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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

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

> I think you're wrong

Hmm! What about?

> 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.

I'm not contesting that. I'm saying that I don't believe Apple is doing anything wrong. (The law and me may differ on that.)

> Apple [has] a dominant market position

Isn't the test for this substitutability in the event that the dominant force increases price? (This area is a total unknown to me so thanks for taking the time to explain!)

> to advantage their own streaming service and disadvantage Spotify

I think the he-said-she-said of the software updates thing is easily parked (unless you think it forms a substantive part of their complaint), so I will focus on the pricing issue. Again I'm drawing a distinction between the ethics of the situation and the law (although I assume that to some extent, the latter follows the former).

Spotify's P&L will have a bunch of rows in it for the costs associated with acquiring a paid user. Different channels have different costs. For example TV, radio, google/bing/alta vista PPC. Each of those will have a cost per install and some channels and keywords will convert better than others. For example if I look at the analysis frequently cited about iPhone vs. Android users, it's easy to believe that there is a greater propensity to pay money for apps on iOS vs. Android.

If Apple was the only place to get those users, I could understand totally the belief that this is unethical behaviour. But Spotify grew by four million paying subscribers in Q4 of last year, all of whom are evidence that they can grow their business by ~$500m of ARR without the app store.

So for me Apple charging Spotify 30% for their paying subscribers (who came to the App store because of a product and marketplace which Apple created, markets, and curates -- benefits which are at least conceptually worth paying for by app developers, even if some of them quibble the 30%). Is the argument that Spotify should not pay this 30% [but still benefit from all the great things which Apple foots the bill for]? And if Apple wasn't in music streaming, they'd be able to charge Spotify 30% Because that to me seems orthogonal to a common monopolistic argument: they are able to do significant harm to Apple (app store), which is a business unit, and remove all of the acquisition costs they'd ordinarily pay through hany channel.

Would it be acceptable legallyl/ethically if Apple effectively treated app store as an acquisition channel like any other, and the Music business unit paid the 30% to App store?

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.

> A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribe to Spotify through Apple devices

Not so as I understand it. Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store. That cost doesn't exist for Mac or PC, but Apple doesn't heavily curate and have costs associated with the wild west of downloading apps from the web.

> it doesn't weight anything to Apple

There are significant costs associated with the app store, no? Part of the reason users gravitate towards the iPhone is because you can download high quality apps without malware, viruses, etc.

> Apple Music doesn't need to have their profitts cut in 30% because they are owned by Apple itself.

Conceptually I'm with you. This is an area I'm struggling with though. The Apple Online store charges accessory manufacturers a fee to be featured there. Should Apple also pay a fee to feature their own products there? I don't think so.

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

Why? They've made the hardware. Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants? (You can Airplay Spotify to Homepod.)

> There are significant costs associated with the app store, no? Part of the reason users gravitate towards the iPhone is because you can download high quality apps without malware, viruses, etc.

That should be covered by the one time fee that developers pay to Apple in order to publish apps into the App Store. I am not sure if a simple binary needs a 30% cut of the entire Spotify profit to keep up with the costs of hosting an app there.

> Why? They've made the hardware. Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants? (You can Airplay Spotify to Homepod.)

Because Apple is using a completely different market, which they have a strong presence on, to increase the value of Apple Music and consequently devaluing any other competing music streaming services.

> That should be covered by the one time fee that developers pay to Apple in order to publish apps into the App Store. I am not sure if a simple binary needs a 30% cut of the entire Spotify profit to keep up with the costs of hosting an app there.

We're now into the murky world of trying to tell other people what their cost base or margins should be.

> Because Apple is using a completely different market, which they have a strong presence on, to increase the value of Apple Music and consequently devaluing any other competing music streaming services.

Another view is that Apple fairly charges a consistent 30% to all customers in the app store. In the same way as Amazon doesn't pay to list its own products on Amazon, and Google doesn't pay to advertise Chrome on google.com, Apple should not have to pay to market its own services on its own marketplace.

> Because Apple is using a completely different market, which they have a strong presence on, to increase the value of Apple Music and consequently devaluing any other competing music streaming services.

This is the core issue. Apple using their dominant market position in the hardware/operating system markets to push anticompetitive practices for their product in a different market (Apple Music).

I don't see how this is much different than IE. Maybe even worse in some ways. But regardless, it is very clearly manipulating the market artificially in Apple's favor.

Apple is not dominant in the hardware market in the same way IE was. Nowhere near.

For those who have significant sums invested in the App Store, they are effectively dominant as there is no way to switch app licenses to a different app store.

Sure, but the rules are _reasonably_ unambiguous and unchanging. The 30% cut has been in place since day one. If Spotify didn't like it, they had the choice to focus their attentions exclusively on other platforms. That wasn't the case with Windows+IE, when effectively there were no other platforms of any size.

And worth noting that Spotify grows by millions of paying subscribers every quarter without the app store. They're currently choosing to focus exclusively on other channels rather than try to pay the 30% and… doing better than Apple Music…

> Apple using their dominant market position in the hardware/operating system markets to push anticompetitive practices for their product in a different market (Apple Music).

Allegedly anticompetitive.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook all engage in similar behavior by giving preferential treatment of their products/features/services.

I would be upset because I bought the hardware and they arbitrarily won't let my music from Spotify play on it while their own music does.

Remember it's my device, but theirs. Not apples. If they are going to allow third party apps then do so, but there's no technical reason to not allow the service.

Imagine Ford says you can only use a certain brand of tires on your new car, or can only buy tires through the dealership. That's what's going on here.

My device *not theirs.

That's the reason I don't buy Apple stuff to begin with.

Wha? You buy an Amazon Alexa and it only supports certain music services. Certain Bose speakers have Spotify integration https://www.spotify.com/uk/bose/ - how is this not the same?

It's your device that you bought, which quite clearly doesn't support the things you want, so why did you buy it?

>That should be covered by the one time fee that developers pay to Apple in order to publish apps into the App Store

As a developer I can push a hundred updates per day if I want to, and they all have to be reviewed by a human. How large of a "one time fee" should be expected to cover the cost of that review?

> That should be covered by the one time fee that developers pay to Apple in order to publish apps into the App Store.

That seems quite unrealistic. Apple certainly has recurring costs to keep the app store running. Taking a one time publishing fee wouldn't be sustainable long term.

> Why? They've made the hardware. Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants? (You can Airplay Spotify to Homepod.)

I perfectly understand why Apple would be as anti-competitive as they can away with on their plateform. It benefits them tremendously.

What I don't understand is why some comsumers, who are definitely loosing from the situation - even if you prefer the Apple solution competition tends to bring price down - are systematically defending Apple. It's not like we are talking about a small and endearing company here.

Out of curiosity, do people really view using Apple products as a life style choice ? I liked my iphone but as far as I am concerned it's a mass market device.

All I know is I don’t have to deal with blue screens, malware, and facetime has worked flawlessly for 10 years. And I can walk into a store and get a replacement device in 30 minutes when I break it. The time and effort I’ve saved not dealing with Windows/Android BS (which I experienced) has been well worth it.

>who are definitely losing from the situation

Maybe you haven't considered that some consumers don't feel like they're losing from the situation. Maybe some consumers feel like they are winning because Apple's interests align with their own, and the interests of Apple's competitors are not aligned with their own?

I like having an app store I can trust to not have malware, I like knowing the apps I download have had a human review them for quality. I like having hardware with an OS where the developer of the OS controls when I get updates, not a carrier or manufacturer who are not affiliated with the developer. I like getting security and feature updates for my OS for 5 years. I like paying the developer of my software so the developer has a profit structure that doesn't necessitate spying on me. I like knowing that every piece of software pre-packaged on my device was put there by the developer of the OS with their explicit approval, and not sold to the highest bidder. I like knowing that the software on my phone is exactly how the developer planned it, and not modified by an unaffiliated device manufacturer to the point where multiple websites exist for the sole purpose of creating ROMs that mimic the developer's intended software, necessitating that I now either trust the unaffiliated hardware manufacturer or trust some random person on the Internet to deliver me a clean ROM.

There are platforms that are open and free to use however you see fit. They exist and they are great options. Very modern and easy to use and as open as you want them to be. I prefer the option that isn't open to modification. Products exist for both use cases.

> I like having an app store I can trust to not have malware, I like knowing the apps I download have had a human review them for quality. I like having hardware with an OS where the developer of the OS controls when I get updates, not a carrier or manufacturer who are not affiliated with the developer. I like getting security and feature updates for my OS for 5 years. I like paying the developer of my software so the developer has a profit structure that doesn't necessitate spying on me. I like knowing that every piece of software pre-packaged on my device was put there by the developer of the OS with their explicit approval, and not sold to the highest bidder. I like knowing that the software on my phone is exactly how the developer planned it, and not modified by an unaffiliated device manufacturer to the point where multiple websites exist for the sole purpose of creating ROMs that mimic the developer's intended software, necessitating that I now either trust the unaffiliated hardware manufacturer or trust some random person on the Internet to deliver me a clean ROM.

And none of that has anything to do with what we are discussing. Apple could still do all this thing while allowing more competition on the plateform. For example could you explain to me how allowing apps competing with the system ones or allowing other streaming service to cast and use the watch would prevent any of what you listed ?

It is not an either/or situation between two opposite situations. There are plenty of inbetween possibilities.

> feel like they are winning because Apple's interests align with their own

Apple interests is selling you phone and apps so they can make money. Unless you are a stockholder, I don't see how their interests can align with yours. Unless you take pleasure in paying more, you are clearly losing from the situation.

> Not so as I understand it. Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store. That cost doesn't exist for Mac or PC, but Apple doesn't heavily curate and have costs associated with the wild west of downloading apps from the web.

The cost is there whether or not you pay through the App Store mechanisms. You have to pay it, even if you provide your own payment mechanism.

> There are significant costs associated with the app store, no? Part of the reason users gravitate towards the iPhone is because you can download high quality apps without malware, viruses, etc.

Sure. Then charge all apps for the cost of being in the App Store. It doesn't excuse a situation where Apple directly competes with Spotify and then charge Spotify 30% they don't charge for Apple Music. Thats a textbook violation of antitrust law.

> Conceptually I'm with you. This is an area I'm struggling with though. The Apple Online store charges accessory manufacturers a fee to be featured there. Should Apple also pay a fee to feature their own products there? I don't think so.

You can buy your accessories other places as well. Apple's Online store doesn't have a monopoly on selling accessories to iPhone users. The App Store on the other hand is the only mechanism to sell to iPhone users. The alternative is to allow competing App Stores on their platform.

> Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store.

Yes, they get 30% only if you subscribe through the app store. That's already too much for a service that doesn't use Apple's infrastructure, but Spotify played along for a while. Their main complaint however is that Apple is outright censoring the Spotify app so that it makes no mention to other options for upgrading to Premium.

That's clearly foul play in my book. I wonder if you would still defend it if instead of Apple, it was e.g. Microsoft using Windows Defender to block Chrome downloads.

> There are significant costs associated with the app store, no?

You pay a $99 per year fee as a developer to Apple. That should cover their costs for general QA. If they feel that popular apps need to pay more, they can still set a higher fixed price. But claiming that 30% is to cover Apple's QA costs is ridiculous.

> Why should they have to let Spotify run on it in the exact way Spotify wants?

Because of the way they market Homepod. They present Homepod as interoperable with your iPhone, but it turns out they place artificial limits to interoperability. I wonder, what would Apple do in case of a mass-return of Homepods from customers unhappy by the lack of interoperability with Spotify or other apps?

>Not so as I understand it. Only if you put the option to subscribe into your app in the app store. That cost doesn't exist for Mac or PC, but Apple doesn't heavily curate and have costs associated with the wild west of downloading apps from the web.

They can do the purchases on their own website, but its against App Store rules for an app to tell users that they have the option of upgrading outside of IAP.

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

I don't think Spotify complains about customer acquisition costs. They complain about having to give away 30% of their revenue forever. That's not the case on the PC, or anywhere else.

As I said: These are the costs of the channel. You don't need to use the channel.

You do, that's the crux of the matter. Apple can happily claim that 30% is the overhead cost of providing the subscriptions service, that's within their right. Looking past how ridiculously high 30% is the fact that they are so hostile to apps having users pay via means that aren't the app store is the issue. For example Spotify aren't allowed to even tell people in the iOS app that they can subscribe with a credit card on the web without facing rejection.

No, you don’t. Just don’t work with Apple.

Their primary complaints seem to center around the rules being unfair and arbitrarily applied.

I was about to argue that in a free market, 30% would never be a reasonable price, but then I looked and that's what Steam charges and they have multiple viable competitors on the same platform, so now I don't know.

But hosting full games is a different story than hosting apps. Not to mention that Steam offers more features, such as cloud saves and an entire social network.

From what they posted, 30% is not the main reason of their complaint. I guess it's more about that they now have to face Apple Music, which has such a huge advantage over them, no fee, better OS support, .etc.

Steam has been hemorrhaging publishers as of late for exactly that reason, and has started offering larger publishers lower rates. That probably still won't be enough.

> A 30% cut is something that Spotify needs to pay to Apple for every user that subscribes to Spotify through Apple devices.

Can you even subscribe through the app? Spotify could simply yell you so go to your web browser to subscribe. That’s what Amazon does for its video etc and it doesn’t seem to cause them any problems.

I subscribed to Spotify via their web site and it works fine on my phone. I’m sure they pay nothing to Apple in order for me to listen. That makes me feel that this is a publicity play by Spotify no matter what the more general (non-Spotify) merits of the issue might be.

In the article, it mentions several times that Apple has rejected apps for linking to the web page to upgrade, or for even mentioning it is possible to upgrade (when IAP is not enabled).

The article says so but I just tried to watch a video on iOS amazon video and it tells me to “Buy through the Amazon website or on your TV”. So I’m sure Spotify could say the same.

I believe it's about the type of product you're paying for -- the Spotify site specifically says Apple doesn't allow _content subscription_ services to be advertised through apps. In addition, I bet Prime gets away with it because it's not _purely_ a content subscription service.

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.

Hmmm. It's absolutely not that as far as I can tell. Apple is not extracting a toll from their competition through their other holdings. Nothing has changed for Spotify: if you want to sign up users through Apple's infrastructure, which has a cost associated with it, you have to pay the same price as everyone else.

To repeat my question asked of someone else in this thread: Apple charges e.g. Mophie a fee to feature their products on the Apple Store online. Should Apple be required to pay the same fee for featuring their own products there?

The question isn't whether Apple is violating antitrust regulations, it's whether the regulations will be enforced. Spotify has a slam dunk case in the regulation heavy EU, and a very winnable case in the US (and anyone who Apple competes with in this way). They build competing products and are putting an artificial restriction to the market that they control.

What Apple is doing is a direct violation of the Sherman Act of 1890, specifically Section 1, in regards to artificially raising prices by restricting trade or supply:

> Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.

Thanks. How does this work for Amazon? Do they have to pay a % cut for every Kindle sold? Apple pulled its products from Amazon for a while rather than selling them there because they had to take a margin hit they didn't like.

There's a few good comparisons to make here, especially if we bring the Google Play Store into the conversation.

Apple is big enough to pull their products from Amazon. Taking it back to the 19th century, Apple owns their own "railway". The real quandary comes in if Amazon gets so big that there's no way for a small supplier to sell a product in mass without going through Amazon and paying their premium. I don't think we're anywhere near there yet.

Amazon also built their own Amazon store, to get away from the fees of Google's equally Sherman Act violating store, and in the process potentially violated the act themselves (Prime Music).

Edit: I just thought of another, slam dunk case, this time for Amazon, because Apple restricts purchasing Audible books in the app, even when using existing book credits.

> Google's equally Sherman Act violating store

I am genuinely curious, does Google Play violate the Sherman Act in the same way that the Apple App store does or is it a different clause?

It seems like allowing users to fairly easily side-load apps (ex. Fortnite) and the presence of competing app stores (Amazon App Store, F-Droid, etc.) should alleviate some concerns.

Courts do not interpret that as strictly as you think. If they did, every S&P 500 company would be in violation.

Hyperbole and not true. There are very few S&P 500 that force their competitors to sell through their own marketplaces.

Exxon doesn't force Shell sell their gas in Exxon stations.

>if you want to sign up users through Apple's infrastructure, which has a cost associated with it, you have to pay the same price as everyone else.

And if you don't, you're out of luck due to the increasingly hostile restrictions on what you're allowed to even mention in the app - at least according to the website.

Can't say I'm 100% on Spotify's side, but to me it doesn't seem like Apple has anything stand on here, ethics-wise. Microsoft and the IE case comes to mind.

> Apple is not extracting a toll from their competition through their other holdings. Nothing has changed for Spotify: if you want to sign up users through Apple's infrastructure, which has a cost associated with it, you have to pay the same price as everyone else.

But Spotify's argument seems to be "you have to pay the same price as everyone else ... except Apple itself."

They charge everyone the same toll, though.

And why should it change just because Apple introduced a competitor? Apple charges Spotify the same before and after they launched Apple Music.

> 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.

Totally see that. But you can still sideload an app onto an iPhone or Mac and hack around. People were getting Windows onto their x86 Macs before Bootcamp, for example. The point of Homepod is that it does nothing else, by design: it's a device for playing Apple Music on. I don't see a distinction between forcing Apple to open up iOS for installation on any hardware.

>But you can still sideload an app onto an iPhone

Can you?

Yup. Look at the way Facebook and others circumvented the app store using certification recently.

You still need certificates from Apple in order to do so. So your ability to sideload requires a $99 subscription to the iOS development program and the continued support of Apple.

I believe that's Enterprise certificate, internally use only, can't distribute directly to customers.

Yes. You can sideload an app with Xcode, but you're need a Mac/Hackintosh to do that, plus the sideloaded app needs to be re-sideloaded after a certain amount of time. The feature is more for developers than normal users.

As an Example, Dash <https://kapeli.com/dash_ios> used that method for a while when they were suspended from the app store. But their audience is developers.

Here's the thing: consumers paid (voluntarily) for an iPhone that has the restriction that apps must be bought / acquired / loaded through the App Store. So, yes, they own the device that has this restriction. If they didn't want this device, they could have bought one of the many devices that doesn't, as approximately 75% percent of people do globally.

I've had both Android and iPhones and honestly they're much the same. Google gives you a little more freedom in app development but you lose a lot of privacy. Neither company champions jailbreaking.

Ultimately there isn't a single consumer handset out there that has the same principles of "now you own the device it's yours to do with as you like". Consumer tech just doesn't operate that way any more.

Lots of Android phones have unlocked bootloaders and it's easy to sideload apps without rooting/jailbreaking.

Some handsets might have an unlocked boot loader but that’s only half the battle. It doesn’t mean there will be a working port of Android available, that any proprietary hardware will be supported nor that you’d get the full features of Android (at least not legally since the Google Play is only available for licensed OEMs).

Also I’d already acknowledged that it was easier and cheaper to sideload apps on Android.

Before you jump in and say something like “why should OEMs / Google offer you all this stuff for free etc”, I do completely agree. This isn’t a rant at Google (nor Apple) specifically but just at the state of technology these days. It’s not just an issue about geeks like us having ownership of our devices, it’s also creating a problem for environmental waste since it’s becoming increasingly hard to upgrade or replace parts. Laptops have components soldered in and old phones often end up in landfills. It’s such a shame to see.

Anyhow, I’ve drifted way off topic. Sorry for that

So you want both freedom over software you install and strong privacy and security.

This will be fine for HN folks but will result in the erasure of security and privacy for normal users.

Not necessarily. However I’m under no disillusion that I’m anything but an edge case.

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?

I use Spotify on my Apple Watch all the time. But there isn't the particular integration which Spotify wants: you can't store music on it.

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

Apple has a monopoly on iOS devices, just like MS had on the PC.

EU antitrust law doesn't require dominance. It requires the ability to materially affect market pricing, and companies with minority market share have previously been found against.

>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.

That's a really great point which I hadn't considered! Thanks.

> Until they entered into a rights sharing agreement.

Also worth noting that the rights sharing arrangement on Sky's end is... <drumroll> ...mandated by a settlement from a previous anti-trust case!

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.

Technically that's called a duopoly.

Agreed.

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.

yeah... not mentioned on Spotify's timeline either. 2016

That's because they twisted the facts like crazy. They might have had a good argument before they got greedy.

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.