t constantly run in the background; you could still play audio in the background without your app, you just couldn&#x27;t watch the percentage played. Fitness tracking apps were allowed to run in the background forever, so some podcast apps told the API they were fitness apps to get around the restriction [0]. Apple later removed this loophole and created the APIs necessary for podcast apps to work on the watch [1].[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marco.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;10&#x2F;removed-send-to-watch#fn:pLK9h4axdwphack" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marco.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;10&#x2F;removed-send-to-watch#fn:pLK9h4...</a>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marco.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;09&#x2F;17&#x2F;overcast5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marco.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;09&#x2F;17&#x2F;overcast5</a>

- Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple WatchHow? By not providing API&#x27;s to do what they wanted? yawn Next?- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePodHow? By not providing API&#x27;s to do what they wanted? yawn Next?- It blocked Spotify from building apps for SiriHow? By not providing API&#x27;s to do what they wanted? yawn Next?- It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basisWakes up Ok here we have the first real issue, BUT even with that said this is SUPER one-sided. We have only Spotify&#x27;s word and given their liberal stretching of the truth (or outright breaking it in some cases) I&#x27;m not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companiesI&#x27;m going to need more info on this because it is super vague.

I don&#x27;t know about the others, but Spotify is BSing about being blocked on the Apple Watch.Until WatchOS 5 the APIs to do something like Spotify didn&#x27;t really exist. There were workarounds, like by abusing the workout API, but unsurprisingly these has significant drawbacks, were unstable and Apple cracked down when they found API abuses.Apple &quot;blocked&quot; Spotify only in that it hadn&#x27;t (yet) released APIs that supported their use cases.It makes me wonder how disingenuous their other claims are.I do think services should have more options than Apple allows for accepting payment.

It&#x27;s pretty clear that Apple is using a dominant platform position to raise prices and block competition.By raising prices and blocking access to competing services, Apple is acting with malice to consumer welfare.

-Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple WatchThe newest version of WatchOS does allow it. The first generation of watchOS really didn’t allow any apps - just remote views of iOS apps (yeah I’m simplifying it).- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePodApple doesn’t have any apps on the HomePod. Now we are going to force all single purpose devices to ship with an SDK?- It blocked Spotify from building apps for SiriApple also just came out with any third party integration with Siri a version or two ago. Again we want the government to dictate the timeline when they build features for apps?- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companiesNetflix also blocked its API from most third parties years ago. Can we sue Netflix?

The claims in here are pretty wild, particularly around how Apple has favored its own products:- Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri- It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companiesI genuinely hope Europe takes this seriously. The issue of the 30% cut alone is enough for further investigation, particularly as Apple now uses that as an advantage to undercut Spotify with Apple Music.

This is long overdue. I really hope this leads to something.The anticompetitive behaviour described on that website is just the tip of the iceberg. Apple is doing a lot worse behind the scenes. Cellular service on Apple Watch for example - as a carrier you can&#x27;t just provide service for the Watch - you have to be an &quot;approved&quot; carrier and this means being friends with Apple and selling iPhones among other things (you only provide SIM-only plans and not interested in selling phones? Tough luck.). Same for visual voicemail, etc.

Going by the latest lawsuit against songwriters (suit filed by google, Spotify, amazon and pandora), it’s probably Apple.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalmusicnews.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;spotify-amazon-google-pandora-backlash&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalmusicnews.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;spotify-amazon-g...</a>

Napster, Tidal, then Apple Music.Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalmusicnews.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;25&#x2F;streaming-music-services-pay-2019&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalmusicnews.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;25&#x2F;streaming-music-...</a>

Which streaming service plays the most fair?

They would gladly pay their fair share. They don&#x27;t own the content, though, the labels do.As much 70% of a streaming service&#x27;s revenue (any streaming service, not just Spotify) goes to rights holders.

&gt; Their whole business model is built upon not playing fair with content creators.Who decides whats fair? Or are you forgetting that the go to website to download songs before streaming was thepiratebay?

It&#x27;s a lot more nuanced than that.The payout per play is basically different between free and premium users as they add more to the revenue shared by all the artists.If you look at revenue for premium users, then it&#x27;s probably much higher than that, but when you add free users, it will lower the average.A solution you might think would be to remove the free-tier. But that will only do one thing: cut a (admittedly smaller) revenue stream for artists, cut a promotional stream for artists and less possibilities to upsale premium accounts to free users.Someone who isn&#x27;t even a free user will either not listen to music or pirate it. Is that preferable?A lot of artists admit that Spotify pay-out per stream is certainly lower, but it&#x27;s still dominating all the other streaming revenues, as long as you are actually an artist who has the potential to make any. Some unknown artist selling 1 CD for $10 on bandcamp with no listen on streaming services will probably think differently.

Spotify asking someone else to play fair, ha, that really made my day...I mean, of all companies, Spotify. Their whole business model is built upon not playing fair with content creators.

Downloading and Streaming are two different royalty models.Legally, you have to pay more expensive royalties if you download music (referred to as &quot;right to reproduce&quot;) rather than stream (right to transmit), so a special type of downloaded file must be used that can&#x27;t be exported in any way. This is what Apple are prohibiting.

See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marco.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;what-watch-podcast-apps-need" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marco.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;what-watch-podcast-apps-need</a>.

Pandora has an Apple Watch app which allows their music to be stored on the watch for offline playback.

I don&#x27;t see why other watchOS apps cannot store music on the watch itself. Don&#x27;t apps get some local storage space? Why can&#x27;t they use that?

Pandora has an Apple Watch app with offline playback.

Pretty annoying as an Apple Watch user to find out only Apple Music is allowed to store music on the device itself.

That was my first thought. The kerning is so bad that some of this is just unreadable

It&#x27;s also very bad on the &quot;There&#x27;s an app for that&quot; image.The other parts of the page are very nice though. The font contrast is fine and the font has a nice weight to it. When they want us to read something they actually still know how to make a proper webpage. And it works fine without JS.

Glad I searched before commenting, it&#x27;s the first thing I noticed. Could be a covert tactic to trigger Apple though, more deadly than a computer virus, will probably shut infinite loop down for a day.

As someone who constantly curses their Android app design, seeing them make such a rookie move was a nice bit of schadenfreude.

To whoever is responsible for this page: in the svg files, turn the text into paths, otherwise they look like Arial with terrible kerning.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;uLaVwnd.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;uLaVwnd.png</a>

For the purposes of reasoning about this, Apple iOS and Apple&#x27;s iOS App Store and the iOS Apple Music app are all the same entity, equivalent.  It doesn&#x27;t matter that it&#x27;s not in the App Store, it ships on the phone alongside the App Store.  That&#x27;s the same as being in the App Store and getting autoinstalled on every device.

Didn&#x27;t Elizabeth Warren say Apple shouldn&#x27;t distribute its own apps in the App Store? Apple Music isn&#x27;t in the App Store…

The timing of this is interesting in the context of Elizabeth Warren’s recent proposal to forbid platform operators from also being participants on their own platforms.It looks like they’ve filed a complaint with the EU Commission; I wonder if it will become a talking point in US politics as well.

Counter point: the discoverability on all of the app stores I&#x27;ve tried has been pretty terrible. Unless I know the name of an app that I&#x27;m trying to install I almost never find what I&#x27;m looking for. Most often I search for &#x27;the best app to do X&#x27; on Google and then put a name from that into the app store.

Google could easily come in here.Note I work for Google but have no knowledge of Googles PWA products or PWA roadmap

In theory that&#x27;s an easy problem: anyone could make an &quot;App Store&quot;, especially considering they wouldn&#x27;t have to host binaries or deliver updates.Something mimicking today&#x27;s stores would essentially be links you can rate and comment on. Kind of like Reddit, but with a different UI and no direct user submissions.

The same way you discover anything else: advertising, word of mouth, web search.  How does the user know about Spotify in tthe first place?

The App Store gives you discoverability and could be argued as being one of the reasons for a 30% cut.If your app can be distributed as a PWA, then the question becomes: is the App Store (which gives you discoverability) worth the 30% revenue cut? For some PWAs the answer will be no.

I agree with that. However, what worries me about PWAs is discoverability. How can I find a catalog of available PWAs to download? Is there a way?

a CRUD app would work fine. Isn’t their web player a CRUD app?

Would a PWA be a viable option for an app like Spotify? I&#x27;m definitely on board with them for simple CRUD type apps

The next progressive web app that I like to use will be my first.

You conflate the current state of PWAs with their ultimate outcome. If web apps are as good as native for most people, there is no need for proprietary app stores. This does indeed conflict with Apple&#x27;s app store business model.And despite it adding certain CSS standards, mobile Safari on the whole remains the IE6 of the mobile browser world. Apple drags its feet on web app standards support for a reason similar to why Microsoft dragged its feet with IE6 web standards support.

&gt; Progressive Web Apps [are] ultimately a threat to Apple&#x27;s app store racketHonestly, no, they&#x27;re not. Even the Gold Standard of PWAs - the Twitter Lite app that Google (the patron saint of PWAs) helped them build - provides an inferior experience compared to native apps.People bring this up often - Apple refuses to improve Safari to bolster their App Store - which completely ignores all the valuable improvements Safari has made to give web apps more native-like features, like backdrop-blur for blurred backgrounds and CSS Snap points for native JS-less carousels. Chrome doesn&#x27;t support either of these.

This exemplifies some of the reasons proprietary app store lock-in is bad for consumers.Progressive Web Apps -- web apps that are installable and available offline without any app store -- are a viable alternative, and ultimately a threat to Apple&#x27;s app store racket. It&#x27;s likely why iOS Safari continues to drag it&#x27;s feet on PWA support.

The HomePod would be a incredible bargain even if it didn&#x27;t support Siri at all, and were just an AirPlay compatible speaker. Everyone who complains about Apple Music (myself included) and Siri&#x27;s uselessness are mostly ignoring the fact that it is the single best compact speaker, audio-wise, shipping today. It&#x27;s an order of magnitude higher audio quality than everything within 10%-1000% of its price range.It&#x27;s insanely great. As a speaker. Period.

The HomePod is a horrible device unless you want Siri in a can. The source selection is just so locked down for whatever reason, so unless you&#x27;re all in with the Apple ecosystem, you&#x27;re going to be missing out something.

That’s actually the reason why I don’t by a HomePod

&gt; A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribe to Spotify through Apple devicesNot so as I understand it. Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store. That cost doesn&#x27;t exist for Mac or PC, but Apple doesn&#x27;t heavily curate and have costs associated with the wild west of downloading apps from the web.&gt; it doesn&#x27;t weight anything to AppleThere are significant costs associated with the app store, no? Part of the reason users gravitate towards the iPhone is because you can download high quality apps without malware, viruses, etc.&gt; Apple Music doesn&#x27;t need to have their profitts cut in 30% because they are owned by Apple itself.Conceptually I&#x27;m with you. This is an area I&#x27;m struggling with though. The Apple Online store charges accessory manufacturers a fee to be featured there. Should Apple also pay a fee to feature their own products there? I don&#x27;t think so.&gt; it&#x27;s even worse if they are using Siri, Homepod and Apple Watch to make Apple Music more appealing in comparison to SpotifyWhy? They&#x27;ve made the hardware. Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants? (You can Airplay Spotify to Homepod.)

How much does Spotify pay for &quot;PC users&quot;? Of course, they have Customer Acquisition costs there too. Google gets the money. Why do they not fight Google? Spotify got big through the apple app store channel. Now that they are big they start whining about the cost of the channel. If you don&#x27;t like it, then don&#x27;t use it?

I was about to argue that in a free market, 30% would never be a reasonable price, but then I looked and that&#x27;s what Steam charges and they have multiple viable competitors on the same platform, so now I don&#x27;t know.

&gt; A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribes to Spotify through Apple devices.Can you even subscribe through the app? Spotify could simply yell you so go to your web browser to subscribe. That’s what Amazon does for its video etc and it doesn’t seem to cause them any problems.I subscribed to Spotify via their web site and it works fine on my phone. I’m sure they pay nothing to Apple in order for me to listen. That makes me feel that this is a publicity play by Spotify no matter what the more general (non-Spotify) merits of the issue might be.

A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribes to Spotify through Apple devices. This cost doesn&#x27;t doesn&#x27;t exist for PC users, for example.They probably could live with it but I can understand why it feels like an artificial cost that Apple came up with. It would be an understandable cost if they were selling the Spotify App through the App Store and using the actual store infrastructure for supporting Spotify... but they are not.The app is nothing more than a portal to the entire Spotify infrastructure, it doesn&#x27;t weight anything to Apple.And then we have the subject of the direct competition, Apple Music doesn&#x27;t need to have their profits cut in 30% because they are owned by Apple itself.And it&#x27;s even worse if they are using Siri, Homepad and Apple Watch to make Apple Music more appealing in comparison to Spotify.

That&#x27;s a really great point which I hadn&#x27;t considered! Thanks.

&gt; Until they entered into a rights sharing agreement.Also worth noting that the rights sharing arrangement on Sky&#x27;s end is... &lt;drumroll&gt; ...mandated by a settlement from a previous anti-trust case!

RE: FootballMonopolies can have negative effects without trying to extract monopoly rents.The competition between BT and Sky massively increased the TV rights price for e.g. the premier league, so the clubs got much more money. In theory, they used this to buy better players etc and increase the quality of the league.Although you now have to pay twice, the quality of the product has gone up. So it&#x27;s not a zero-sum game. You can argue that you don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s worth it, but that&#x27;s an opinion, it&#x27;s not true that it&#x27;s an inherently worse situation.Until they entered into a rights sharing agreement.

Hmmm. It&#x27;s absolutely not that as far as I can tell. Apple is not extracting a toll from their competition through their other holdings. Nothing has changed for Spotify: if you want to sign up users through Apple&#x27;s infrastructure, which has a cost associated with it, you have to pay the same price as everyone else.To repeat my question asked of someone else in this thread: Apple charges e.g. Mophie a fee to feature their products on the Apple Store online. Should Apple be required to pay the same fee for featuring their own products there?

They charge everyone the same toll, though.And why should it change just because Apple introduced a competitor? Apple charges Spotify the same before and after they launched Apple Music.

The difference comes in when Apple introduced Apple Music, a direct competitor to Spotify. So now, they&#x27;re not only offering an essentially identical service, they&#x27;re extracting a toll from their competition through their other holdings.To put this in 19th century anti-trust terms, the manufacturing company owns the railways and charges the competition a toll to transport their goods. It&#x27;s a clear cut case for Spotify, from a legal perspective.

I use Spotify on my Apple Watch all the time. But there isn&#x27;t the particular integration which Spotify wants: you can&#x27;t store music on it.

On my opinion there is no comparison with the dominance MS in the OS market and Apple, I think Apple’ market share is very far from the 90+% windows enjoyed

More than a decade ago, the EU forced Microsoft to let people choose their browser on a Windows machine with a fresh install. Not only that but the list of choices was randomly sorted so that IE would not be the first listed.&gt; Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it&#x27;s technically possible?Of course if you were Apple, you would not want to do it. But, that’s what antitrust laws are for. As a consumer they are valuable: how long have people been waiting to use Spotify their Apple Watch?

Totally see that. But you can still sideload an app onto an iPhone or Mac and hack around. People were getting Windows onto their x86 Macs before Bootcamp, for example. The point of Homepod is that it does nothing else, by design: it&#x27;s a device for playing Apple Music on. I don&#x27;t see a distinction between forcing Apple to open up iOS for installation on any hardware.

Here&#x27;s the thing: consumers paid (voluntarily) for an iPhone that has the restriction that apps must be bought &#x2F; acquired &#x2F; loaded through the App Store. So, yes, they own the device that has this restriction. If they didn&#x27;t want this device, they could have bought one of the many devices that doesn&#x27;t, as approximately 75% percent of people do globally.

&gt; Spotify feels aggrieved that Apple does not allow it to develop software for certain of their hardware lines, such as Homepod or Apple Watch. Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it&#x27;s technically possible?I see your point but you could flip that a 3rd way:&quot;Consumers pay for their hardware - they own the device - so why should manufacturers tell consumers what they can or cannot install on their hardware?&quot;I grew up in an era when hardware wasn&#x27;t so tightly coupled with software. In fact you could go further than that and mod your hardware with custom chips and so on without violating anything more than your warranty. So I find this current era where consumers are expected to pay high prices for hardware and still not have any rights over that platform to be a massive con.

&gt;Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it&#x27;s technically possible?It&#x27;s not that you have to, but if you do and you become one of only two or three platform oligopolists worldwide, then you better make sure it&#x27;s a level playing field or you risk getting regulated as a utility.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-to-break-up-apple.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-t...</a>

Technically that&#x27;s called a duopoly.

&gt; Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it&#x27;s technically possible?Because Apple+Android = de facto monopoly.

The complaint regarding the fee is not just that Apple takes such a large fee (which is reasonable for a one-off game where the exposure and back-end processing is beneficial, but is ludicrous for a recurring subscription from a large scale org), it&#x27;s that you are restricted from offering any other payment options, or even alluding to possible other payment options. That is grossly anti-competitive and does absolutely nothing for consumers.As a user of an iPhone&#x2F;Mac&#x2F;etc, but who loves Spotify, this whole thing just sours me on Apple a bit. Spotify works great with my webOS TV, and just about everything else for that matter. It supports everything. Its networking&#x2F;streaming model is brilliant. The interface is much better than Apple music (with its bizarre integration with iTunes). That I can&#x27;t use Siri to play a song is just obnoxious and turns me off of Siri, and whatever middle managers in Apple are pushing this are just doing themselves harm in the longer run.

~~Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it&#x27;s technically possible?I don&#x27;t think we have a clear ethic yet, for these situations. There&#x27;s obviously a ton of economic power in platforms. Since the msft-vs-netscape days, it&#x27;s been controversial.Ultimately... these are marketplaces, important ones and, considering their size, scope and influence... I think there is a strong case that &quot;my house, my rules&quot; is not a reasonable way of doing things.Apple&#x2F;Google&#x27;s app &amp; content stores are huge bottlenecks and being locked out of them is on the same scale as being locked out of the financial&#x2F;banking system for certain companies.Does &quot;free market&quot; mean anything useful, if the free market consists of a handful of unfree &quot;platforms?&quot;There&#x27;s a similar question for FB and Twitter. They are such big media channels that being locked out of one could (for example) make it impossible to run for elected office.Things have different implications at large scale.

I agree. I&#x27;m actually surprised it&#x27;s taken someone this long to launch such an action in Europe, as it seems a fairly open and shut case given the precedent and EU law (especially that the EU holds monopoly behaviour to require the ability to &quot;materially affect market pricing&quot;, and not to actually own a given percentage of the market, and actions in non-technology sector with market shares in the 40% are not uncommon).

&gt; I think you&#x27;re wrongHmm! What about?&gt; Apple&#x27;s behaviour in this instance is clearly an abuse of market power and I fully expect the European Commission to rule in Spotify&#x27;s favour.I&#x27;m not contesting that. I&#x27;m saying that I don&#x27;t believe Apple is doing anything wrong. (The law and me may differ on that.)&gt; Apple [has] a dominant market positionIsn&#x27;t the test for this substitutability in the event that the dominant force increases price? (This area is a total unknown to me so thanks for taking the time to explain!)&gt; to advantage their own streaming service and disadvantage SpotifyI think the he-said-she-said of the software updates thing is easily parked (unless you think it forms a substantive part of their complaint), so I will focus on the pricing issue. Again I&#x27;m drawing a distinction between the ethics of the situation and the law (although I assume that to some extent, the latter follows the former).Spotify&#x27;s P&amp;L will have a bunch of rows in it for the costs associated with acquiring a paid user. Different channels have different costs. For example TV, radio, google&#x2F;bing&#x2F;alta vista PPC. Each of those will have a cost per install and some channels and keywords will convert better than others. For example if I look at the analysis frequently cited about iPhone vs. Android users, it&#x27;s easy to believe that there is a greater propensity to pay money for apps on iOS vs. Android.If Apple was the only place to get those users, I could understand totally the belief that this is unethical behaviour. But Spotify grew by four million paying subscribers in Q4 of last year, all of whom are evidence that they can grow their business by ~$500m of ARR without the app store.So for me Apple charging Spotify 30% for their paying subscribers (who came to the App store because of a product and marketplace which Apple created, markets, and curates -- benefits which are at least conceptually worth paying for by app developers, even if some of them quibble the 30%). Is the argument that Spotify should not pay this 30% [but still benefit from all the great things which Apple foots the bill for]? And if Apple wasn&#x27;t in music streaming, they&#x27;d be able to charge Spotify 30% Because that to me seems orthogonal to a common monopolistic argument: they are able to do significant harm to Apple (app store), which is a business unit, and remove all of the acquisition costs they&#x27;d ordinarily pay through hany channel.Would it be acceptable legallyl&#x2F;ethically if Apple effectively treated app store as an acquisition channel like any other, and the Music business unit paid the 30% to App store?

I think you&#x27;re wrong - Apple&#x27;s behaviour in this instance is clearly an abuse of market power and I fully expect the European Commission to rule in Spotify&#x27;s favour.Apple are directly competing with Spotify in the field of streaming music services via Apple Music. Apple&#x27;s total control of the app store and their substantial share of the smartphone market means that they have a dominant market position within the meaning of Article 102 TFEU. Apple are using that dominant market position to advantage their own streaming service and disadvantage Spotify, for reasons set out at length in the original article. Apple are required under EU competition law to give Apple Music and Spotify an equal playing field, which they clearly aren&#x27;t doing. Apple might have a partial defence if they allowed sideloading of apps, but they don&#x27;t.The obvious precedent is the European Commission&#x27;s action against Google in 2018. Google were fined €4.34bn for using Android to unfairly advantage their search business. Android has a dominant market position within the mobile OS market - if you&#x27;re a small mobile device manufacturer, you don&#x27;t have many reasonable alternatives to using Android. Google didn&#x27;t allow manufacturers to pre-install the Play Store app unless they also pre-installed Chrome and the Google Search app, which is an abuse of their dominant market position. They used their dominance of the mobile OS business to unfairly advantage their search business, which is blatantly illegal.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;European_Union_competition_law#Abuse_of_dominance" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;European_Union_competition_law...</a><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;europa.eu&#x2F;rapid&#x2F;press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;europa.eu&#x2F;rapid&#x2F;press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm</a>

There was a post by Ben Thompson[1] that outlines some of the challenges with Apples approach in the App Store. It&#x27;s a good read if you have the time. I&#x27;m not trying to change your mind, but more give a different perspective on the conundrum that Apple is in.[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;antitrust-the-app-store-and-apple&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;antitrust-the-app-store-and-app...</a>

yeah... not mentioned on Spotify&#x27;s timeline either. 2016

Something not mentioned anywhere in this thread either is the fact that, after 1 year, any subscription made through the app store goes from a 30% cut to 15% - what I would call much more manageable.

Bottom line: I can&#x27;t queue and download Spotify content to my Apple Watch for offline use. Considering Apple has a competitor product, there is no reason for me to believe Apple is playing fair.Secondarily, the expectation that Spotify buck the labels AND expect to bring the concept of &#x27;all music for one price&#x27; is a non-starter, so I don&#x27;t understand that criticsim.

As an avid user of Spotify well before I switched from Android to iPhone. It annoys me to no extent how everything used to work over there like it was first party.On iOS unless everything else is only partiality supported. iTunes in comparison to Spotify was a joke when it was first released and they&#x27;re shoving it down our throats constantly.Never really used Siri until I bought a pair of AirPods. How am I not able to tell it to play music via Spotify?

Apple does provide the infrastructure to distribute the app to customers and does deserve some compensation for it.But on the other hand, Apple is stepping into a market (music streaming) from which they control top to bottom and has a advantage no one has (no IAP transactions fee, they basically pay themselves for it), which in a way is unfair.If they want to remain fair to competition, they should waive IAPs costs or reduce them significantly in market they engage themselves in which they are direct competitors.

Can someone help me stop playing the world&#x27;s smallest violin here?Spotify knowingly built a low margin business living in the pocket of the labels (who force Spotify towards razor thin margins) and Apple&#x2F;Google (who have, since before Spotify launched, operated app stores for their platforms which are to some extent curated and which are not free market economies).Spotify feels aggrieved that Apple does not allow it to develop software for certain of their hardware lines, such as Homepod or Apple Watch. Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it&#x27;s technically possible?The crucial line in their argument is this:&gt; giving up 30% was too much for us to keep our prices low for our fans. Unfortunately, the end result is that you can no longer upgrade to Premium through the app.How is this Apple&#x27;s fault and not your fault? Every market place takes a cut from the vendor. Your business not being able to sustain the cost of doing business is nobody&#x27;s fault except your own.Apple should not be allowed to send push notifications about products or services they prohibit other apps from sending. They shouldn&#x27;t arbitrarily restrict Spotify from updating the app (virtually no information is provided about what infractions Apple saw, and history suggests that companies are great at presenting one side of the argument and then we find that Apple has a legitimate grievance). They should not be able to charge Spotify more because of their competition.But to suggest that Apple should be forced to allow Siri integration with Spotify? Homepod? Apple Watch? Ridiculous.Monopolies where prices rise are bad news. But look at UK football coverage. On top of my free-to-air channels (£150 p.a. TV licence) I need a Sky Sports subscription (minimum £25 per month) and a BT Sport subscription (which necessitates one of BT Broadband - gross - or Sky) which I think is around £5-£10 per year. The top flight football is fragmented across all three providers. Is that better for me?

I hope this never, ever happens. I love that I can basically listen to any music I like on Spotify. (I know there are exclusivity deals in music streaming but so far it hasn&#x27;t affected me.) Compare that to the fragmented video streaming marketplace where services try to distinguish themselves with exclusive and&#x2F;or original content. If you want to watch N shows, you have to subscribe to N different services. And none of the services have a comprehensive movie library (at least where I live).

I’ve been waiting to see Spotify follow Netflix and create their own label, instead of just curated playlists. They’ll otherwise always be at the whim of renegotiations. (Not entirely relevant to the post, but seems like it’s an avenue for them to go to break a little from other players).

That&#x27;s not an &quot;unpopular opinion&quot;, that&#x27;s a personal preference and you&#x27;re welcome to it.

diversity vs privacy. iOS is still much more secure and has much more protection for the typical user than android.

Why unpopular? It&#x27;s a rational decision. Diversity vs centralization.

yeah good for you, many of us never even got into it to begin with. I will say my job got me a macbook pro (after decades of windows usage and hackage) and this bitch is still kicking ass 5 years later. Big ups for the laptop. iPhone, who gives a shit it&#x27;s a phone. Some people are super into it, i&#x27;m like dude i dont fucking care about the screen, the camera, the unlocking your face with a picture. If think all that jazz is worth $800+ be my guest.

Unpopular opinion: I will never go back to the Apple ecosystem. I like my freedom way too much.

oh, I didn&#x27;t know that they were giving away the devices for free.

Apple invests billions into R&amp;D, design, manufacture, and UX design for its devices. Your logic would then see them dealing with picking up the pieces for bricked devices, hacked passwords, lost data, viruses, etc.Using an Apple devices is accepting a benevolent dictatorship, and it&#x27;s a trade off tonnes of users are happy to make.

EU style choice (which cost MS 700M)- Show list of available app stores

Microsoft were pushed to add a screen to the Windows installer asking the user which browser they wanted to be the default. That would work perfectly well for app stores.

&gt; Vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.So then how would a novice user get apps the first time they boot up their phone? They would have to know where to get apps from. That seems like an easy way for users to end up downloading a bunch of malware because they think it&#x27;s the official Apple or Google app store when it&#x27;s just a random website.Having a built in app store has huge advantages in security and usability for the end user.

That sounds like a great strategy to switch everything everywhere to crappy web apps.

&gt; By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.That&#x27;s Apple&#x27;s magic trick. They only own the top 20% of the market (evading monopoly attention) but they extract almost 100% of all profit in the smartphone market. No idea how you&#x27;d legislate against that though..

&gt; By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.Apple sold 47% of the all smartphones shipped in the US in Q4 2018<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.counterpointresearch.com&#x2F;us-market-smartphone-share&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.counterpointresearch.com&#x2F;us-market-smartphone-sh...</a>

&gt;That comparison doesn&#x27;t really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.Market share is not the only criteria for determining whether a company has a dominant market position under EU competition law. Apple have a substantial share of the mobile phone market and they have a total monopoly on iOS app distribution. If you want to sell apps to ~27% of consumers in the EU, you have no choice but to go through Apple. End users might have a meaningful choice, but developers don&#x27;t, which is highly relevant in this case.

&gt; Just because YOU want this doesn&#x27;t mean the Apple users want it. I&#x27;m utterly content with a single, curated-by-Apple app store for iOS. I like the stability it affords the platform.And you should be able to choose that. But should you change your mind, you should be able to take your purchases with you and go elsewhere. Although apple is in the spotlight here, all of these vendor-locked app-stores are the problem.

&gt;Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.That comparison doesn&#x27;t really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.&gt;They should be FORCED to have an open platform,Just because YOU want this doesn&#x27;t mean the Apple users want it. I&#x27;m utterly content with a single, curated-by-Apple app store for iOS. I like the stability it affords the platform.I&#x27;d never accept it on a general-purpose computing device, but for my phone it&#x27;s perfect.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Windows_XP_editions#Edition_N" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Windows_XP_editions#Edition_N</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BrowserChoice.eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BrowserChoice.eu</a>

Are you in the US?  This was a European ruling.

&gt; Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OSWhat do you mean? Every time I&#x27;ve installed Windows, it came with Internet Explorer or Edge (which I then used to install another browser).

Completely agree. The blindness of users here towards the use case of non-techies is surprising.

&gt; vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.Congratulations, you&#x27;ve just reinvented the desktop adware &#x2F; malware market. We know that if this is possible users will be manipulated into making bad decisions which are hard to recover from, and in many cases those bad decisions will be made for them by their carrier.What I would support is that the app store should be more open: no refusing apps for competing with the built-in apps, and removing the ban on purchases which don&#x27;t go through the platform — let the store owner charge for payment processing but e.g. Amazon should be allowed to sell you a movie on iOS without paying Apple a cut simply by using their payment system instead.

&gt; Customers have a right to choose a tightly-controlled platform, just as they have a right to shop at a grocery store that refuses to sell poisonous foodAnd giving them the choice is the whole point

&gt;There&#x27;s nothing wrong with providing an app store as long as that store offers fair and non-discriminatory terms to all vendorsSetting aside the store issue for a moment, what you suggest is impossible if Apple is also making apps.

i have been thinking more about this and i think you are right. on GOG i am (depending on rightsholdet) able to add games to my library that I own on steam. if this was the norm, enforced through consumer rights, it would allow users the ability to purchase licenses through a store of their choice.

&gt;Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.There&#x27;s nothing wrong with providing an app store as long as that store offers fair and non-discriminatory terms to all vendors. Charging app developers for the costs of running a store and maintaining an ecosystem is perfectly reasonable; using those charges to stifle competition isn&#x27;t.Engineers tend to want neat, perfect solutions that require no human judgement, but they&#x27;re very rare in the real world. There are obvious and major disadvantages to a free-for-all versus a walled garden, for both developers and users. Customers have a right to choose a tightly-controlled platform, just as they have a right to shop at a grocery store that refuses to sell poisonous food. Banning app store bundling is a scorched-earth approach that would do more harm than good for the average consumer.

More technically, they had to provide a version of Windows that didn&#x27;t ship with IE, and iirc a version that allowed new users to pick an alternate browser.

&gt;Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OSThey were never stopped from that.They were stopped for abusing their monopoly (e.g. threatening OEM PC vendors that unless they bundled this or that, they wont get Windows for a special price, etc).And that when they had a monopoly (e.g. close to 98% of the desktop AND business market) -- which in itself is not illegal.

Vendors could solve the whole problem by letting users choose which default apps they want to install in the beginning. In order to make it simple, they could offer bundles. &gt;95% of the users would choose the &#x27;Apple Apps&#x27; bundle on iOS and the &#x27;Google Apps&#x27; bundle on Android and the &#x27;Microsoft Apps&#x27; bundle on Windows. And the few people choosing the &#x27;Privacy-First&#x27; bundle with Firefox and Ad-Blocker are those people who would install an alternative browser anyway.But instead, they are greedy and want 100% of the users of their platform to use their apps.

&gt; vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OSThe problem here isn&#x27;t the quality of the App Store. The problem is that Spotify has no alternative.Apple is a hardware developer, a software developer, and a software retailer. The problem is how tightly coupled those three roles are on the iPhone.You can&#x27;t run iOS on other hardware.
You can&#x27;t run another OS on the iPhone.
You can&#x27;t install apps on iOS except from the App Store.
You can&#x27;t use the App Store on other OSes.Those are the underlying problems.Users can&#x27;t use part of the ecosystem. They have to invest in the whole thing, giving Apple more control and reducing consumer mobility.

Apple has an absolute monopoly on its own platform.They are certainly complying with the laws in this regard, but the reality is that anti-competition laws need to change to deal with companies of this scale and reach.

&gt; Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.Microsoft had a monopoly, Apple doesn&#x27;t. It&#x27;s as simple as that.

Judging by number of sales, people seem to either like these walled gardens or don&#x27;t care about them.For those of us that care about freedom, we can just buy a phone that&#x27;s compatible with LineageOS (or Replicant if you&#x27;re willing to go full Stallman) and install it.

Forced? That doesn&#x27;t sound like freedom. Forced to enable your competitors to compete with you on your own platform? Forced to develop a platform upon which competitors can reduce your payoff on that investment?Look at Google Play store. Much more &quot;open,&quot; and a shitload of malware, scams, and shit software. Without curation of any kind, you end up with shit. It&#x27;s the Tragedy of the Commons applied to apps. Build it, and they will ruin.

Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your &quot;purchases&quot; - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created.They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple platforms. They can market themselves as official&#x2F;curated&#x2F;whatever they want but the user should have the choice.

Kudos to Spotify! Somebody has to do this, and from the time line posted, they really suffered. Amazon&#x27;s Kindle team probably should chime in too..

I would totally buy this fear if iOS was anywhere close to the marketshare that Windows was back in the 90s.

I&#x27;ve been with Apple Music and Pandora for years. A few months ago my teammates at work convinced me to try Spotify: I love Spotify! Both the content and the UX work for me.While this post represents Spotify&#x27;s view without having Apple&#x27;s to contrast it with, it seem eerily similar to the &quot;Browser War&quot; days leading up to Microsoft&#x27;s admonishment. Apple seems to be the equivalent of a drunkard walking a fine line.

Spotify is platform neutral. All things being equal, that&#x27;s enough to use them vs. Apple&#x2F;Google&#x2F;Amazon anything.Those three serving up things like music or movies are ancillary to their main product. Spotify has a vested interest in being the best music platform. Apple as an interest in selling more phones and computers, which may be benefited by a good in-house music app.

I wonder if companies like Spotify would be willing to help invest in developing FOSS devices that compete with Apple products. It would be one way to fight back and advance their own business.

A more honest title would be - Spotify to Regulator: Please force Apple to be fair™

Why don&#x27;t Apple&#x2F;Google ensure AV&#x2F;Malware protection is a default app? Why do we depend on Apple&#x2F;Google protecting us from these big bad apps?If not Apple&#x2F;Google controlling it directly, I&#x27;d imagine there would be a reasonable market for malware&#x2F;AV providers on mobiles, if not solutions provided by Apple&#x2F;Google.

This opens up a wide host of negative side-effects including the extreme ease of malware. I&#x27;d say the #1 value proposition for the App Store, and why most iOS users prefer it, is the guarantee of virus-free programs.

I was about to argue with this and rage against Apple, but then I remembered a very similar situation everyone deals with and no one complains about: Supermarket Generics.&quot;How is it fair for Price Chopper to undercut Rice Crispies with a similar, cheaper product?&quot; no on says this...

the fact that I, a software developer by trade, can&#x27;t install or run any code on an ios device without running something by apple first.that&#x27;s like tesla releasing a car saying if you are a lawyer who wants to drive it you have to pay them 100k a year plus 30% of what you earn, or are &quot;free&quot; to drive another car (even if theirs is the fastest&#x2F;safest&#x2F;best-for-price in the market.)or, now, can obtain a &quot;provisional&quot; license to drive it that expires weekly, with the same option to pay yearly for an annual license - these are all artificial barriers. installing software has up till now always been as simple as owning the device you&#x27;re running it on and running the appropriate commands, these artificual barriers introduced by apple ensure anyone wanting to do so has to check in to see if it&#x27;s okay with them.

What is &quot;should&quot;? Who determines should, aside from what the law currently says?Maybe I&#x27;m uninformed, but it doesn&#x27;t appear to me that access to an app store and the terms of such access (which by the way didn&#x27;t even exist almost 10 years ago) is a public utility or good with an expectation of equal access or certain fair pricing.Then, under what right does anyone claim that Apple (or any ecosystem platform) has to do anything beyond what is regulated in the payment and terms of operation? What makes your 30% price the right call? If you&#x27;re an app developer, are you equally ok with someone else determining what you get to charge for your app when you&#x27;re done with it? Isn&#x27;t that the same (lack of) logic?

A lower cut?Why not only allow to use their payment system?

&gt; In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.This is especially damaging to small companies. Most people have heard of Spotify, Netflix, Pandora, etc. So it&#x27;s somewhat natural for them (if not a bit akward) to go to the website if they can&#x27;t get premium in the app.But for small companies that connection isn&#x27;t immediately obvious. In my company for instance, we aren&#x27;t allowed to put ANY reference to our website in the app (as it relates to purchasing premium). As a result when a user signs up, my only option is IAP. I cannot just assume they will naturally go to the website.

It&#x27;s not just those two, it&#x27;s standard practice: Audible, Google Play video, Amazon video, Amazon music, Playstation Video, Vimeo, Sky Store video, and YouTube Premium&#x2F;Google Music (same subscription with different marketing).Deezer music went another route: you can pay for your subscription through an iOS device, but you&#x27;ll pay a higher price. [0] I&#x27;m surprised Apple permit this.All this strikes me as a clear indication that Apple is asking for too high a cut.I&#x27;ve never been tempted to use a mobile app to shop on, say, Amazon, but Apple are clearly ok with that experience being far better on Android than on iPhone.&gt; In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.Interesting.The exact words used by the Audible app for iPhone: This app does not support purchasing content. Instead, add to your wishlist.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.deezer.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-gb&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360000633989" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.deezer.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-gb&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360000633989</a>

&gt;In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.Why on earth is Apple allowed to do that? I get that it is their marketplace and their rules, but they are directly hurting competition and consumers this way. There&#x27;s simply no real argument to prohibit developers like this. Seems like something the EU should combat against.

&gt; In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.The counter point is, if Apple allowed this, then every single App would use that method. Most people would not realize or care that they bought the XYZ in a web view vs through the AppStore payment system. Even apps that are currently paid only would switch to a &quot;free&quot; app with a &quot;pay here&quot; in-app purchase.At this point the AppStore no longer can bring in any money for Apple except indirectly via encouraging iPhone sales.Maybe Apple could charge the publisher for each app download or something instead to keep making money but I doubt that would be very popular.

Amazon&#x27;s Kindle app has done the same as well.

Spotify has already turned off the ability for new accounts to pay to upgrade to a premium account inside their iOS app last year.You pay for your account on Spotify&#x27;s own web site, which bypasses Apple getting any cut at all.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.spotify.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;account_payment_help&#x2F;subscription_information&#x2F;spotify-through-the-app-store&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.spotify.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;account_payment_help&#x2F;subscrip...</a>Netflix has done the same thing.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.billboard.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;business&#x2F;8471988&#x2F;spotify-netflix-bypassing-apple-app-store-billing-charges" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.billboard.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;business&#x2F;8471988&#x2F;spotify-...</a>In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.

Do you think apple&#x27;s subscription feature is worth paying 30% more for spotify?Do you think spotify should just suck it up and take the hit to keep prices the same because apple is providing a service (access and subscription handling) worth 30% of the price? Not even Amazon charges that much.I don&#x27;t know if the anti-competitive practices mentioned are illegal, but they&#x27;re certainly scummy. The company that owns the walled garden shouldn&#x27;t be bullying spotify to try and prop apple music up.

Try telling the IRS you think their tax rates are too high. Apple owns the sandbox with the most valuable customers and if you want to play in it you gotta pay. Personally I love letting Apple handle my subscriptions and subscribing through iTunes is one of the things it does well.

That’s sort of true for the app itself - if the Trello API is down then the Trello app doesn’t work.

&gt; And then every PAID app will switch to FREE and charge for PRO, to circumvent the 30%.Then make it 30% of the first 20 or 30 dollars, and 5% or less after. That more than pays for Apple&#x27;s verification work without letting them gouge repeat payments.

&gt; I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%.And then every PAID app will switch to FREE and charge for PRO, to circumvent the 30%. Oh, Apple complained it’s not technically a microtransaction? Fine, just separate every feature into a new purchase.&gt; If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don&#x27;t see why apps can&#x27;t be hosted on a secure website from the vendorIf the vendor server is compromised or is down, a download from the App Store won’t work for a single app, leaving customers confused and complaining to Apple, who can’t fix the issue.

While I agree that the percentage that Apple takes per sale is too high, I completely disagree with the term &#x27;vendor Tax&#x27;. While it&#x27;s fine as a fun synonym, it&#x27;s problematic as soon as people start to think about it as an actual Tax. It&#x27;s not a Tax, it&#x27;s the amount of money the vendor&#x2F;platform owner wants to make for every sale. You can opt-out (by not being on the platform, still a choice!) if you want to. But because it&#x27;s bad for the bottom-line of most companies to do so, they position themselves as a sad little broken bird that gets stomped around by the big bad corp. Newsflash: they all are generic money making capitalistic institutions that on the business side exclusively exist to make money. For profit. For doing things, any thing, to make money. That goes for Spotify and Apple just the same.On the side of &#x27;level playing field&#x27; they do of course still have a point, just like all the anti-trust stuff we had&#x2F;have with Microsoft and Google. It does make me wonder a bit why this hasn&#x27;t been involving other companies like Amazon and Facebook. (or, why it hasn&#x27;t been suggested as widely as it is now)I do wonder about the technical aspect of those store denials and watchOS problems; other streaming services do not face the same issues&#x2F;pressue, so what makes spotify so special? They app is a bit crappy (it&#x27;s not very good at maintaining&#x2F;restoring state and doesn&#x27;t have the most consistent UI), but other than that, it doesn&#x27;t do much different things when compared to others (like Deezer or Tidal). Putting it as a &quot;Apple Music vs. Spotify&quot; thing is a bit weird too; while it might make sense, it doesn&#x27;t make sense if it&#x27;s just that and all the other streaming and buying services are free to do what they want. It&#x27;s weird stuff.

I mean, you don&#x27;t have to download apps through a website if you don&#x27;t want to.It is everyone&#x27;s full legal right to do whatever they want with their phone. Including downloading apps from websites.

&gt; I would hate for Apple to allow downloading apps through websitesThis is such an extreme stance compared to what you&#x27;re allowed to do on the desktop. Regardless of what Apple allows or not, shouldn&#x27;t the user, the owner of the device, be allowed to install applications as they see fit, and choose to bypass any centralized app store? A smarthphone is a computer, and it&#x27;s arguably many peoples primary computing device, and so I see no valid reason for the future of such devices to be a locked-down walled garden under the guise of security.More than anything and any security, Apple benefits directly from this, just like they do lobbying against right-to-repair legislation. Because God forbid an owner of a Apple device repairing it themselves instead of have to go through official, expensive channels. Likewise with a (legitimate) company or app maker saying &quot;We&#x27;ll just let the users install it outside of the app store&quot; and choosing not to deal with Apple&#x27;s ecosystem. For example, Wireguard for macOS cannot be distributed outside of the app store due to native integration requiring APIs that Apple restricts with such clauses [1]. This is in my opinion ridiculous.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.zx2c4.com&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;wireguard&#x2F;2019-February&#x2F;003853.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.zx2c4.com&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;wireguard&#x2F;2019-February&#x2F;00...</a>

What does the site the app is downloaded from have to do with security? The app is either signed, or it isn&#x27;t.Apple is simply erecting gratuitous roadblocks for rent-seeking purposes.

Imagine you had a laptop or desktop where you could only install apps that were approved by the hardware manufacturer or os developer. Would you really be ok with that?If not, how is it any different from the phone?

While the Apple Tax is a problem of its own, I would hate for Apple to allow downloading apps through websites. A large part of iOS security is that everything has to be co-signed by Apple unless it&#x27;s an Enterprise distribution app [1], so even if there is an exploit that breaks out of the app sandbox you don&#x27;t have to worry about malicious websites drive-by downloading it.1: they&#x27;re likely refining the process of obtaining one of these certs after the recent news reports on business fraud

With said company owned by apple and paying apple for licensing fees that just so happen to be equivalent to its yearly rev.That&#x27;s easy enough to circumvent.

Not sure if you know how enterprises work.But it is standard practice for divisions to bill other divisions for work. I would be almost certain that Apple Music is already paying the 30% tax however since it’s internal it doesn’t really make a difference. Likewise splitting into a new entity does not change anything.

What they need to do is split off the new competing services into a walled corporation (even new entity). And they play fair by the rules, so 30% tax even to them.

&gt; ...and they are clearly profitable enough if they can buy Super Bowl airtime.This is not a good reason to limit how much money an app developer makes. You want to make the play field fair, regardless if there are some companies making a lot of money.

&gt; and they are clearly profitable enough if they can buy Super Bowl airtimeThese dollars are most certainly coming from VC funding. Most of these businesses aren&#x27;t (and will never be) profitable.

&gt; There are enough of those apps in the store, and they are clearly profitable enough if they can buy Super Bowl airtime.You&#x27;re talking about the top 1% or less of micro transaction-based apps here. There are ton of indie apps that depend on micro transactions and aren&#x27;t making enough to buy a Super Bowl ad.It&#x27;s unfortunate that spammy or low quality micro transaction-based apps have become commonplace, but I&#x27;d rather that be dealt with by the App Store flagging and filtering the apps with issues.

Making micro-transactions more profitable would be an unfortunate course of action. There are enough of those apps in the store, and they are clearly profitable enough if they can buy Super Bowl airtime.Subscriptions for apps should be different, but I see a challenge in drawing the line between Spotify&#x2F;Netflix and a scam app like &quot;awesome culculator&quot; that charges $5&#x2F;mo to people who don&#x27;didn&#x27;t realize it was a subscription (there was an article on HN this week about apps like that, targeting kids and the elderly, of course).If Apple has a stipulation about requiring a website, then maybe subscription-based apps can get a discount on the 30% fee if they also have a web or desktop-based version of their application that provides comparable functionality and takes payments.

The practice of stores like Walmart strongarming producers into reducing prices and quality is a well established problem with a number of articles and documentaries around it already.In either case the difference between a store doing this and Apple doing this is that Best Buy is not the one of two practical ways to access the product, and consumers are not compelled to go only to Best Buy simply because they chose to go there once.Figuring out the proper practices for phone app markets is difficult right now, because we really can&#x27;t compare them to anything that already exists. Physical markets just aren&#x27;t the same thing.

Mobile OS&#x27;s are more than just a &quot;distribution channel&quot; though, because there&#x27;s a significant amount of lock-in that prevents customers from buying your software from another distributor even if they want to. I think a better metaphor is like this:A billion people live in a company town (&quot;Appleville&quot;). When they first decided to move there, they paid a lot of money to buy a house there, and in return they get access to all the benefits the town offers - nicely-built houses, well-maintained streets, and access to lots of public services. Because living in the town is so nice, houses there cost a lot more than they do in other areas.While you live in the town, you&#x27;ve signed a contract that says you&#x27;re only allowed to buy things from one store owned by the town&#x27;s developer. Most popular items are available at the store, so it&#x27;s never too much of an inconvience, but sometimes things are more expensive than they are in other towns, or they aren&#x27;t available at all.Every time you drive into the town, you get stopped, and a bunch of guards search your car. If they find anything in your car that you didn&#x27;t buy from them, they take it, and you can&#x27;t have it back.If you ever do want to leave the town, not only will you have to buy a house somewhere else (and your existing house will be worth a lot less than what you paid for it), but you&#x27;re not allowed to take any of the stuff in your house with you - it all just disappears forever.Now imagine you&#x27;re a new company trying to sell a product, and the store owner won&#x27;t let you sell your product in their town for some reason (you aren&#x27;t paying them enough, it violates one of their rules, etc.) Even if the people living inside the town want your product, they can&#x27;t buy it unless they completely uproot their life and move somewhere else, which no one is willing to do. And so the town owner is able to kill your product, and prevent it from ever being a threat to them. (Meanwhile, the town owner copies your product and starts selling it in the store themselves).

Not sure that I completely follow your logic in regards to the &quot;tax&quot; here. With any product, you have two main things: production of the product and distribution of the product. Spotify doesn&#x27;t NEED to be on Apple devices (they started off on the web), but they WANT to be on Apple devices (and Android devices) because they are great distribution channels for its product.That said, how much is distribution worth to Spotify? Imagine that Spotify was not software, but instead it was a hardware device. Would they expect Best Buy to carry it for free? Would they expect Walmart or Target not to offer a store branded competitor? I think not.When you don&#x27;t own your distribution channel, you pay for distribution one way or another.

&quot;then it should waive the tax altogether. It&#x27;s only fair.&quot;They&#x27;ve still got to at least cover bandwidth (minor) and payment processing.

DOJ - SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME (SORRY FOR CAPS) HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM USA vs. MICROSOFT (besides the obvious).

Apple should take no cut, and profit only from the sale of hardware.  By taking cut on software they are double dipping.  Good software makes the phone more valuable for users and drives phone sales.

If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don&#x27;t see why apps can&#x27;t be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I&#x27;m aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.Because that worked so well for Windows with malware,viruses, and ransomware.

I believe it is not the problem of 30% cuts. It is the Problem of Anti-Competitive behaviour when you have a competing services without the cost of cuts.This is not the same as Amazon offering their own label in their Store. Customers could shop in dozens of many other online retail or local retail. And Amazon does not charge other label 30% cut for stocking fees.I believe Apple should charge a fair amount only when they have a competing product or services within its locked system. Had Apple Charge 15% for the first year on Spotify and 10% for all subsequent subscription it would have been much better. I don&#x27;t believe the 5% would work, as I have seen many saying 5% should be enough. The cost of running microtransaction, processing, billing, legal, etc are just about break even at 5% even in the scale of Apple. I don&#x27;t see charging 10% would seem unfair. ( In US at least, in EU the processing fees are much much lower )Or Apple should never have made Apple Music in the first place. I still don&#x27;t see any value in Apple offering it. iTunes was required for iPod. And it changes the whole music industry as a whole, along with iPod sold which ultimately saved Apple. No one will buy iPhone because of Apple Music, and Apple Music itself isn&#x27;t even profitable.

Personally, as an app developer, I think Spotify is taking the right stance here.I believe that Apple should take some cuts but not as high as 30%. I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%. Plus, I think that if Apple has a competing service, then it should waive the tax altogether. It&#x27;s only fair.If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don&#x27;t see why apps can&#x27;t be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I&#x27;m aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.At least Google allows installing apps without the Play Store, perhaps it&#x27;s time Apple permitted something similar with its apps? This could solve this whole problem and have other positive side effects such as people being less likely to jailbreak their iPhones.

Netflix already removed iTunes payment[0] to avoid the 30% Apple tax ($256 million in 2018)[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;31&#x2F;netflix-stops-paying-the-apple-tax-on-its-853m-in-annual-ios-revenue&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;31&#x2F;netflix-stops-paying-the-a...</a>

Is Netflix next?  March 25th is right around the corner...

No, Apple doesn’t get all its money from Spotify. For Apple it’s insignificant.And of course it only applie for in app purchases, if you browse to Spotify.com on you iphone and pay there, Apple doesn’t get a penny.Most of these claims are dubious at best. Bunch of cry-babies.

Something to note: competition wise, Spotify doesn’t have a 30% App Store profit handicap compared to Apple Music, it has a 60% one.Spotify doesn’t just forfeit 30% of their App Store revenue, they pay this directly to Apple - so the relative handicap is doubled.

&gt; The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app.Well, you probably can’t advertise your apartment on AirBnb and then Link people to your own payment service that bypasses AirBnb’s fee either. It sort of makes sense.

They are not compelled to use Apple as their payment processor.They are absolutely free to handle billing their customers on their own website and to turn off the ability to pay through their iOS app altogether.This is, in fact, exactly what Netflix has chosen to do with new users.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;31&#x2F;netflix-stops-paying-the-apple-tax-on-its-853m-in-annual-ios-revenue&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;31&#x2F;netflix-stops-paying-the-a...</a>Nothing is stopping Spotify from doing the same thing with new and&#x2F;or existing users.What they are not free to do is provide a link to their billing web page within their app.

&gt; They have some valid complaints, but &quot;if we use Apple&#x27;s payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so&quot; isn&#x27;t one of them.But Spotify doesn&#x27;t want to use Apple&#x27;s infrastructure and is compelled to do so regardless.Spotify is saying that if using Apple payment infrastructure was free, then not allowing other options would not be a problem, but since it&#x27;s not free, not allowing anything else is a problem, not that Apple charging for the use of its payment infrastructure is a problem in itself.

They have some valid complaints, but &quot;if we use Apple&#x27;s payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so&quot; isn&#x27;t one of them.The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app.Apple has long allowed content providers to opt out of using Apple&#x27;s own payment system (and paying Apple a cut), but without being able to point users to your payment website, this rings hollow.As far as Apple Watch goes, the API to allow for downloading content to local storage and playing it back in the background landed in last year&#x27;s Watch OS update.Pandora manages this task just fine.

I&#x27;m no great fan of Google, but it&#x27;s a little harder to point the finger at them.F-droid works perfectly well on any Android device, and is a viable alternative to Google Play (for some users). Android .apk files can be installed on any Android device with one switch flipped - and the first time you attempt to install an .apk file, it points you to the setting. Chrome extensions can similarly be packaged and distributed from another source (i.e. GitHub) and are treated as first-class chrome extensions alongside their store-installed counterparts. Apps installed on an iPhone via Xcode (only available for macOS, which is only available on Apple hardware) expire after 7 days and refuse to open unless they are re-deployed. They last for a year if the user pays Apple $99&#x2F;year for a developer certificate.Google&#x27;s platforms don&#x27;t have people spending money as much as iPhone users do, but they are not nearly as locked down or restrictive.

Upvote the fuck out of this.Google does exactly the same thing with Chrome Extensions or Android Apps.

I&#x27;m on android pie and I&#x27;m not the only one having these issues, go to the play store listing and sort reviews by latest version, many are complaining about the lack of lock screen and headset controls.The app is extremely unstable on Bluetooth as well, I now leave my expensive wireless earbuds at home because Spotify can&#x27;t handle more than 10 seconds of continuous wireless playback without cutting out.

&gt; As a premium subscriber it&#x27;s very frustrating to not be able to pause music on the lockscreen anymore. Or using the headphone controls.I just wanted to say that I am also a Spotify Premium subscriber using the Android (Pie) app and I don&#x27;t have any issues with these two features. I cannot comment on the blocked songs, since I do not use that functionality. Have you checked the forums to see if other users are experiencing the same problems? Maybe there is a specific fix for your device.

I guess now I know where Spotify&#x27;s priorities have been over the last few years as their Android app regressed.Your war with Apple seems to have distracted you from the one platform you are on good terms with. As a premium subscriber it&#x27;s very frustrating to not be able to pause music on the lockscreen anymore. Or using the headphone controls. Or why a blocked song keeps being played in discover weekly. Get your act together or you&#x27;ll lose your android customers to Apple too.

Has anyone noticed in CarPlay that Spotify sounds much quieter (and worse) than Apple Music? I have always had a suspicion that this was Apple’s doing, but now it seems much more likely. But if I’m wrong someone please let me know! I’d really love to know what is causing it. It almost makes me want to subscribe to Apple Music just for listening in the car.

Spotify petitions EU to sanction Apple for abuse of their monopoly on the iOS platform? Which looks a bit like what they&#x27;ve just done...

&gt; Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn&#x27;t that send a very clear message to Apple?Apple shrugs and bans Spotify. Next move?

I agree that Spotify is taking the right stance. In their position, working on whatever team is responsible for fighting Apple, I would also do anything in my power to fight.Having said this, Apple can do as they please. They control the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the user accounts. The same was true of Twitter who effectively squeezed access to their API until one or two desktop clients remained.The only two ways out of this is to legislate a lower rate (through campaigns such as these), or to create a competing platform that lowers costs for its users. Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn&#x27;t that send a very clear message to Apple?

Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair