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Comment by teddyfrozevelt | Hacker News Reader

But Spotify can’t even tell users how to upgrade to premium according to Apple’s rules. The best they can say is “You can’t upgrade to Premium in the app. We know, it’s not ideal.”

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Right, because Apple does not want them using the App Store platform to promote, sell, and execute payment on a premium service without paying a cut of the premium price to Apple, as per their explicit platform rules.

That’s what I said in my comment, and what Spotify is arguing. They have to follow rules set by Apple that Apple doesn’t apply to Apple Music.

Honest question. Internally, do you know if the Apple Music division of the business still tracks a 30% payment to the App Store division of the business? If this was the case, does that change your opinion here?

I honestly cannot see the legal footing in this whole thing to claim that Apple has any sort of obligation to be "fair" here.

I don’t know if Apple Music has to pay 30% to Apple, but either way It wouldn’t change my opinion and I don’t think it would make a difference to the EU. It’s illegal in most places to use your dominance in one market to your advantage in another. Google got fined by the EU for doing that with Android and Chrome/other GApps. I personally think Apple should allow developers to link to an external payment system for subscriptions/iAPs if they would rather set all that up themselves, but we’ll have to wait and see what the EU decides.

It seems like you've set up an opinion where Apple Music is not allowed to exist in any form because Apple obeying the App Store rules like any other app is not considered enough.

I have no problem with Google Play Music/YouTube Music because those are treated like equal citizens with Spotify on Android. I think it’s better for everyone if Apple Music’s competitors weren’t at a disadvantage just because Apple makes the platform, and I say this as someone who owns many Apple products.

There are many instances where competitors are more or less disadvantaged because the owner of the platform is also competing. Does your favorite supermarket have a store brand? Are you against that?

If that is their argument, then it's pretty weak IMO.

They’ve listed all their arguments on their site www.timetoplayfair.com, although I wish some where more technically in-depth.

>I wish some where more technically in-depth

Or even just any legal depth. It's all just PR fluff speak.

www.timetoplayfair.com?! I have no sympathy for Spotify WRT "playing fair". Match Apple, or even better Google when it comes to paying artists, then we'll talk. They even discuss, as market leader, offering predatory pricing! The rest, as evidenced by Apple's response is seemingly misrepresenting the facts. To be fair, Spotify's marketing team have taken this straight out of the Steven P. Jobs play book; pick a fight.

Personally, I use Amazon Music because I get it as part of Amazon Prime. It has most of the music I want to listen to, but not all. I was considering Spotify, but with nonsense like this, this is one potential customer that they have lost.

How do Netflix and Hulu get around this?

When you download the Netflix app, you only get a sign in button. The only extra info you get about how to get a Netflix account is a help button that calls support. I don’t know what Hulu does, but I presume something similar.

That's a good point. Most of this boils down to not having an upgrade nag prompt. Since netflix doesn't have a free tier, they are less affected. Spotify is in a tough spot because they want free users to upgrade.

They choose not to promote premium services whose payments are executed outside the Apple ecosystem, using (free) advertising channels within the Apple ecosystem.

You can subscribe to Hulu within the app.

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