Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair | Hacker News Reader

Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

timetoplayfair.com

1,903 pointsdmitriid841 comments

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'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't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I'm aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.

At least Google allows installing apps without the Play Store, perhaps it'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.

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's own web site, which bypasses Apple getting any cut at all.

https://support.spotify.com/us/account_payment_help/subscrip...

Netflix has done the same thing.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8471988/spotify-...

In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.

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/Netflix and a scam app like "awesome culculator" that charges $5/mo to people who don'didn'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.

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's an Enterprise distribution app [1], so even if there is an exploit that breaks out of the app sandbox you don't have to worry about malicious websites drive-by downloading it.

1: they're likely refining the process of obtaining one of these certs after the recent news reports on business fraud

What is "should"? Who determines should, aside from what the law currently says?

Maybe I'm uninformed, but it doesn't appear to me that access to an app store and the terms of such access (which by the way didn'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're an app developer, are you equally ok with someone else determining what you get to charge for your app when you're done with it? Isn't that the same (lack of) logic?

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.

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.

Not sure that I completely follow your logic in regards to the "tax" here. With any product, you have two main things: production of the product and distribution of the product. Spotify doesn'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't own your distribution channel, you pay for distribution one way or another.

> 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.

> If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor

If 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.

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'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'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'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't even profitable.

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

"then it should waive the tax altogether. It's only fair."

They've still got to at least cover bandwidth (minor) and payment processing.

Because that worked so well for Windows with malware,viruses, and ransomware.

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.

A lower cut?

Why not only allow to use their payment system?

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

Apple did the same thing to Kindle for iPhone back when it launched.

We submitted the original version to Apple with a fully functioning store built into it—and were then stuck in submission limbo. Two weeks later, Apple announces their intent to build in-app purchasing.

The kicker: Apple wanted a 30% cut of every book sold on the store …and at the same time, had negotiated with book publishers that the publishers MUST sell all books at a 30% margin on ALL stores if they want to sell their books via Apple's own ebook store.

Aka we couldn't sell books at an increased cost, even if we wanted to. We would have had to take a loss on every purchase.

In the end, we had to remove all of the store functionality from the app, and weren't even allowed to link people directly to the web store for purchasing (or even instructions for purchasing).

Even crazier, Apple in some cases forces apps that use webviews to block out links to the Kindle Store that would normally appear. My iOS app [1] has speed reading and accessibility features that we overlay on websites, including the Kindle Cloud Reader.

Apple wouldn't approve our app until we blocked the Kindle Store button from loading on the Kindle Cloud Reader website. It never occurred to me that Apple would try to exercise control over how third-party websites are rendered inside webviews, but it turns out they do.

1: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beeline-reader/id938026867?m...

It wasn't just Kindle. There were dozens of really high quality book reading apps that either sold old or hard to find books, comics, or even mangas. All of them evaporated over night once Apple forced the 30% cut. I'm still very bitter about that move.

Apple even went as far as making some Steve Jobsian rule that you had to sell your book for the same price on the web as you did in-app. So you couldn't make up for the 30% cut. That was a pure bad-faith move and Apple only recently rescinded that requirement.

My dad has had iPads since the first one, and it is still jarring for him to not be able to just click a "store" button in the Kindle app. (I believe it used to have a webview for the store built-in; I do not use the Kindle app)

He was very confused when it disappeared. I imagine most users feel this way. I had to coach my mom to sign up for Pandora on the website so she saved a couple bucks a month, and it was baffling to her why it costed more in the app.

I'll feel sorry for Kindle when their devices support EPUB files.

> Kindle for iPhone

You put a walled garden... in another walled garden.

On a more serious note: I get it; among Apple users are the most happily paying people that you can find on this planet and if you have a product you want to make it available to them. No wonder they think it their right to take a massive 30% cut.

The Kindle iPhone app still doesn't even link you to the website so you can buy books does it? It only looks like I can add it to a "list" that I assume I can view in the browser and then purchase.

Amazon played the victim here but book publishers preferred Apple’s model to Amazon selling their books at a loss to keep competitors out and to boost sales of the Kindle.

As a user this is infuriating, I remember spending a good chunk of time trying to figure out how to get book on the Kindle app :/

I've used the Kindle app ever since it launched, and have followed this fiasco. The trouble for someone like me is I would rather purchase my content from Amazon since I can read it on any device, not just an apple device.

p.s. Do you know how I would go about recommending someone add the ability to have green or amber text on the black background?

Also: there were multiple ebook readers on the store at the time that were already selling books in-app. Several stopped development, others removed their in-app store.

I suspect we (Kindle) we're either the trigger for the in-app purchasing store, or really accelerated plans around it.

I wasted so much time trying to figure out how to get books in the iOS kindle app. When I finally figured out that I had to use my laptop, I was still confused at so why the iOS app was not saying anything about anything.

Which is especially unfortunate, since most Kindle users want this feature and (probably) frequently request it, not knowing that Amazon's hand is forced.

Apple doesn’t always get 30%. You can buy iTunes gift cards 20% off. Amazon can take 90% by selling iTunes gift cards used to buy through App Store.

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 companies

I 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.

> - It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies

Interesting one since it is Spotify that is trying to close the currently open podcasting universe.

Let's not pretend that Spotify is either the white knight or the underdog here. This is two big companies negotiating over pricing.

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

> Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch

I'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't seem like apple prevented anything.

Counterargument: Apple's review process is more likely to let "some guy's" 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.

I _believe_ the issue here is some app developers were invited to visit Apple and (perhaps) get access to certain APIs that weren't going to be made available to normal app developers.

- If you're deep into iOS development you know that Apple apps - the ones shipped with the OS - sometimes do things that 3rd party apps aren'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 - https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/05/uber-removing-apple-gra...

Apple has been inviting 3rd party developers to preview technologies for a while e.g. https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/17/apple-invites-dev... so it seems to be standard practice.

As I read this "Time to Play Fair" website, it looks to me like Spotify is complaining they weren't invited to these preview sessions and thereby didn't get to learn about / get permission to use undocumented APIs.

Of course IANAL

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.

My read from the linked timeline is that Apple didn't block Spotify from the Apple Watch, but rather wouldn'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.

> 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'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't you instead build your app and submit it for approval? This is probably because the Apple Watch SDK didn't provide all the functionality Spotify wanted, and so Spotify was trying to get Apple to add new functionality to the SDK.

> We submit a new proposal for a streaming app directly on the Apple Watch. Apple declines

> With WatchOS 4, Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch

Again, doesn't say they were blocked, just that proposals were rejected and the provided functionality made it difficult/impossible to do what they wanted.

> With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionality

Was 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't want to build without this functionality)?

EDIT: I'm also not saying they didn't build the app and submit it and have it rejected. They just never actually say that in the timeline.

It's one thing to make an app, it's an entirely different thing to get it through the App Store review process.

Did that guy's app make it on the App Store? He could have easily built it with private APIs which would work but wouldn't pass review (maybe, App Review is very inconsistent) or many other reasons why he could and Spotify couldn't.

Spotify is available (on apple watch) now, for whatever that'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)

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't have been released.

If you read between the lines, it'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.

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's most likely that they wanted to use functionality available to Apple Music, but not any other app.

I don'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'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 "blocked" Spotify only in that it hadn'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.

> - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch / HomePad

But they've blocked every streaming music thing, right? It wasn'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.

I believe this is their point: Apple deliberately leaves those features unbuilt in order to give itself a market position that others can't compete with

> It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies

Is 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't constantly run in the background; you could still play audio in the background without your app, you just couldn'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] https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch#fn:pLK9h4...

[1] https://marco.org/2018/09/17/overcast5

It'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.

> The issue of the 30% cut alone is enough for further investigation,

Not really, it's 30% for everyone, not just Spotify.

I don'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.

-Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch

The 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 HomePod

Apple 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 Siri

Apple 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 companies

Netflix also blocked its API from most third parties years ago. Can we sue Netflix?

- Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch

How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?

- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod

How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?

- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri

How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?

- It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis

Wakes up Ok here we have the first real issue, BUT even with that said this is SUPER one-sided. We have only Spotify's word and given their liberal stretching of the truth (or outright breaking it in some cases) I'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 companies

I'm going to need more info on this because it is super vague.

Utterly disagree.

The problem isn't the amount of the Apple tax, and it buries the lead to make it about that. The contention here is that applying rules like this arbitrarily in a way that at least appears to favour your own products over your rivals is an abuse of your position.

If the commission rules in Spotify's favour (which I would think is likely, given the dim view they've taken of such matters previously), then I'd be astonished if Spotify doesn't file lawsuits in the US under the Sherman Act.

In any case, having this fight happen, and in public, can only be good for indie developers if it forces Apple to apply it's rules arbitrarily.

For a long time I've been confused about the rules of monopolies. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE into Windows so much so that the US threatened heavily to break up the company.

Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...

They bundled _while_ having a monopoly. They could have bundled or they could have had a monopoly, but doing both is where it crosses the anti-trust line since your customers are effectively captive.

What does Apple have a monopoly on? What does Amazon have a monopoly on? Google arguably has a monopoly on search which could put them in an unfavorable position should an antitrust case be brought against them (maybe why they added DDG to a default search engine choice in chrome, see judge, there are other search options!).

I was there, it was more like the US threatened to break up Microsoft, and then Microsoft, their army of lawyers, and the courts laughed the government out of the room. The government had to settle for lesser sanctions. ("Sanctions" which, in my opinion, were not sanctions at all.)

>Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...

That's because the "sanctions" solidified that practice as explicitly legal. So now EVERYONE started doing it. The only thing you needed to do was to allow other people to put their unrelated services on your platform too. You could even charge other people for that if you wanted. (And you didn't even have to let unrelated services on your platform in certain cases. For instance, at the time, Windows was riddled with viruses and bugs, so where the safety or security of the consumer was concerned, you didn't have to allow or even have certain services on your platform. Little known loophole there.)

The problem was really that the issues on the face of it, to someone like me, a young developer activist at the time, were not really the questions dealt with when you finally get into court. The law is about the law, and there was no getting around it.

I became convinced that what we should be doing is trying to change the law. I'm just to old to put that kind of effort into agitating for changed laws any longer.

EDIT: It's probably only fair for me to add that the courts turned out to be right in the Microsoft case. History has shown that information processing paradigms can change on a dime. (PC to mobile). The law is there to provide reasonable safeguards to all actors in a market, and ensure that competition is fair. It's just that "fair" in the eyes of the law, looked a bit different than "fair" did in my own opinion.

> Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE

I think it is an impressive PR achievement by Microsoft that you remember it this way.

As a more recent example, when Google was fined related to Android, they tried to spin it as "being fined for bundling the play store". That is of course not what they were fined for, but it makes a nice memorable headline.

Microsoft bundled IE for the express purpose of putting Netscape out of business and used their market power to kill netscape. It’s not illegal to be a monopoly, it’s illegal to abuse that monopoly position. Google can make Maps and chrome and whatever, but they can’t force Samsung to not bundle a competeing maps app.

At that time Microsoft completely dominated desktop operating systems to the extent that it was an effective monopoly. It them attempted to leverage that position to try and squash other browser makers.

I agree that Apple is trying to squash Spotify, but I don't believe it doesn't have an effective monopoly on mobile phones.

The problem is that Apple isn't the leader, by market share, in cell phones. That would be Android.

I work for Google, opinions are my own.

I believe this is because previously antitrust law was used when things were bad for competition but nowadays the thinking is more that antitrust laws should be used when things cause higher prices.

https://qz.com/work/1460402/google-facebook-and-amazon-benef... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/lina-kh...

The difference is that Netscape Navigator was a paid application. Microsoft was bundling their product, which was free, with their OS. They OS was dominating the market, which meant that majority of people didn't have to buy from Netscape. They were forcing out the competition.

When Apple, Google and Amazon are releasing unrelated services into their platforms it isn't to starve out competitors but just expand their business. They aren't, as far as I know, drastically undercutting the prices of their services to levels that aren't sustainable for other companies to compete.

* should read forces Apple to apply it's rules fairly. Was a bad edit, whoops!

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't that send a very clear message to Apple?

Well, that's not entirely true, Apple can't exactly do what it wants. As other comments point out regarding Microsoft, Microsoft were forced to allow IE to be debundled and other competing browsers installed, because having a monopoly on a platform and using that platform to enforce anti-competitive practices is illegal under anti-trust law.

So given Apple's marketshare (not a monopoly per se though pretty substantial), and given they both control the platform that people pay money to access, and promote preferential treatment of a first party service at the expense of any third party services, it sounds pretty ripe for an anti-trust lawsuit.

The same I believe has recently been applied to Google in the EU for using its monopoly to promote its own product search results above other online stores.

The only difference now is, the teeth of anti-trust regulators are a lot more dull than they were in the 90s, for various reasons.

> Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?

I believe this is also against Apple's Terms of Service. IIRC, they have a "most favored nation" clause which prohibits you from offering a lower price on a competing platform.

"Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?" - That is exactly what Spotify should do. They need to use the fact that Apple is married to its platform against them. Charge Apple users 12.99 and Android users 9.99 and then beat them by offering superior content. If Apple users want to sign up online then they can get the 9.99 price.

> Having said this, Apple can do as they please. They control the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the user accounts.

I disagree. Apple created the App Store and invited 3rd parties to host their apps there, so they should have to play fair for whatever the legal system deems is a good definition of fair.

> Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users...

They already did, the 12.99 for premium was only for purchase through the App store.

> Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?

Apple shrugs and bans Spotify. Next move?

Yeah, this does seem like a thorny issue. It feels like a shopping mall; you have this big space with a lot of people, a lot of things going on. If you didn't know what it was you could easily mistake it for a public space, but it most certainly is not.

But then you have the complication in the analogy that afaik, the landlord doesn't usually operate stores?

Similarly, at a local level, it looks pretty bad, Apple has advantages in its environment that allows it to operate in sort of unassailable ways. But indeed, if you zoom out, the big driver Apple has is millions and millions of iPhone users.

Apple has users that want its products, spotify wants market access to those users, the link imo is "do the users want spotify more than apple?". And the answer I would think is no, but then that brings up I think the reasonable issue that there's a larger barrier in switching devices than there is in switching apps. Sorry for the ramble, the whole thing seems like a mess.

Legislating consumer right to root and sideload is even better solution.

> Apple can do as they please

I hope they continue to do so, in so much as I would like Apple to experience some backlash for having inconsistent stances when it comes to the app ecosystem and their rules.

I think you have made a great point. Until Spotify gives a 30% price break to Android, this just looks like a contest of who gets to keep the gouge.

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 "purchases" - 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/curated/whatever they want but the user should have the choice.

>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'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't.

Engineers tend to want neat, perfect solutions that require no human judgement, but they'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.

> vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.

Congratulations, you've just reinvented the desktop adware / 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'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.

> 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's the official Apple or Google app store when it's just a random website.

Having a built in app store has huge advantages in security and usability for the end user.

>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't really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.

>They should be FORCED to have an open platform,

Just because YOU want this doesn't mean the Apple users want it. I'm utterly content with a single, curated-by-Apple app store for iOS. I like the stability it affords the platform.

I'd never accept it on a general-purpose computing device, but for my phone it's perfect.

Apple invests billions into R&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's a trade off tonnes of users are happy to make.

> Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS

What do you mean? Every time I've installed Windows, it came with Internet Explorer or Edge (which I then used to install another browser).

>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS

They 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. >95% of the users would choose the 'Apple Apps' bundle on iOS and the 'Google Apps' bundle on Android and the 'Microsoft Apps' bundle on Windows. And the few people choosing the 'Privacy-First' 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.

> 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't. It's as simple as that.

Forced? That doesn'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 "open," and a shitload of malware, scams, and shit software. Without curation of any kind, you end up with shit. It's the Tragedy of the Commons applied to apps. Build it, and they will ruin.

Judging by number of sales, people seem to either like these walled gardens or don't care about them.

For those of us that care about freedom, we can just buy a phone that's compatible with LineageOS (or Replicant if you're willing to go full Stallman) and install it.

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

> vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS

The problem here isn'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't run iOS on other hardware. You can't run another OS on the iPhone. You can't install apps on iOS except from the App Store. You can't use the App Store on other OSes.

Those are the underlying problems.

Users can't use part of the ecosystem. They have to invest in the whole thing, giving Apple more control and reducing consumer mobility.

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't just provide service for the Watch - you have to be an "approved" 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.

Whenever Apple's 30% take on the App Store comes up, people on this website get all up in arms about it. Let me provide some perspective, which I think is sorely lacking:

I sell physical goods on Amazon. They charge me 15% for this privilege. The only reason they don't charge more is because physical goods have lower margins than digital goods (my margins after it's all said and done are somewhere between 10-15%). And, you know what? I'm happy to pay Amazon their 15% because they're bringing me customers that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Perhaps thinking about it like this is instructive: does Amazon have an obligation to let me sell on their platform simply because lots of consumers choose to buy stuff from Amazon? Does Amazon have an obligation to change their fee structure so that I can more easily compete with Amazon Basics branded products?

Should Apple charge a smaller percentage to subscription services that can't afford to give up 30%? Probably. It would net Apple a percentage of something, rather than the 30% of $0 that they're getting now. And it would be a better experience for Apple's customers. But it is in no way unreasonable for Apple to expect to get paid for originating sales of software and subscriptions. And it is certainly not unreasonable for them to get paid significantly more than credit card processing fees.

The Amazon Basics point is interesting. They are able to capitalize on other's R&D and market research with almost no cost. If you want to sell a product, you have to do some amount of research to determine if it will be profitable. They are able to just look at selling statistics and launch their own version of popular, profitable to produce items.

This feels like an abuse of their position as a marketplace platform, but it isn't that different from grocery stores creating white label/off brand products.

Maybe it only becomes an issue when they promote their own items and bump original products down the search results. This is closer to the behavior that Spotify alleges Apple is doing.

Thing is, unless your app is already somewhat popular, Apple won’t do anything for you. Maybe you get more customers. But maybe an app like Spotify invested enough in marketing to reach new customers without Apple‘s health.

The problem is that it’s really hard to measure how many customers Apple really brings and how many would find an app through other means.

The difference is that for a mobile app, it's either apple's way or highway(more like nothing). You can't very well be a significant app developer by ignoring iOS. And apple does not allow users to sideload your app on the store. So the amazon analogy is disingenuous at best. You can still operate a website or dozens of other ecommerce platforms to sell your goods. But without app store, there is no way for you to reach iOS users. iOs users are almost 50% of mobile users and contribute much higher percentage of revenue.

Amazon has an obligation to play fairly in the marketplace at large and they don't. They operate at a loss. They shouldn't have to let anyone on their platform. But they should also play fair. As it relates to Apple, the iPhone or Android are literally the only reasonable means of accessing online services on the go. They are a platform of a higher order than Amazon and should allow others to play in their sandbox. I don't know what the right number should be — probably it should be zero. 30% is insane.

You’re missing the point: Apple seems to be abusing its power as a platform to unfairly charge content based providers with 30% tax while not applying it to themself. On Amazon, it would be comparable to charging you 15% while not charging themselves the same on their Amazon Basic products.

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.

Didn't Elizabeth Warren say Apple shouldn't distribute its own apps in the App Store? Apple Music isn't in the App Store…

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's app store racket. It's likely why iOS Safari continues to drag it's feet on PWA support.

> Progressive Web Apps [are] ultimately a threat to Apple's app store racket

Honestly, no, they'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't support either of these.

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?

Would a PWA be a viable option for an app like Spotify? I'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.

Seeing this makes me want to get even further away from Apple's ecosystem.

4 years ago, I was all in- Mac, iPad, iPhone. In the last 4 years, I've been driven away by Apple seeming contempt for professional users.

Their contempt for other competition is even graver cause for concern.

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.

I don't think this is about Spotify versus Apple - its about Apple versus its customers. I want to be able to choose what music service I want, and I want the price to be competitive. And not just music.

You just have to wonder what's up with Apple.

This is why I think the "if you're not the customer you're the product" mantra is overly simplistic. In this case, you can still pay $1000 for a phone, and it only makes you a more valuable product for Apple to sell to its (developer) customers.

It's about Apple and anyone they consider a (potential or active) competitor. As far as customers come into it, Apple wants to be able to milk them dry and keep them from using anyone who might provide a similar or better service than their own, as well as take over any profitable channels they don't already have support for.

It's 1990s Microsoft on a mobile phone.

Why not switch to Android?

Let's be fair then:

Phones now have the same level of processing power as portable computers. We shouldn't be obligated to only run applications that are siphoned thru a third party "trusted clearinghouse", be it the smartphone or the operating system vendor.

If I want more safety or I am not a Power User, I can flick a switch on the device to allow that binding behavior to happen. Heck, they are giving me the 'free service' of taking care of app security for me, I could even pay for that if I am serious about having my apps checked and stuff.

Phones are computers. You own the hardware, you should be able to install whatever you want. Always.

Is the argument about protecting the masses of non-tech people? Great, make it an opt-out. And still: There ought to be someone keeping tabs on that big brother (gov regulations? agencies) or else shady behavior can ensue as well.

> Phones now have the same level of processing power as portable computers. We shouldn't be obligated to only run applications that are siphoned thru a third party "trusted clearinghouse", be it the smartphone or the operating system vendor.

I pay a lot of money for iPad Pros and Google Pixelbooks for precisely this functionality. When the user can run anything they want, the result is the unsafe landscape of malware we see on common desktop OSes.

Just because Apple can do as they please, doesn't mean they ought to be allowed to.

Antitrust is a useful tool for when players end up controlling monopolies and using them in anti-competitive ways.

There's an interesting philosophical question there. Can a vendor who has 15% marketshare really be called a monopoly?

Sure, they have complete control over who publishes on their own platform, but that sort of thing happens all the time without anyone batting an eyelash at it: The major console vendors do this, as did all cell phone vendors in the pre-smartphone era. My digital camera does this.

That leaves me thinking there's no real ground for invoking antitrust laws on this issue. Though there's still plenty of room to say that these policies are consumer-hostile and not in the public interest, and therefore there ought to be a law against it.

Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic.

There is a stronger case against Amazon for selling Amazon-branded, well-moving products like batteries and diapers, even though they don't stifle the other brands.

It’s important to define exactly what is “anti-competitive.” If Apple banned Spotify or Deezer, that could be considered anti-competitive. But they aren’t. Netflix has original programming, is that anti-competitive? Don’t Netflix originals compete against non-Netflix shows for streaming revenue? Are there alternatives to Netflix? Yes. Are there alternatives to the App Store? Yes: Spotify could, for example be web-only if they wanted to. Spotify also could sell on macOS, Windows, Chrome, Android, and Linux. “Having an app” isn’t a particular right, but even a requirement for reaching users. Also, they don’t have to sell their subscriptions via in-app purchase; that can be done via web without paying Apple’s commission.

While I was ready to leave a comment about Spotify not playing fair with artists, I have seen Apple'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's fine, but these practices go beyond that and are unfair.

> Spotify not playing fair with artists

Spotify 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.

As a user, I much prefer the Android model. For example I can buy and browse Kindle or Audible books directly in the app. I don't use Spotify but I imagine it's a similar experience.

Apple policies do not really benefit anyone. Kindle iOS users will simply open Safari to buy their books, making their experience worse.

Either Apple should really remain objective and not have horses in the App Store race, or follow the same rules on its own apps that they impose on others, or change the rules to benefit everyone (including the users).

In all seriousness, when people say "iPads are better tablets because of software compared to Android tablets" I really do raise an eyebrow.

If your use case for a tablet is to read books or comics (which I suspect it is for many people! A lot!), then the iPad is terrible because of this specific limitation, and Android tablets are much easier to use. Shame Google seems hellbent on destroying them - the Pixel C really was a very, very nice comic reading tablet when it wasn't suffering hardware failures.

Just because Apple can currently do this shit legally, doesn't mean that they should.

Software platforms are marketplaces and company behind such platforms yield great power, even if technically speaking they aren't yet a monopoly.

Hardware devices should not be legally allowed to be locked down in the way that Apple devices are. Not sure how many people remember, but Microsoft eventually being forced to provide choice in browsers was a great outcome and allowed Firefox and Chrome to flourish. Yes, Microsoft was at that time a monopoly, whereas Apple right now isn't, but Apple has the potential to be a monopoly. They are after all the richest software company in the world.

Apple succeeded where Microsoft failed, they normalized “trusted computing”, which brought everything we feared.

I very much prefer EU's consumer protectionism in these regards and I'm hoping they'll do something about walled gardens such as Apple's.

I just don't understand why most people think Apple don't have a monopoly market position. Of course Apple is the monopoly on the App Service market ([1] App store generated 93 more revenue than google play in Q3). We are talking about app service rather than the phone units sold.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/app-store-generated-93-mor...

It's one things to compare app sales from one market to another, but the broader issue is that Apple maintains a monopoly on the store itself. There is no Google Play store on iPhone.

And... listening to SCOTUS oral arguments recently, that sounds like it will be changing soon.

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).

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't affected me.) Compare that to the fragmented video streaming marketplace where services try to distinguish themselves with exclusive and/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).

Can someone help me stop playing the world'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/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's technically possible?

The crucial line in their argument is this:

> 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'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'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'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 think you're wrong - Apple's behaviour in this instance is clearly an abuse of market power and I fully expect the European Commission to rule in Spotify's favour.

Apple are directly competing with Spotify in the field of streaming music services via Apple Music. Apple'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't doing. Apple might have a partial defence if they allowed sideloading of apps, but they don't.

The obvious precedent is the European Commission'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're a small mobile device manufacturer, you don't have many reasonable alternatives to using Android. Google didn'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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law...

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm

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't doesn'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't weight anything to Apple.

And then we have the subject of the direct competition, Apple Music doesn't need to have their profits cut in 30% because they are owned by Apple itself.

And it's even worse if they are using Siri, Homepad and Apple Watch to make Apple Music more appealing in comparison to Spotify.

The difference comes in when Apple introduced Apple Music, a direct competitor to Spotify. So now, they're not only offering an essentially identical service, they'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's a clear cut case for Spotify, from a legal perspective.

> 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's technically possible?

I see your point but you could flip that a 3rd way:

"Consumers pay for their hardware - they own the device - so why should manufacturers tell consumers what they can or cannot install on their hardware?"

I grew up in an era when hardware wasn'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.

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.

> Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it'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?

>Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible?

It'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's a level playing field or you risk getting regulated as a utility.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-t...

There was a post by Ben Thompson[1] that outlines some of the challenges with Apples approach in the App Store. It's a good read if you have the time. I'm not trying to change your mind, but more give a different perspective on the conundrum that Apple is in.

[1] - https://stratechery.com/2018/antitrust-the-app-store-and-app...

RE: Football

Monopolies 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's not a zero-sum game. You can argue that you don't think it's worth it, but that's an opinion, it's not true that it's an inherently worse situation.

Until they entered into a rights sharing agreement.

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'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?

> Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it'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'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/Mac/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/streaming model is brilliant. The interface is much better than Apple music (with its bizarre integration with iTunes). That I can'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.

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'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 'all music for one price' is a non-starter, so I don't understand that criticsim.

~~Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible?

I don't think we have a clear ethic yet, for these situations. There's obviously a ton of economic power in platforms. Since the msft-vs-netscape days, it's been controversial.

Ultimately... these are marketplaces, important ones and, considering their size, scope and influence... I think there is a strong case that "my house, my rules" is not a reasonable way of doing things.

Apple/Google's app & content stores are huge bottlenecks and being locked out of them is on the same scale as being locked out of the financial/banking system for certain companies.

Does "free market" mean anything useful, if the free market consists of a handful of unfree "platforms?"

There'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.

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.

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.

> 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'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'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'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'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.

They would gladly pay their fair share. They don't own the content, though, the labels do.

As much 70% of a streaming service's revenue (any streaming service, not just Spotify) goes to rights holders.

Which streaming service plays the most fair?

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

Pandora has an Apple Watch app with offline playback.

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

I'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's view without having Apple's to contrast it with, it seem eerily similar to the "Browser War" days leading up to Microsoft's admonishment. Apple seems to be the equivalent of a drunkard walking a fine line.

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

I guess now I know where Spotify'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'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'll lose your android customers to Apple too.

> As a premium subscriber it'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'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 hate to say this, but one of my main gripes against Apple - the unfair advantage they have in pricing by not having to "pay themselves" 30% - has lost some strength in my mind.

Every grocery store takes a cut of every item sold on the store. The store owner determines the percentage. Just like Apple. Grocery stores make similar/nearly identical products to the third-party merchandise they sell. Just like Apple. Grocery stores can routinely undercut the pricing of third-parties due to not needing to "pay themselves". Just like Apple.

Damn. I really wanted to hate EvilBigTech for this.

The rest of Spotify's points I have no issue, but this one doesn't hold as much water for me anymore.

I think the fact that Apple prevented them from using payment methods that didn't go through them makes it significantly worse though - to carry the analogy (perhaps to far) the grocery store prevents the packaging of the products it carries from mentioning the website where you can order other products or something.

Yes please. EU commission, please fine the shit out of Apple and give them a reality check that they infact are a bully.

I have given all hope on the US govt doing anything to help the average joe. It’s a govt lobbied and paid for by corporations.

All companies do this. Back in days, even Evernote started doing that (with disguise "API bandwidth limits"). Nowadays, Evernote is irrelevant, so nobody complains.

The only difference here it that Apple's customers have $$, so everybody wants to be on their platform and everybody make noise.

And these politicians are talking on both side of their mouth: first they say how "3rd-party apps are stealing data" so platform must to have more checks when adding an app on their store. And when platform tries to enforce the rules they complain how platform needs to be "more open".

When I'm on Spotify on macOS and press play on my keyboard, it always opens up iTunes instead. Am sick of this second party support for everything especially when the Apple versions are so dire

I had a similar frustration where the media keys would control videos in Safari instead of my music.

This little app lets you go back to the old behavior, or set a priority: http://milgra.com/mac-media-key-forwarder.html

A week before launch of an SVOD product I worked on, Apple chose to reject us in spite of months of meetings and reviews with their app teams and assurances we were in-bounds since we were working with them for launch featuring.

It came down to the fact we required an email address and password for IAP so you could bring your subscription to the web or other platforms. While everyone else in the category did this, they decided that policy was going to change and we were just going to be the first people to deal with it. Since having an email-based account was core to the architecture and the UX, I went through a week of refactor hell to make emails/passwords optional to meet our launch date.

Since other apps still get to do this, it's clear the policy change message was BS. I've suspected a lot has had to do with Apple's ambitions in the streaming space and their desire to be in a position to offer bundling and other over the top services. They're already trying to control the UX with the TV app and are offering companies better rev share rates to do the integration work. Cutting back from 30% is how Apple incentivizes even heavier integration into their ecosystem.

Apple keeps doing this: Google and the Google Phone app, Netflix, Spotify, my product...more that we haven't even heard of, since not many are as big as the ones I've mentioned. The idea that this is somehow about protecting the consumer rings hollow.

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.

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.

Spotify is platform neutral. All things being equal, that's enough to use them vs. Apple/Google/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.

What will be the real innovation if the platforms are more open?

I'm looking forward to the Chrome dev tools and v8 that comes out of this.

Microsoft/IE antitrust led to a retraction in unhealthy Microsoft dominance (see IE6) and a rise in Firefox and eventually Chrome. Rise in Chrome led v8, node and better dev tooling (and by extension a richer JS ecosystem and maybe things like ClojureScript tangentially).

When the platforms monopolist/duopolists get retracted that will pave the way probably for more open source apps in the app stores and maybe a few other large corporations (like Google did for Chrome) dominating. Maybe better cross-platform tooling will come out of this? It's fun to think of what this will allow.

Slightly off-topic: I find it intriguing that Spotify keeps on calling their users as 'fans' instead of users or customers!

Slimy and disingenuous corporate PR speak is everywhere. They probably have something equally repulsive for their employees.

They have some valid complaints, but "if we use Apple's payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so" isn'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'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's Watch OS update.

Pandora manages this task just fine.

> They have some valid complaints, but "if we use Apple's payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so" isn't one of them.

But Spotify doesn't want to use Apple'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'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.

> 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.

There's a lot of things I like and are consumer-friendly about the App Store, mainly around privacy and security. But the "Apple tax" is absolutely where it veers into a level of concentrated power that concerns antitrust law.

Yes, I get that you can switch to Android and Apple doesn't have an actual monopoly. They still wield a lot of power to force this 30% tax down everyone's throats. Specifically it's the power of "bundling" which is a potential antitrust violation.[1]

The implied reasoning behind Apple's restrictions on bypassing the tax is to ensure a positive customer experience. By selling things through Apple they take on the role of an intermediary merchant that can do things like refunds and otherwise ensure a positive, trustworthy customer experience.

But we need only look at the Mac App Store to get an idea of how much consumers truly value this value-add. On that platform, vendors and consumers have the freedom to directly interact, while Apple has still enacted a pretty good level of privacy and security protections (through revokable developer certificates and sandboxing). Many simply bypass the store. And the tax there would make even less sense for strictly ongoing content subscriptions that pose no additional security or privacy threat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_(antitrust_law)

I hate to be that guy, but Apple built their own platform and they can bend the rules as they see fit.

Spotify should just quit said platform if they don't like the rules and ask their "fans" to follow them over to other platforms. I know this is not likely to happen but, oh boy, what a move. Let's all jump into the water and let the Apple platform be an Apple service ghost town.

On the other hand I do want to see Apple slapped on the hand by the European Commission and level the ground for all developers, specially indie ones.

Interesting tidbit: "FairPlay" was the name of apple's proprietary iTunes DRM technology that was eventually mostly phased out due to the aftermath of Steve Jobs' open letter [1]. I wonder if the naming parallel is intentional?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#Steve_Jobs'_%22Though...

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

It's time to trot out Cory Doctorow's talk on DRM to Microsoft (2004):

https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

> "Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone's records."

I remember when Apple's M.O. was to build insanely great hardware, and make money selling that hardware. It was the Other Guys who would do shady things like bundle browsers with OSes and do things explicitly against users' preferences to promote their own platform and ecosystem. Apple never really started with that until the iPhone.

Now they do all of this ecosystem-lock-in stuff because they're not solely interested in revenue from hardware sales now. It's lame and scummy and un-Apple.

I'd love to be able to use the Google Assistant and Signal Messenger on my Apple Watch, and use Spotify on my HomePod, and use iMessage on my Pixelbook. Real shame that I pay top dollar for hardware and that I can't.

Apple owns their platform. It cost a fortune to develop, and it's theirs.

Imagine it's the 1800s and you wanted to develop technology to let anyone listen to music anytime. You'd have to invent the computer, an operating system, and the internet (some means of distribution), then invent Spotify. (Or maybe not all those things in their entirety, but just enough to support the Spotify's functionality.)

Since it's 2019, there are platforms that provide the operating system and means of distribution, and Spotify merely has to deliver an app that floats in high-level-land. They then complain that that platform, who did all the work Spotify didn't have to, isn't being "fair." What does that mean? What are they rightfully owed?

Why doesn't Spotify create their own OS and App Store, and develop/distribute Spotify there? Because it's inconceivably hard? Surely that's why the people who did it get to set the rules.

Maybe Intel should only allow Apple to run Intel approved apps on Intel Mac's, because it's Intel's CPU running the show? And what about the modem chip vendors? Shouldn't Qualcomm put a firewall in firmware and filter all traffic on the iPhone that it hasn't approved? What about the ISP carrying those packets? Shouldn't they lay claim to packet ownership?

This platform ownership piffle Apple has sold for eons is pure horse shit, and the EU regulators will rule as such. Simply put, a fridge manufacturer cannot control what items get stored and cooled in the fridge, after the customer has paid in full for both the fridge and the item. And the fridge manufacturer certainly cannot restrict items only sold though it's own stores

It would be nice if the platform-independent music sites (Spotify, Tidal, Beatport, Bandcamp, etc) joined together to fund a web framework for music streaming that didn't require the same level of system access as a native app. That would allow them to escape the App Store tax, and the headaches related to Apple's review process, deployment issues, etc.

Right now, Apple owns the moat. The fairness Spotify is asking for requires people to give up money on the table. Because of that, a well-intentioned public awareness campaign is no substitute for legal action.

PS - I'd love it if more news websites were structured like the simple timeline on this site. I'd like to see how the situation developed over time, rather than seeing a stream of articles littered with links to past stories. Just give me one timeline I can scroll through, and I'll decide which of the linked stories I want to click on.

I'm pretty sure that such a web framework exists. There's <audio> element and web audio JS API.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/au...

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...

I think we should break the monopoly of app store and play store. Platforms should enable other stores to play well along with their stores. It is ridiculous at this day and age to go through a process like app store / play store approval after you've spent so much money building an app. The web works fine without a single party deciding what should or should not be on it. We should treat app store as a service for distributing apps and providing services to update and charge people for those services. It should be distinct from the platform itself. The platform should stick with publishing a spec for how an executable should be and standards to verify the veracity of the distribution with certificates and digital signatures. I think if there is a region that can enforce this change, it will be the EU and the rest of the world will follow.

A recent law passed in India seems like the kind of regulation that is needed to prevent this kind of behaviour https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/amazon-how-india-ecommerce-l... Essentially what the law says is that if you own a platform you can't create and sell products on it. This law targets Amazon and Flipkart since Amazon also uses their own website to sell Amazon basics products. Amazon also uses internal metrics to determine which new product categories to launch which other sellers on the platform won't have access to. Apple and Google app stores should also have similar restrictions.

Wow... Spotify had an opportunity to make a good case and then threw it all away because they got greedy.

A company not providing you and API you want does not equate to them blocking you. FULL STOP.

Spotify had some decent arguments (re: 30%, IAP, payment) but it fell 100% flat when they started giving equal importance to things that were not targeted at them. The lack of music API's on homepod, watch, iPhone are not some direct slight against Spotify and to pretend they are only shows Spotify's inflated view of themselves. Put simply: NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU.

Spotify is twisting the truth to it's breaking point in this post with just enough truth sprinkled around that you might not notice the bullshit.

The complaint is that Apple is withholding certain APIs from public access, though nothing technical prevents it from doing so, other than anti-trust issues. There is certainly truth to that! When Apple is both an app publisher, and API publisher, these anti trust issues are bound to pop up

There are always 2 sides to it. Especially when one side makes the other look like a blithering idiot.

A few points: * Without Apple, Spotify would be worthless and not reached any users at all, never grown * Apple is doing the heavy-lifting of building and distributing Apple Watch, HomePod, iPhones. Spotify is creating little additional value in comparison * Spotify repeatedly tried to cheat Apple's system and they were blocked and rejected (in my opinion) rightfully. They tweaked wordings, they even linked to a website that first looked harmless and would be MODIFIED after the app is approved. I'm not sure Spotify's behavior is ANY better.

This reminds of the whole browser war situation with Microsoft many years ago which Microsoft was forced to allow other browsers. It, however, feels different from Apple who seem to be able to just get away with this behaviour unchallenged.

There should be an alternative App Store, plain and simple. As long as the sandbox for apps exist, users will be pretty safe. Apps should work the same way sandboxing works on PC browsers. Apple constricts Safari iOS because they don't want web apps to be fully competitive with native apps. E.g I prefer to use Overcast.fm over web than the native app, but most times, my podcast streams will stop abruptly in mobile safari, that i'm thinking of trading my privacy to Android for a pixel 1. Only thing that saves me, is I hardly use my phone, otherwise the limited functionality of iOS for devices you pay hundreds for is painful.

I'm glad that Spotify is taking this stance. Apple and Google Play together have an effective monopoly on the mobile device app market, which is worth about 70 bln USD per year. Cost of entry and network effects make it essentially impossible to have new competing app stores, so barring new regulations the market will remain as un-free as it is. It's therefore about time for regulators to step in if we want to promote innovation in the app market that doesn't necessary align with the self-interests of Apple and Google, so I'm glad a relatively well-known company such as Spotify is pushing for this.

Anecdotally spotlight has had a hard time finding the Spotify app for me recently. (I use spotlight like an app launcher.) I chalked it off to some mojave bug with my new laptop but a tiny part of me was thinking conspiracy.

It's interesting how this appears just after Elizabeth Warren's call to break up the big tech companies.

I don't agree with Warren's stance, but hats off to Spotify for nice PR campaign timing.

This all seems well and good.

However, I'd like to point out something that doesn't sit well with me.

Spotify uses this same kind of extraction mechanism on the artists that use its platform.

The complaint loop is complete. We have artists complaining about artist 'hosting' companies complaining about application hosting companies.

I believe the solution lies in different, non-zero sum economics, but haven't been able to think of anything for music. I do, however, have some pretty cool ideas for longer form text and video content.

> We – and our partners – use cookies to deliver our services and to show you ads based on your interests.

Seriously? Y'all want to sniff/sell my data and run ads on a website that's supposed to "raise awareness" about "consumer unfairness"? Jerk move. Yeah it's all technically legal, but it's definitely tacky. You're making it rather hard to sympathize with you.

It's hard to have much sympathy when you know that this was written by the marketing department of a company with a $30bn market cap.

This looks to me like a blatant attempt to latch on to a perceived popular sentiment that Spotify thinks they can use to to have the government give them a big advantage that they didn't have before.

Call me cynical but it's hard to see this as anything but self serving.

Sure, but if another company with a $1T mkt cap is abusing it's market position to the detriment of a $30B company, wouldn't you want to hear about it?

After all, if they treat Spotify this way, how do you think they'll treat your app in the future if it happens to compete with them in someway?

sure but it’s 30bn vs apples almost trillion in market cap

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

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're all in with the Apple ecosystem, you're going to be missing out something.

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.

Apple's actions are not good and will eventually discourage companies from developing anything more than marketing apps for the App Store. You don't want a big piece of your revenue stream dependent on Apple app sales and Tim Cook's whim. Maybe this is why there are so many Cr-Apps and fewer and fewer "killer apps" anymore.

As Apple hardware sales decline they are desperately trying to build other services to make up for that lost revenue.

> Uber doesn't pay the 30% like others do.

This makes me curious if this is how Uber(Jump Scooters) is undercutting Lime and Bird on Scooter and Bike pricing in my city (Dallas). Uber is $0 to start a ride + $.15 a min. Bird and Lime and $1 to start + $.15 a min.

Is this partially because Apple takes 30% from Bird and Lime, but not Uber?

Eh this is just one big company trying to get more profits by complaining against another.

Spotify is not the good guy here.

Spotify works just fine on apple products (I use it), who cares about using Apples payment processing system (which they have a right to charge for), it's a Spotify service, so i should pay through Spotify which i do.

Given the increasing importance of smart phones in our lives it seems like we would benefit by having a modern day equivalent of the Carterfone decision[1] for smartphones.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone

Its been a super long time since I have looked into developing on the iOS side -- are there restrictions on Safari which would prevent Spotify from going to an all PWA type deployment for iOS and peacing out from the App Store? What would the API for Safari restrictions be to overcome? Thanks in advance.

AFAIK Safari has great support for PWAs these days except for not being able to show a native banner that allows the user to install the PWA on the home screen.

When I've first read about the 30% apps tax I couldn't believe my eyes. That's insane. It would be Ok if the actual devices were at least 10 times more cheap and Apple was making the actual profits relying on apps taxation only but given how much iPhones cost it's ridiculous.

It’s thanks to crap like this & the total lack of original innovation on the iPhone platform, that I am seriously considering the Samsung S10, after 8 years of exclusive iPhone use.

Post-Jobs Apple is over & done for. They are in “rent collection” mode now.

So long & thanks for all the fun. It was good while it lasted.

Customer to Spotify: support Siri Shortcuts and I will switch immediately.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Siri-Shortcu...

https://freeyourmusic.com/blog/spotify-trying-to-lockin-user...

Spotify is not the angel here, as it's using same tricks to block free choice and lock in users heavily.

Funny that Spotify fails to mention that, for app subscriptions, after a year Apple's cut drops to 15%.

I think if you own the platform you shouldn’t be allowed to compete. E.g. You can’t write apps for your OS. You can’t sell your own products through your own market. Etc. I’m surprised this hasn’t been legislated by now... we all remember Novell & WordPerfect... it never gets better.

This is part of a bigger war to maximise the duopoly of music and video streaming, perhaps analogous to the triple/quad play in telecoms.

It seems that Spotify's latest salvo is timed to capitalise on the rumoured event[1] and maybe even influenced by previous decision by Netflix to breakaway[2] from the two main revenue generating platforms (Android & iOS). Whether or not it will be beneficial to their business model(s) long term - only time will tell.

Apple needs a new goose and a contender in the ring to keep institutional investors happy, at least until a new market strategy[3] is cemented and next round of R&D, technological advancements, tooling etc. take effect and come to fruition; especially considering the recent battery recalls[4] and lower than expected demand for flagship products, So, I would assume they have carried out some due diligence to avoid any punitive measures by the EU or invite excessive regulation.

Nonetheless, it might turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for Spotify, despite a ruling in favour of an app with some clout in a dominant ecosystem. For example, Amazon has decided to fight[5] Google/Apple on many occasions, with no obvious benefits. Microsoft has largely capitulated to Amazon & Google on some of their efforts e.g. Cortana v Alexa, Edge v Chrome..

[1]https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-streaming-servic...

[2]https://bgr.com/2018/08/23/netflix-subscription-payment-chan...

[3]https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-must-reverse-angela-ah...

[4]https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/2/18165866/apple-iphone-sale...

[5]https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16371292/google-youtube-a...

This isn't about a 30% take rate on IAP (that's fine). This isn't about apple having apple music.

The problem is that Spotify is not allowed to take credit card input directly in the app. The problem is that Spotify isn't allowed to redirect users to a webpage to collect payment.

> Apple decides to open up the App Store to outside app developers and lures them in by the hundreds. They ask users – want to order a pizza, find your nearest florist, or look up how to do the Soulja Boy dance? “There’s an app for that.”

We already had the web for those things ...

I'm 100% behind Spotify on this issue even though I don't use the service.

BUT

If you're going to ask someone else to play fair, then maybe you should do the same i.e. have a revenue-sharing model that is fair to all of big labels, indie labels, and independent music producers.

Interesting to see this given Spotify doesn't play fair by locking in data in their app for developers. See: https://freeyourmusic.com [not mine, but read why this exists]

I've submitted a complaint about this requirement to use specific purchase systems against Play Store and App Store two years ago but they didn't see it as a problem because, apparently, you can switch from GPlay to Apple products or vice-versa.

A sound logic.

Not sure why Apple didn't get hit with an anti-trust lawsuit yet. Spotify is correct.

Spotify is a shady company that doesn't pay artists as well as Apple, it doesn't have a sustainable business model and now that they're public they're hiring PR firms to make timetoplayfair.com and spam HN because they're accountable to investors.

Spotify doesn't play fair with intellectual property, they were founded by a guy than ran an ad supported torrent company and got enough early market share to go public, but it's not sustainable. Now they expect less of a cut to gain market share because they didn't build something sustainable, unique or based upon a higher standard of ethics. No tears to be shed for this company's standard of fairness. Plus the product has other issues which I noted when I was a customer but were ignored as this company is simply interested in the bottom line; so I cancelled my account, which was not easy.

What if Spotify takes your phone number and sends you a text link to sign up to pay?

That would probably be fine...until Apple created a rule to discourage and then eventually ban all apps that used that pattern without going through their API.

Cannot post link to

https://www.timetoplayfair.com/ on Facebook.

It says:

  Oops
  Something went wrong. We're working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.

Facebook was experiencing issues all day today.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/13/tech/facebook-instagram-down/...

Someone - please commoditize mobile phone hardware. I want to be able to get a phone and assemble my on stack on it. Without any playstores / subscription services / location tracking / snooping built in.

What am I missing here? Why can Spotify not redirect users to subscribe on their own website?

I'm pretty sure I signed up on Spotifys website, then logged into my iPhone. Apple definitely don't get 30% of that subscription fee.

>Why can Spotify not redirect users to subscribe on their own website?

Because it's forbidden by apple to inform your user that it's cheaper on the website.

Because Apple rejects their app whenever they try something like that, or even have phrasing suggesting that users do so without actually redirecting themselves.

According to the website, the debate is that Apple does not currently allow apps to do what you are describing.

A few quotes from the timeline:

> Apple now prohibits buttons or links to any other external ways to pay.

> While we haven’t been able to include any buttons or external links to pages containing product info, discounts, promotions, etc. (even if they don’t link directly to a payment system!) since Feb. 2011

They also posted a Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=&v=l8SShgWqJvg

This is exactly why I moved from the iPhone to an Android phone about a year ago: I couldn't use Siri to play things on Spotify – that's pretty much the only thing that really bugged me about iOS.

As an extension, not only is Apple guilty of the absurd 30% tax on IAP, Google does it too and I think its very unfair that you cannot choose your own payment processor. Apple and Google should be viewed as an oligarchy of some sort being that they control almost all of the mobile market. The fact that there is almost no oversight to their business practices and their ability to literally take any app off the market or charge whatever processing fee they want is ridiculous. Its not like any company can also just set out to build their own app store since Google and specially Apple would never allow them to compete. I could go on this topic for days since I just know how much mobile developers are so vulnerable and powerless against the app stores.

Isn't it a little ironic that Spotify complains about Apple's cut while their entire business model is exactly the same? If anything, they are less fair to artists than Apple is to devs.

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.

Just to add to the debate - when in was working in the music industry and had a view of the data (~ 3 years ago now), the money Apple Music would pay per stream was higher than Spotify...

The solution here is for the US to start enforcing anti-trust laws again.

I can't imagine a clearer example of uncompetitive business practices and platform monopolization than the App Store.

Regardless of Spotify or not, Apple has become a state of the art bloodsucker while delivering flat out products. Making the switch to Android has never been more convenient.

I hope the EU takes this seriously just like they did with Microsoft. They shouldn't charge the 30% if they have a competing product and are undercutting it.

Meanwhile, Spotify is still a rip-off for artists http://www.timetoplayfair.art

Oh, that title.. thought for a moment they were going to start paying more to the musicians.. but I guess it's not yet time to play fair there.

Asking the European commission to impose regulations is morally worse than taking advantage of your market position and consumers' ignorance.

For what it's worth, I don't think Spotify is asking the European commission to impose regulations, but rather asking them to enforce the regulations they already have.

It’s their platform and they can do whatever they want. They invested, they built it, they rule it. Whiny generation and their stupid EU laws...

How about Spotify also start paying a better cut to all creators? Are you guys not sick of corporarions pretending like they are good citizens?

Apple seem completely unreasonable behind the scenes. As an iPhone fan boy it really puts me off. Do google do similar things I wonder?

So what was wrong with using Apple subscription service but jacking up the price 50%?

It's a lazy tax as far as I see it, why would anyone complain?

This will keep happening until Apple does what it should have done all along: give users control by allowing them to sideload apps.

It really should be a progressive fee, which starts low for new apps and goes up as more and more sales are made per time period.

The entire platform economy is a bad idea.

Because it's one thing if a government regulates a market, but yet another if a company does it.

You can already write web apps (which can be pretty sophisticated these days) and users can even “install” them right on their home screen. This capability has been there since the original iphone though the power available to web apps has grown enormously.

Unfortunately not every app can work his way, e.g. access to PII-sensitive sensors. But nothing stops Spotify from doing this — it’s how Spotify works on a laptop anyway.

Nice title given Apple's FairPlay DRM.

hard to feel bad for spotify, another publicly traded company maximizing profit and posing as a person, but it does highlight the downsides of rent-seeking behavior.

it's almost like private markets are bad and always lead to this sort of bs in every single real world case.

Side note but talking about their users/customers as "our fans" is super strange.

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

That's not an "unpopular opinion", that's a personal preference and you're welcome to it.

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's a phone. Some people are super into it, i'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.

Not unpopular, just uninteresting.

Why unpopular? It's a rational decision. Diversity vs centralization.

...unfair as Apple's rates may or may not be, it's a bit rich coming from Spotify.

Imagine if the entire web were subject to the arbitrary will of an individual corporation.

Artists to Spotify: cough

Upvote the fuck out of this.

Google does exactly the same thing with Chrome Extensions or Android Apps.

I'm no great fan of Google, but it'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/year for a developer certificate.

Google's platforms don't have people spending money as much as iPhone users do, but they are not nearly as locked down or restrictive.

But Apple not only has unilaterally changed the rules themselves time and again, but also frequently decides to interpret (and re-interpret) them in ways to disadvantage rivals like us.

Spotify isn’t so much a rival as it is a serf on Apple’s farm though, right?

Apple could just remove Spotify from the app store altogether, for fun.

I like how Spotify uses the word fans in place of customers.

Nice marketing.

I forgot my Apple Music membership was active, I just canceled it.

You had me, until the point where you turned off libspotify.

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

Netflix already removed iTunes payment[0] to avoid the 30% Apple tax ($256 million in 2018)

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/netflix-stops-paying-the-a...

Me to Spotify: it's time to start looking closely Purism's PureOs and Librem 5.

It has the potential to really be the one true alternative runtime that can get mass adoption.

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

Apple needs to be broken up. Warren go it right.

About time.

A bit off-topic but since this page is a call to the European Comission, it would have been nice to have a GDPR compliant cookie notice.

Someone just posted this, about Spotify trying to lock in users: https://freeyourmusic.com/blog/spotify-trying-to-lockin-user...

Spotify isn't really complaining about "unfairness". Business complaining are really just them trying to mobilize customer outrage to force a better deal for them. Apple created an ecosystem, and is allowed to charge what they want for it. Other vendors charge markups: retail, a business with notoriously low profit margins, charges about 15% markup. This is because price elasticity of groceries is exceedingly high: customers have extensive choice and it's not an immediate/emergency good. Restaurants charge about 60%. Clothing can be 300%, high fashion more. But nobody complains about that.

We need to stop thinking of the app store as a "tax" and more as a retail outlet, because it is just a digital retailer. The 30% effectively amounts to a markup.

> [Apple] frequently decides to interpret (and re-interpret) them [App Store rules]

This is a hard line for Apple to walk. Other platforms have issues with this too, and can't always come to one perfect interpretation. See some of the issues with Youtube policing pedophilia recently and having to take some drastic (and very unpopular) steps. What was okay previously isn't now.

On Apple's payment system: they run a walled garden. Though there are disadvantages to this, there are also advantages to it. The case could be made that this has massive security benefits (iOS malware, anyone?) and can also keep users from having their payment details tricked out of them by forcing them through one channel. Think it wouldn't happen? An app tried to trick iPhone users into scanning their fingerprint to authorize a large Apple Pay charge to the scammer. It could be worse without the security.

> Siri still won’t talk to us today

Need some more technical detail here, but why is the onus on Apple to do the work to integrate with your platform the way you want to do it? Apple does provide SiriKit: https://developer.apple.com/sirikit/

> [they] won’t work with us to develop an app for it [the Apple Watch]

Again, why should Apple have to work with you? What you're effectively looking for is a support contract. Pandora managed it.

> Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge

Yes, it's called vertical integration and there are huge benefits to it. It's been one of Apple's core business practices from day one. They control huge parts of their supply chain, even developing their own phone chips (which may well end up as desktop-grade CPUs and could provide a huge consumer benefit in terms of microarchitectural advancement). This isn't unfair. Undercutting is not unfair.

App store tightening is of course designed to protect Apple's revenue stream. They've seen other developers stop using IAP, and want to ensure the App Store remains dominant. Not unfair. It's Apple's right to say what they sell and don't sell on their store.

> "level playing field"

See the article linked at the top of this reply. Spotify is trying to keep users in its platform by preventing playlist transfer (and even prohibiting apps that do it for them, so not an issue of just not developing the functionality). That's at least as anti-consumer. Business do this sort of stuff all the time, and Spotify is more committed to its revenue than to "fairness".

Spotify is just salty because they didn't get the deal they wanted and because Apple is trying to push users toward its products over Spotifys. Not really nice of Apple, but not "unfair".

To whoever is responsible for this page: in the svg files, turn the text into paths, otherwise they look like Arial with terrible kerning.

https://i.imgur.com/uLaVwnd.png

It's also very bad on the "There's an app for that" 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'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.

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

European Commission is the only antitrust regulator with teeth, I'm glad that single market area is coming into its own. The regulator for the 21st century that corporations actually listen to. Without them, we would be here debating how this doesn't satisfy antitrust laws to the American standard, which would be beyond the point but a typical discussion.

Going to take another 50 years before that succumbs to regulatory capture.

Well I want to make a startup but dont want to to get wrecked by Facebook or Google or Apple. I guess I'll wait until lawmakers break them. Or else they dont deserve innovation.

I really hope Apple dies and burns. They have good PR but thats it. They lie and deceit developers just like Google. Bait and Switch. There should be government regulation of Apple, Facebook and Google. These corps are just too big and control our democracy.

Apple is starving innovation by deliberately not supporting many thing on the Safari iOS browser and prevents competition illegally by restricting 3rd party browser engines.

Taking a 30% rent on purchases is blatant theft. More people need to speak out. #AppleRentSeeker

Because Apple is unable to increase revenues, it's now trying to increase by using uncompetitive tactics and illegal restriction of competition.

What does iOS Safari not support? It uses WebKit, so more or less full technical/js support, it has ad blockers, tracking prevention, a built in password manager that uses the iOS keychain... not sure what else I’d really want for web browsing.

Knowing how crap Spotify app is (an Electron monstrocity on the desktop) that's for the best.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19377601 and marked it off-topic.

Given that electron monstrosity allows them to have a Linux client, Spotify will always have my support over Apple Music

Spotify is not an Electron app, it uses CEF.

except its not electron and it doesnt hog half as much as itunes

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