“Music streaming service Spotify has elevated its disputes with Apple into a full blown anti-trust complaint filed with the European Commission,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for AppleInsider. “But Spotify’s public case, as detailed on its website, is misleading and covers up the basic reality that Spotify wants to do business at Apple’s expense without paying for it.”
“In a blog posting, Spotify’s founder and CEO Daniel Ek touched on some grievances the company has with Apple’s App Store policies but provided scant details backing up the general complaints it presented to the public,” Dilger writes. “That line is reminiscent of a parallel concept presented by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who recently floated the idea that Apple should not be able to run the App Store platform while also serving its own first-party apps or services on it, such as Apple Music… There simply isn’t a way to compete with Apple in ‘iOS app stores,’ the same way there isn’t any way to put targeted ads on Facebook with paying Facebook, or any way to sell products on Amazon’s platform without following Amazon’s rules (which include having Amazon’s own products potentially competing with your own).”
“In building a secure software store for iOS users, Apple created something of incredible value that didn’t exist before,” Dilger writes. “Spotify’s portrayal of the history of iOS apps on its ‘Time to Play Fair’ complaint site is simplified to the point of being false… Apple’s App Store is the only place that has attracted anything close to 800 million affluent users who care about their privacy and security… The App Store didn’t open itself. It cost Apple massive resources to get off the ground and it continues to require incredible resources globally to operate. And yet, Apple still offers access to its store to third-party developers for free, charging fees only when they make money distributing their software or selling subscription services.”
Muhc more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Spotify is a money-losing enterprise that cannot compete and has already been eclipsed by Apple Music in the world’s No.1 market for recorded music, the United States of America. Seeing the writing on the wall, Spotify runs whining to the EU like little babies crying for mommy; not a shred of dignity left. Beleaguered Spotify predicts an operating loss of up to $406.77 million for 2019.
“This boils down to the fact that Spotify wants to use the platform that Apple built and maintains at great expense for free.” – MacDailyNews, March 13, 2019
BTW: You’d have to be stupid to subscribe to Spotify when it has 40% fewer tracks than Apple Music for the same price. Apple Music boasts a catalog of 50 million songs; Spotify has just 30 million. Don’t be stupid. If you’re still subscribing to Spotify, it’s past time for you to cancel it and upgrade to Apple Music. (See also: How to move your Spotify playlists to Apple Music.)
SEE ALSO:
Spotify’s Apple Music complaint was a near decade in the making – March 13, 2019
Spotify files EU antitrust complaint against Apple – March 13, 2019
Samsung to preinstall Spotify on phones – March 8, 2019
Streaming services led by Apple Music account for 75 percent of the U.S. recording industry’s revenue – March 1, 2019
Apple Music now leads Spotify in the U.S., the No. 1 recorded music market – December 31, 2018
Apple is anticompetitive with this.
I love my iPhone and i have spotify from the days before apple music was even around. Spotify is better then apple music and i prefer it. Apple thinks it can force me to use apple music it by not letting siri use it spotify, not letting it work with homepod (when it would likely sell more homepods) and on the flip benefits by companies competing pushing you to sign up outside of the app store.
Why should it profit from others innovation just by allowing the user experience to be the same. Why make a user experience worse for some apps (forcing people to sign up online directly with the vendor) then others.
Does google make a commision on apple music through playstore?
Does amazon pay apple 30 of the profit it makes on profits from its store? Do retailers??
Just like googlemaps wasnt available on carplay.
Just like microsoft got slapped for only allowing IE
Apple is on the wrong side of the fence and the EU hates this type of stuff. Apple will be slapped down, in the EU at least.
not even close.
MS has literally 100% consumer market share – so naturally it becomes anti-competitive if they dont allow other internet explorers…
where as Apple has nearly 8% share globally and less than 50% share in US…so consumer is free to chose what they want outside Apple.
is this a rocket science?
But I do agree Apple should change its ways for setting default apps.
You Keep Using That Word (literally). I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
“Does amazon pay apple 30 of the profit it makes on profits from its store? Do retailers??”
Am I missing something?? Amazon isn’t charging Spotify 30% of their profilts? It’s charging Spotify 30% of the retail price of the goods sold through the Apple Store. Which is probably close to what Amazon (and other retailers) charge Apple when Apple sells goods through THEIR stores…
This is NOT anti-competitive…
(However, not letting HomePod and SIRI work with alternate music sources IS a problem for me…)
Spotify has already made a turn or two into its incipient death spiral.
If this was a lawsuit it wouldn’t stand a chance. They basically want apple not to make any money from the platform they created, maintain and update. It’s just a bullshit publicity stunt targeting apple’s reputation. If they actually believed they were right, they wouldn’t spend resources shouting about it. They’d just fight it in court.
Europe can get bent. Those collective of countries stole lands, sold slaves, and decimated biodiversity over the past 500 years since they started colonizing lands that didnt belong to them. Now they want to bully a company from a former colonized country into following their BS rules? They can suck it.
yes
both companies abusing the rights of musicians and squabbling over the spoils.
Maybe we should start by paying a fair royalty to the artist but..
I suppose that’s why Spotify is trying to get Apples 30% cut reduced or outright deleted as it knows that Artists are ( at some point soon) going to get a reasonable royalty and as soon as that happens Spotifys business will evaporate as it relies on paying almost nothing to Artists ignorer to make money.