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mackey

If you subscribe through the iOS app, Apple gets 30% of the subscription. That 30% drops to 15% after a year.

You also can't advertise signing up for the subscription outside of the app.

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> You also can't advertise signing up for the subscription outside of the app.

IN THE APP.

This is why you can't buy kindle books in the Amazon app, because then they would have to pay the 30% tax. This is also why Amazon doesn't have links in that app to take you to a web browser where you can buy the books.

But if you don't want to pay the 30% tax and you have a subscription service, you are free to charge whatever you want on your own website. You just don't have to have people sign up inside the app or links to where to sign up inside the app.

This has ALWAYS been the rule. It's not new. Some companies charge extra to cover the fee, some company seem to eat the fee because they're happy to get that many extra sign ups.

I imagine if you open the Spotify app and it said that it's a subscription service and you must have a Spotify account to login and listen to music, and nothing else, the vast majority of people would figure out to check their website to sign up.

I'll ignore the question of whether not what Apple is doing is right. There's nothing new here, so why is Spotify making noise now? Could it be because they're losing members and losing money and need someone to blame?

> I imagine if you open the Spotify app and it said that it's a subscription service and you must have a Spotify account to login and listen to music, and nothing else, the vast majority of people would figure out to check their website to sign up.

I'm not so optimistic. I'd presume a nontrivial number of people would be confused and leave a 1-star review. I can't imagine how many people are confused about how the Kindle iOS experience works.

That's possible too. I guess you'd have to weigh the loss of the 30% to Apple (now 15% if they keep the scription over a year) to the lost 100% from the people who don't sign up at all.

I remember hearing somewhere that some apps have fantastic subscription conversion inside the app because payment to so convenient compared to doing it outside. I don't know if that was a dating app, or Netflix, or what. But Apple's payment system is so simple and frictionless that user seem to be very willing to spend money.

>> You also can't advertise signing up for the subscription outside of the app.

Amazon Prime does this, no. In the Amazon iOS app, you can browse, but cannot buy items. You can still login using your Prime account.

In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than IAP.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Oh wow, that's harsh. I can't believe you aren't allowed to direct people to the web experience. That must seriously erode margins for hardware folks.

Not quite sure what you mean by hardware folks? Any physical good sold in an app from the Apple App Store has to be processed by the vendors payment processor not by Apple.

This practice is common in digital marketplaces. For instance, Amazon doesn't allow Marketplace Sellers (people who aren't Amazon but sell goods on Amazon.com) to:

- link to a non-Amazon webpage

- provide buyers with a phone number or email address to reach them at

- or any other thing that could funnel sales outside of Amazon

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