“Its antagonists include politicians: Senator Al Franken sent a letter to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission last week calling for an investigation into Apple’s App Store,” Julia Greenberg reports for Wired. “The Minnesota senator says that Apple unfairly takes a 30 percent cut of Apple Music competitors’ subscription revenue, forcing competitors to charge more.”
“Consumer advocates are also taking aim: the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog has independently called for an investigation into Apple’s dealings with music labels,” Greenberg reports. “And, of course, to other streaming services, Apple’s practices seem unfair… But while Apple may be putting its competitors into a bind, it’s not clear that Apple is doing anything illegal. Its practices might seem monopolistic. But what might look like a monopoly from the losing side might, from the winner’s vantage, just look like winning.”
Greenberg reports, “Streaming services hoping for a reprise of the e-books scandal with these questions around the App Store may face an uphill battle.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, if Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, Tidal, Pandora, etc. don’t like Apple’s App Store terms, they are free to market their wares to non-iOS users. Surely their “freemium” offering will be in very high demand among the BOGOF cheapskate set who have proven more than willing to surrender their privacy and personal date in exchange for what they erroneously think is “free.”
As myopic “analysts” like to repeatedly tell each other on CNBC, Apple’s iOS market share is dwarfed by Android, that amazing and wondrous OS that delivers not only a poor facsimile of iOS and 99% of all mobile malware, but also exceedingly profitless results for knockoff peddlers the world over. Therefore, Apple clearly does not have a monopoly in smartphones (only in brilliantphones), so there’s simply no monopoly to abuse, Al.
Spotify and the rest of the also-rans: Go peddle your outmoded, inferior crap to the billion+ fragmandroid settlers if you don’t like Apple’s App Store terms. Knock yourselves out.
SEE ALSO:
U.S. Senate Democrat Al Franken urges federal probe of Apple Music – July 23, 2015
Consumer Watchdog Asks U.S. feds to investigate Apple Music over alleged ‘antitrust violations’ – July 22, 2015
Apple Music faces antitrust scrutiny in New York, Connecticut – June 10, 2015
a href=”http://macdailynews.com/2015/05/07/rival-music-services-claim-apples-app-store-pricing-is-anticompetitive/”>Rival music services claim Apple’s App Store pricing is anticompetitive – May 7, 2015
EU regulators already probing Apple’s music streaming plans in Europe – April 2, 2015
Not that I’m trying no to be a fly in the ointment but…
How can MDN one moment tell Spotify and the rest of the also-rans to go peddle their outmoded, inferior crap to android settlers, and then in the next moment slam Apple Music as being a hot mess? (Mental jujitsu required.)
Just askin’.
careful. i got banned once in 2010 because they were contradicting themselves about ‘antennagate’ the same way and i called them out.
iTunes (the app) is the hot mess.
Apple Music is a bit confusing here and there, but the mix of music, the breadth of music, the human curation of music are all markedly superior to Spotify. Spotify can be inferior to Apple Music and Apple Music can be in need of UI improvement.The two are not mutually exclusive.
A friend has been trying for the past week to figure out how to add radio stations of his own choosing. Mine were grandfathered in from before Apple Music, but I couldn’t figure it out for him. Both of us are Mac users going back twenty plus years. Some brilliant stuff in Apple Music, but a total lack of usability. Pandora and Spotify have NOTHING to fear as long as this crap continues. Just another example of how, lately, IT DOESN’T JUST WORK.
Given Apple’s recent success with iTunes, I’m not sure that Spotify et al, have much to worry about. If you use iTunes, there’s a chance you could lose all the music you bought and paid for. At the very least, Apple will DRM it. With Spotify, you get to keep your music right where it is and still stream. And, as some have recommended, you have two separate apps – one for each function.
It doesn’t matter if its LEGAL. The US GOV is out to get Apple for the money.
Oh yes. We’ve established that fact. Gouge every company with taxes on foreign made profit. Gouge ’em good! Because Apple, via Tim Cooks, was so elegantly articulate about the problem and how to solve it, certain morons in the federal legislature (hello Carl Levin!) are out to get Apple for being CORRECT.
The truth is that Iovine (Apple) Music is unfairly sucky and rudderless. IYAM it SO misses the S Jobs factor–his love of the music was clear and evident–not some global it’s-all-good rainbow malaise of mushy-ocrity. He was dead-set against going to a streaming model for a reason. If you can’t put your own unique Apple stamp on this sucker and own the sh#t out of it, it doesn’t need to be our product. Period. Cook’s Apple has lost sight of Jobs ‘saying no to 1,000 things (good ideas) and picking carefully what they yes to’. This is the thing imo
Music is not like industrial design or architecture where one might feel more on solid ground defining good design and good taste. Music is in the ear of the beholder. If Apple were to be a tastemaker for only a narrow subset of music out there (say Jobs’ favorites the Beatles or Bob Dylan) then Apple Music would quickly consign itself to irrelevancy.
Music is indeed in the ear of the beholder..however some ears are better than others. There is a distinction..
Is it illegal that my local drugstore sells their own store brands alongside the national brands? Ditto for grocery stores and department stores.
Advantage – yes😎, Unfair…- Hell NO !
So competition in the marketplace (as opposed to fixing, abusing, rigging, poisoning, dumping into the marketplace) is no longer ‘fair’, eh?
Whatever happened to actual capitalism? Apple knows what it is. Pathetic that all these abusive, lazy, uninspired companies can’t deal with actual capitalism. Poor babies. 😛
Righteous parasites