Why Spotify thinks Apple behaves like a monopolist | Hacker News Reader

Why Spotify thinks Apple behaves like a monopolist

theverge.com

12 pointstombot5 comments

> We want Apple to go back to the situation that existed at the time when we joined the App Store

He seems to miss a key point: apps (and games in particular, the largest app category) largely shifted from paid to "free" with DLC/subscriptions. Take away the DLC/subscription cut and the Apple Tax revenue drops to zero – which Spotify might like but Apple is presumably less excited about. Except that Spotify can already dodge the Apple Tax by selling subscriptions on its own web site, which it does.

> they saw that they were not going to be able to keep up with Android unless they opened up the App Store

Citation?

That is not the only point he is making - he is saying that if they had known Apple would be changing terms in the future to harm Spotify's interest, they would have thought twice before releasing an app for the ios platform and add value to it. His valid point is that it is apps, like his and many others, that also really added value to the ios platform. But Apple is now ignoring that factor and pretending as if Apple is solely responsible for making ios an attractive platform for users, and so thinks it can dictate terms as it wants.

Let's not forget that the reason the Windows Mobile platform died was because no developers cared for it. And others like Tizen OS or Sailfish OS struggle now with the same problem.

Apple should be happy that idiot developers are willing to pay it $100 every year (which is also too high and should be a one time fee in my opinion), rather than trying to gauge its developers for money it doesn't even deserve. It also screws their users because ultimately the developer passes on the Apple Tax to the user.

He presents some good arguments:

    The issue is not whether the rate is 30 or 15 or 10 percent, the issue is that the rate is arbitrary and they get to set it unilaterally because they’ve insulated themselves from competition ... What we’re saying is they actually prevent competitors from coming in and offering alternative payment systems, and therefore there is no market ... Let the market decide. Enable PayPal and Mastercard and other new payment systems to come in and then let users decide, vote with their dollars on whether Apple’s technology is so superior when it comes to payment and all these other things that they’re willing to pay 30 percent more.

That's an excellent argument that I fully support as a user - I am very averse to pay any unnecessary percentage for an an app or service as Apple Tax just because Apple has locked down the system for precisely that. It feels like extortion. More than that, the indian banking system provides various methods of digital payments all of which are better than Apple Pay as they also protect my financial privacy - and it is telling that Apple deliberately doesn't support any of it in India and demands and accepts only a credit card.

    The market is not operating. And people assume it has always been like that. “You kind of knew what the rules were when you came in.” And that’s when I stop them and I say, “Well, no. That is not historically correct. It wasn’t always like that. It wasn’t like that when we joined the App Store.”

As a developer and user this is another valid concern - companies seem to have adopted the attitude that they can change their terms and policies arbitrarily and at their whims as and when they want. The recent WhatsApp privacy policy change is a good example of this. As is Apple's with every new OS release. This definitely requires regulation.

    They say, “Well, but we built it.” Yeah, you built it. But when you built it it wasn’t like that. It was significantly built on the backs of the work of many app developers that came to the App Store that you touted as the reason why people should come and use your platform. ... it really doesn’t matter from an antitrust perspective. … The biggest cases in the history of antitrust enforcement in the US had to do with companies that had built that infrastructure and then used the power that that control gave them to hurt competitors.

Again an excellent point - the Apple platform is what it is because we developers add half the value to it. And yes, after a certain point when a company has grown large and starts abusing their users (developers and users) they need to be regulated.

I think this was a good interview; I was glad to see Nilay Patel ask about the potentially analogous situation between Apple:Spotify and Spotify:Artists. He didn't just ask and let the answer alone, he followed up too.

You know for all this talk of tech monopolies in the past few years, it's kind of absurd at this point nothing is being done about it. Trump still feels like the closest we had at legitimate tech inquiries but there was too much hate for him to generate support. I'm incredibly saddened that I don't hear any party vying for it now. Democrats and republicans alike have disfavor of it, so why hasn't it been broken up.

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