Personally, as an app developer, I think Spotify is taking the right stance here.
I believe that Apple should take some cuts but not as high as 30%. I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%. Plus, I think that if Apple has a competing service, then it should waive the tax altogether. It's only fair.
If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I'm aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.
At least Google allows installing apps without the Play Store, perhaps it's time Apple permitted something similar with its apps? This could solve this whole problem and have other positive side effects such as people being less likely to jailbreak their iPhones.
> In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.
This is especially damaging to small companies. Most people have heard of Spotify, Netflix, Pandora, etc. So it's somewhat natural for them (if not a bit akward) to go to the website if they can't get premium in the app.
But for small companies that connection isn't immediately obvious. In my company for instance, we aren't allowed to put ANY reference to our website in the app (as it relates to purchasing premium). As a result when a user signs up, my only option is IAP. I cannot just assume they will naturally go to the website.
Most(every?) app that I’ve signed up for requires an email address. Some apps then send a verification or welcome email. If you mention and link to paid subscription upgrades in that email, will Apple pull your app?
As Spotify points out, and I've seen first hand, Apple prohibits you from allowing users to create accounts or enter contact information if your service has a paid option and you don't use apple's IAP.
So you couldn't even get to the point where you can send an email without first falling in line with IAP.
And according to my understanding of the Spotify timeline, and I haven't see this because I haven't published to the platform in a while, Apple now prohibits you from targeting your iOS users with upgrade communications (even if they didn't sign up via iOS, which they didn't since that's prohibited).
“We’ve just sent a verification code to the email you provided, please type the 4 digit code here:_ _ _ _”
It could even be 2 digits (the same 2 digits for everyone), you’re just looking to get their eyes on the email letting them know additional paid subscriptions are available on your website.
Let's assume you purposefully crafted the email or app to break the code autofill built into iOS.
I think you'd end up confusing users. Most people will go to their email expecting to see a verification code in big bold type. If you make the code less obvious, they'll get frustrated ("I came here to get a code, why am I now doing something else?") It's awful UX at a particularly business-critical moment.
And this is all assuming Apple doesn't see through your ploy and just reject the app.
It's not just those two, it's standard practice: Audible, Google Play video, Amazon video, Amazon music, Playstation Video, Vimeo, Sky Store video, and YouTube Premium/Google Music (same subscription with different marketing).
Deezer music went another route: you can pay for your subscription through an iOS device, but you'll pay a higher price. [0] I'm surprised Apple permit this.
All this strikes me as a clear indication that Apple is asking for too high a cut.
I've never been tempted to use a mobile app to shop on, say, Amazon, but Apple are clearly ok with that experience being far better on Android than on iPhone.
> In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.
Interesting.
The exact words used by the Audible app for iPhone: This app does not support purchasing content. Instead, add to your wishlist.
> Deezer music went another route: you can pay for your subscription through an iOS device, but you'll pay a higher price. [0] I'm surprised Apple permit this.
This is what Spotify used to do (charging $13 instead of the normal $10 to give apple their cut), but they stopped when apple started making apple music available at $10 (since they didn't need to pay their own tax)
How so? Isn't the tipping point of an antitrust suit a lack of competition and/or a monopolized position? Apple doesn't have that. They can do whatever they want in the confines of their own store.
They have close to 50% of the market in the US and I don't think a strict majority is required to be judged a monopoly.
You simply can't ignore iOS if you want to have a successful smartphone app business. That fact alone is enough in my opinion to consider Apple a monopoly and to take action to force them to play fair on their own platform.
I think an obvious comparison could be drawn with the movie industry of the 1940s, when the studios were forced to divest their ownership of the actual theaters their movies were shown in.
Abusing market dominance in one sector in order to shut out or outcompete other providers in another sector is the classic justification for antitrust action.
>In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.
Why on earth is Apple allowed to do that? I get that it is their marketplace and their rules, but they are directly hurting competition and consumers this way. There's simply no real argument to prohibit developers like this. Seems like something the EU should combat against.
That depends on whether you prioritize the ability for developers to profit or the security of customers making the purchase. Apple is guaranteeing its users that purchases made within apps are secure and that only Apple has access to their payment info. In the alternate scenario, customers have no way of verifying the security or veracity of some random app developer collecting their payment info.
I feel for Spotify and other companies on the 30% tax but I also love knowing that any purchase by my family or myself is protected, private and easily refunded if there's a mistake. There are already a lot of apps preying on kids but it would be at another level without the in-house payment system.
I think something like 30% on the first purchase and then 5-6% for any recurring purchases would make more sense. I know it changes to 15% after a year but that's still ridiculous IMO.
Maybe there's an App Association that challenges all of these stores on their rather high recurring fees.
This is a ridiculous stance. Essentially it's the same as saying that you're scared to pay for anything online and you only trust Apple for making online payments. There are other solutions to feel secure about paying online or via an app. For instance, if the app asks you for payment, you could be first shown its rating in the store, if it's low. There could be even a separate rating judging the payment security of the app, if security is what Apple is after. You're allowing Apple to rip you off by 30% on all app transactions, it's as simple as that. (Not to mention the cost of locking yourself in their platform and hardware.)
> Essentially it's the same as saying that you're scared to pay for anything online and you only trust Apple for making online payments.
I'm not particularly scared of paying for things online. I'm scared of almost anyone else in my extended family doing so, though. If you think that concern's "ridiculous" you haven't watched them use the Web. And lots of them—especially the older ones—have (rightly!) never entirely gotten over fear of buying things online. Some(!) of them do buy things online, but reluctantly, with great deliberation. In an app on an Apple device? Concerns gone. Even for me, that little background stress of being on alert for shenanigans quiets down when I'm in the Apple ecosystem. Far lower (though non-zero—there's a reason I do almost no iOS gaming) permitted rates of douchebaggery is one of the things keeping me on iOS, and the one-source-of-payments is a vital part of that.
[EDIT] there are further benefits to users and developers alike, I should add, when the UI for a purchase is the same in every app. It's worth 30% to "defect" from that, so worth it on the individual level, but if it's permitted at all then the game's up and everyone loses.
> Essentially it's the same as saying that you're scared to pay for anything online and you only trust Apple for making online payments.
Strawman. That's not at all what the parent said.
> For instance, if the app asks you for payment, you could be first shown its rating in the store, if it's low. There could be even a separate rating judging the payment security of the app, if security is what Apple is after.
You think people should be shown a payment security score so they can judge whether they want to make an in-app purchase? You must be joking. I don't think you understand what Apple is after if that's your suggestion.
> You're allowing Apple to rip you off by 30% on all app transactions, it's as simple as that.
Your entire comment reeks of irrational anti Apple bias. It's as simple as that.
Yeah... no. Your stance is ridiculous. People have already gamed sites like Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Play with fake reviews. The App Store also probably is flooded with tons of fake reviews. I'd rather trust my payment information to a company that has already demonstrated that they're incredibly thoughtful with my security regarding payments rather than trusting some giant unknown and just hoping for the best.
> In my book, the problem is that you are not allowed to provide a link to your payment website inside your app.
The counter point is, if Apple allowed this, then every single App would use that method. Most people would not realize or care that they bought the XYZ in a web view vs through the AppStore payment system. Even apps that are currently paid only would switch to a "free" app with a "pay here" in-app purchase.
At this point the AppStore no longer can bring in any money for Apple except indirectly via encouraging iPhone sales.
Maybe Apple could charge the publisher for each app download or something instead to keep making money but I doubt that would be very popular.
There is still a non-zero cost to implementing a checkout page, as well as associated vendor fees etc. In a fair market the fees for Apple checkout would be along the same lines as Stripe, PayPal etc., but they are using their position as the device and OS vendor to charge 10x as much and giving developers no other option.
I disagree they should be the same. Credit card fraud risk is much higher on the internet than in person for instance. Apple through iOS and the App Store I would guess, also has a significant edge in detecting and stopping fraud through name, location, etc. While 15/30% might be too high, it should be higher than a simple payment processor as the transaction is also safer for the merchant.
Making micro-transactions more profitable would be an unfortunate course of action. There are enough of those apps in the store, and they are clearly profitable enough if they can buy Super Bowl airtime.
Subscriptions for apps should be different, but I see a challenge in drawing the line between Spotify/Netflix and a scam app like "awesome culculator" that charges $5/mo to people who don'didn't realize it was a subscription (there was an article on HN this week about apps like that, targeting kids and the elderly, of course).
If Apple has a stipulation about requiring a website, then maybe subscription-based apps can get a discount on the 30% fee if they also have a web or desktop-based version of their application that provides comparable functionality and takes payments.
> ...and they are clearly profitable enough if they can buy Super Bowl airtime.
This is not a good reason to limit how much money an app developer makes. You want to make the play field fair, regardless if there are some companies making a lot of money.
> There are enough of those apps in the store, and they are clearly profitable enough if they can buy Super Bowl airtime.
You're talking about the top 1% or less of micro transaction-based apps here. There are ton of indie apps that depend on micro transactions and aren't making enough to buy a Super Bowl ad.
It's unfortunate that spammy or low quality micro transaction-based apps have become commonplace, but I'd rather that be dealt with by the App Store flagging and filtering the apps with issues.
While the Apple Tax is a problem of its own, I would hate for Apple to allow downloading apps through websites. A large part of iOS security is that everything has to be co-signed by Apple unless it's an Enterprise distribution app [1], so even if there is an exploit that breaks out of the app sandbox you don't have to worry about malicious websites drive-by downloading it.
1: they're likely refining the process of obtaining one of these certs after the recent news reports on business fraud
> I would hate for Apple to allow downloading apps through websites
This is such an extreme stance compared to what you're allowed to do on the desktop. Regardless of what Apple allows or not, shouldn't the user, the owner of the device, be allowed to install applications as they see fit, and choose to bypass any centralized app store? A smarthphone is a computer, and it's arguably many peoples primary computing device, and so I see no valid reason for the future of such devices to be a locked-down walled garden under the guise of security.
More than anything and any security, Apple benefits directly from this, just like they do lobbying against right-to-repair legislation. Because God forbid an owner of a Apple device repairing it themselves instead of have to go through official, expensive channels. Likewise with a (legitimate) company or app maker saying "We'll just let the users install it outside of the app store" and choosing not to deal with Apple's ecosystem. For example, Wireguard for macOS cannot be distributed outside of the app store due to native integration requiring APIs that Apple restricts with such clauses [1]. This is in my opinion ridiculous.
There are plenty of devices that allow you the freedom to do whatever you want to the software. If that is a priority, get one of those. Apple's walled garden is in fact much more secure. (and they also benefit financially. But correlation does not equal causation, necessarily)
You're missing the point. Security is throwing up a hurdle against installing outside apps (could be a bit steeper hurdle than Android's if you need). That's enough to keep your grandparents safe from installing crapware. Apple fighting tooth and nail against any possible installer, sideloading, rooting, whatnot, that's purely for the power, control and financial benefit of Apple and "their" ecosystem.
I put quotes around "their" just to remind that this ecosystem is made up by hundreds of millions of users, too. Yes Apple holds a singular power over this ecosystem but that power mostly boils down to the ability to wreck it for any particular group of participants. That's not ownership unless you want to claim that humans own the coral reefs, too.
Imagine you had a laptop or desktop where you could only install apps that were approved by the hardware manufacturer or os developer. Would you really be ok with that?
And that was part of the advantage of the phone. I’m not cleaning crapware and viruses from my parents and children’s phones and tablets every six months.
Do you feel that console makers shouldn’t be allowed to dictate what runs on their devices? Yes physical discs still have to be approved by the console maker. It’s been that way for 30 years.
> Do you feel that console makers shouldn’t be allowed to dictate what runs on their devices? Yes physical discs still have to be approved by the console maker. It’s been that way for 30 years.
Yes of course. Either allow the user full control of the hardware they apparently own, or call it what it really is, renting.
I'd say that the person in favor of restricting someone's use of their own hardware needs to come up with the argument in support of that, not the other way around.
You could have an argument in the case of a car, for safety. Cable box perhaps, but I'd say that should probably be considered a case of renting hardware for it to really make sense.
a laptop is not a tablet, a tablet is not a phone, a phone is not a watch; that’s part of apple’s philosophy behind how their devices work together. knock it all you want (and there are legitimate criticisms), but it works remarkably well and makes all these devices feel like they have a natural place and purpose
*EDIT: i’m not saying “place and purpose” is a reason why macos and ios have different security models, but just pointing out that “why is a laptop different to a phone” is not reeeeeeally a particularly valid place to start
> it works remarkably well and makes all these devices feel like they have a natural place and purpose
Um really those are artificial, not natural. The nature of the devices is that they're still general purpose computers, the artificial restrictions on them give them an artificial place and purpose. It's still a thing, but Apple isn't magically altering reality.
While I agree that the percentage that Apple takes per sale is too high, I completely disagree with the term 'vendor Tax'. While it's fine as a fun synonym, it's problematic as soon as people start to think about it as an actual Tax. It's not a Tax, it's the amount of money the vendor/platform owner wants to make for every sale. You can opt-out (by not being on the platform, still a choice!) if you want to. But because it's bad for the bottom-line of most companies to do so, they position themselves as a sad little broken bird that gets stomped around by the big bad corp. Newsflash: they all are generic money making capitalistic institutions that on the business side exclusively exist to make money. For profit. For doing things, any thing, to make money. That goes for Spotify and Apple just the same.
On the side of 'level playing field' they do of course still have a point, just like all the anti-trust stuff we had/have with Microsoft and Google. It does make me wonder a bit why this hasn't been involving other companies like Amazon and Facebook. (or, why it hasn't been suggested as widely as it is now)
I do wonder about the technical aspect of those store denials and watchOS problems; other streaming services do not face the same issues/pressue, so what makes spotify so special? They app is a bit crappy (it's not very good at maintaining/restoring state and doesn't have the most consistent UI), but other than that, it doesn't do much different things when compared to others (like Deezer or Tidal). Putting it as a "Apple Music vs. Spotify" thing is a bit weird too; while it might make sense, it doesn't make sense if it's just that and all the other streaming and buying services are free to do what they want. It's weird stuff.
> Putting it as a "Apple Music vs. Spotify" thing is a bit weird too; while it might make sense, it doesn't make sense if it's just that and all the other streaming and buying services are free to do what they want. It's weird stuff.
Isn't Spotify just the biggest one by a large margin?
Because frankly I never heard of Deezer or Tidal, and everyone I know that uses a music streaming service is on Spotify or, rarely, iTunes (or Apple Music? is that a rebrand or is it a new thing?)
> It's not a Tax, it's the amount of money the vendor/platform owner wants to make for every sale. You can opt-out (by not being on the platform, still a choice!) if you want to.
And I can opt out of selling things in Idaho if I don't want to pay their sales tax. I don't understand the distinction you're making at all.
If you don't sell in Idaho, you lose that market. If you don't sell on Apple's platform, you lose that market. The issue is a combination of the "tax" and the market dominance of these two companies.
If you consider the Appstore/iOS ecosystem to be Apple's "land", then sure that 30% is like the tax for having a presence in that land.
That's the classic meaning of "tax".
However, nowadays, in most civilised countries we expect more of "tax". We expect it to not simply flow to whoever holds power over the land (ecosystem), for them to use for profit, projecting power and keeping it. We expect the tax instead to largely be invested in things that benefit the people paying it (users). In fact, the more this happens, instead of going to the rulers, the nicer a place to live (in general).
Now one the one hand Apple is doing a pretty good job with things that benefit the users: they get security and some privacy. On the other hand, as a tax, it's fair to ask whether that 30% is really necessary for these benefits or just for lining Apple's pockets. An additional thing, looking at it pragmatically, whatever Apple's doing to Spotify doesn't seem to be in the user's benefit at all. But then, they don't pay tax. So that points to the 30% being significantly more than the tax required to benefit the users.
It seems to me that Apple should lower this tax to a rate that Spotify is willing to pay and put up with.
Thing is, Apple is not really like a modern government to its users. They are a "if you don't like it, just leave"-ocracy. So when they put up a "public" service (Apple Music), that undercuts commercial services (Spotify), it is NOT in the benefit of the people (users) like a public transport system would be. This is because the undercutting is purely based on the tax-cut, not because it's more efficient to do it as a public service rather than a commercial one.
Using the word 'tax' here is like calling anything that you need to pay for 'tax'. If you put a bit of money in a vending machine to buy some chocolate, you don't call that vending machine tax, do you?
If you were to scope it to 'services' or 'platform', then perhaps we should call virtual hosting cost not cost but tax :p and if you rent a movie, that'd then be movie tax, or rental tax? But what about actual tax, are we going to call that tax tax? Because at this point people just start using the word tax for every generic transaction.
In your vending machine example, it is a transaction, not a tax, as you implied and I agree. However Apple taking cut of app's revenue is awfully a lot like corporate tax.
No and that's a bad thing. Generally the ability to do so (or side-loading in general) has been to the public benefit. Think building a Playstation supercomputer cluster, debugging /modding games and of course the ability to use the things for general purpose (or media centre).
It's just that consoles never have been nearly as popular to make a stink about it. I never bought a console because of exactly this limitation: I can do anything with a computer, why would I buy a neutered computer as well? And that was fine. Because you don't need a console. But you do need a smartphone. And the choice is Android or iPhone, and the usage is about 50/50. So when the iPhone is shut tight, that's a much bigger deal.
No and that's a bad thing. Generally the ability to do so (or side-loading in general) has been to the public benefit.
There is 30 years worth of malware, ransomware spyware and viruses on PCs to show that most of the public hasn’t benefited from being able to download freely.
What is "should"? Who determines should, aside from what the law currently says?
Maybe I'm uninformed, but it doesn't appear to me that access to an app store and the terms of such access (which by the way didn't even exist almost 10 years ago) is a public utility or good with an expectation of equal access or certain fair pricing.
Then, under what right does anyone claim that Apple (or any ecosystem platform) has to do anything beyond what is regulated in the payment and terms of operation? What makes your 30% price the right call? If you're an app developer, are you equally ok with someone else determining what you get to charge for your app when you're done with it? Isn't that the same (lack of) logic?
the fact that I, a software developer by trade, can't install or run any code on an ios device without running something by apple first.
that's like tesla releasing a car saying if you are a lawyer who wants to drive it you have to pay them 100k a year plus 30% of what you earn, or are "free" to drive another car (even if theirs is the fastest/safest/best-for-price in the market.)
or, now, can obtain a "provisional" license to drive it that expires weekly, with the same option to pay yearly for an annual license - these are all artificial barriers. installing software has up till now always been as simple as owning the device you're running it on and running the appropriate commands, these artificual barriers introduced by apple ensure anyone wanting to do so has to check in to see if it's okay with them.
No, your analogy oversimplifies the situation, just like that old joke about airlines selling paint for different prices.
Apple or Google's app store isn't a blank / open space where you entered an agreement that you have right to do anything you want. Just because you want to not run your code by Apple every time doesn't mean you have the right to do it.
There is no expectation that you have access to their hardware or software kit to do anything that you define. It's not like owning a car.
If the terms of your agreement are that you get time-limited / renewable access to a certain company's playground, what right do you have to insist that they change their terms, with recourse to what law?
There could be laws that decide that there should be open access. But there aren't. Why should this kind of lawsuit succeed in misinterpreting the law? The law can be rewritten, but until then I believe this effort should fail.
That's fine - I don't care about the App Store and what it offers, I just want some way to give users access to my app. Now what? Apple says "Fall in line if you want to access to our platform", I say "Thanks, but I'm not interested, I just want users to access my app somehow", but they can't and that's the crux of it. There are many legitimate apps banned from the app store, and that would be fine if the user could still install them outside of the app store. Consider the analogy of the toll bridge: if you don't want to pay, that's ok, go around. But Apple doesn't leave any alternative, and then in your argument you're putting words into peoples mouths and claiming they wanted to cross the toll bridge all along and they don't have a right to free (both literally and as in freedom) travel.
> There is no expectation
The expectation comes down to the owner of the device being allowed to have control over something they purchased, which in extension gives app developers freedom to target these users. This includes both hardware (right to repair), and software. It's completely valid, and repair, specifically, has been in news headlines months prior.
Again, that's not a correct analogy, and you're framing it like someone with deep feelings of entitlement to do what you want in the software world. That's creating a flawed argument in your logic and you're turning your desire into what you believe is legal. Or thinking that because you put work into something, someone else has to give you a forum to get paid for that work.
Actually your bridge analogy is apt, but in a way that works against your argument.
Toll bridges aren't required to have an alternate way around just because you think you have a right to go there for free by some alternative method.
Staten Island is only accessible by toll bridge. Entry to San Francisco from the north or east is only accessible by toll bridge.
Regardless, Apple built an island and a toll bridge that allows crossing for a fee. There is no entitlement in law that says you have the right to get to that island without paying what Apple charges because you think that would be "fair".
What argument do you have to support not letting users run whatever software they'd like on hardware they own?
And in extension to that, paying other people for software that they'd like to run and don't mind paying for, which is not sold through e.g. the App Store.
I'm legitimately interested in this, because I cannot see any reason why a user shouldn't be able to run any software they'd like on their own hardware, and/or pay for it however they want.
If you can't see any reason why a user isn't able to run any software they'd like on hardware they've purchased, then you need to educate yourself. Because the reason is that the contract you have with the hardware manufacturer and the terms of use do not allow you to. And there is no contradictory law or regulation that trumps that agreement.
Just because you might disagree with that contract, it doesn't change the rules. Your ability and expectation to run software of your choosing on your computer doesn't mean you have the same ability on a phone.
I could ask you, why don't you complain that even on an Android phone, you're not allowed to tinker with the baseband chip and broadcast whatever you want over the air. "Why can't I be allowed to do that? It's my right." Nope. It is not.
This is just an extension of that principle. In some other state or country the rules may be set up differently that consumer rights (however those are defined) take precedence over commercial regulations. But not here. Public opinion and law might someday change. Until then, don't confuse what you think should be with what is. It will not do you credit.
> If you can't see any reason why a user isn't able to run any software they'd like on hardware they've purchased, then you need to educate yourself. Because the reason is that the contract you have with the hardware manufacturer and the terms of use do not allow you to. And there is no contradictory law or regulation that trumps that agreement.
I did not sign a contract relinquishing my rights to execute whatever code I like when I purchased my phone. Does one have to do that with an iPhone?
If you do, shouldn't it be called an applePhone, not an iPhone? If you cannot control what code is executed by the cpu, it is really more Apple's phone than your own.
I'm going to take my leave from this thread after this post, as it's kind of like talking to a wall at this point. I get nothing out of it.
You don't naturally have any expectations of a right to run whatever code you want on a phone. There is nowhere written in law or regulation that you have such a "right". So there is no such right to give up.
Apple enters into an agreement with you to give you a phone with certain capabilities. Control of what code is executed by the phone is not included in your capabilities. End of story.
That's what I wanted to know, and hearing that I'm glad I've never been interested in an apple phone.
> You don't naturally have any expectations of a right to run whatever code you want on a phone. There is nowhere written in law or regulation that you have such a "right". So there is no such right to give up.
Plenty of things that you naturally have a right to do aren't written in a law. Is there a law saying you can browse and post on hackernews on your computer?
> Because the reason is that the contract you have with the hardware manufacturer and the terms of use do not allow you to. And there is no contradictory law or regulation that trumps that agreement.
You are simply answering the question "Why are things this way?" with a tautological "because this is the way it is." Whether or not the status quo will change in the future, it must always start with someone questioning it.
The car analogy doesn't help that much here; plenty of cars work in that fashion. Not the average consumer car of course, but again, even then a company is free to do so. Might hurt their business, where at Apple it's not a problem because they make plenty of money.
I think that is where part of the problem lies: you can choose to do something with the platform or you can leave it alone. Seeing it as an 'I must do something with the platform' is rather strange considering it is a private, non-public platform in the sense that it has an owner and the owner is free to make whatever rules they want to as long as it is within the boundaries of the law (i.e. you can't require use of a platform to be paid with organs :p ).
the fact that I, a software developer by trade, can't install or run any code on an ios device without running something by apple first.
If I were a game developer could I install any software on my game console?
that's like tesla releasing a car saying if you are a lawyer who wants to drive it you have to pay them 100k a year plus 30% of what you earn, or are "free" to drive another car (even if theirs is the fastest/safest/best-for-price in the market.)
Let’s not make an analogy. Can I install any software on the computers in my Tesla?
I was about to argue with this and rage against Apple, but then I remembered a very similar situation everyone deals with and no one complains about: Supermarket Generics.
"How is it fair for Price Chopper to undercut Rice Crispies with a similar, cheaper product?" no on says this...
Because your choice of phone brand does not tie you to a specific grocery where you can buy rice crispies. You can simply cross the street and shop at a competing grocery.
If I go to a different grocery store, I can get products that are compatible with everything else I own.
If we go with the store=phone analogy, then somehow my brand A flour and my brand B milk are magnetically repulsed and I can't make pancakes. It's not good for consumers.
There are some extra levels to this. Imagine a country where there is only one supermarket chain allowed. In that case there is no competition and no choice for consumers.
Before you should people should simply switch phones: you can switch phones, but you can't take the apps you bought with you. And even if you switch: there's only one real alternative: Android. If Apple is allowed their 30% cut on literally everythig, why wouldn't Google do the same?
This way you end up with only 2 App stores, 2 Music and 2 Movie streaming services.
Google doesn't require all app installs to run through the play store. In fact, the OS allows for other app stores to automatically install and update apps. The Play Store may be the only option preinstalled on devices, but anyone can download and install third party apps, and if you're rooted or writing a custom rom you can create/use your own app store. See the fdroid privileged extension for an example of an alternate app store that allows background installs similar to the play store. Alternate app stores in general include the Amazon app store for Android.
Try telling the IRS you think their tax rates are too high. Apple owns the sandbox with the most valuable customers and if you want to play in it you gotta pay. Personally I love letting Apple handle my subscriptions and subscribing through iTunes is one of the things it does well.
Do you think apple's subscription feature is worth paying 30% more for spotify?
Do you think spotify should just suck it up and take the hit to keep prices the same because apple is providing a service (access and subscription handling) worth 30% of the price? Not even Amazon charges that much.
I don't know if the anti-competitive practices mentioned are illegal, but they're certainly scummy. The company that owns the walled garden shouldn't be bullying spotify to try and prop apple music up.
Does this view still apply if Apple considers the music subscription as part of the product/device?
Consider the countless users that, perhaps rightfully, argue that Apple should include more than 5 GB of iCloud storage for backups, user data, etc. That could be considered part of the product while it still competes in a different market with Dropbox and similar services.
Yes. Or do what everyone else does and negotiate a lower rate. The simplicity of in app transactions is great and offering that to customers makes a lot of sense. I’m
More likely to keep a subscription if it’s through iTunes; it also makes moving to new devices super easy as all I have to do is login with my iTunes account and all my subscriptions are there or that and hit restore purchases and boom
I’m done.
What they need to do is split off the new competing services into a walled corporation (even new entity). And they play fair by the rules, so 30% tax even to them.
But it is standard practice for divisions to bill other divisions for work. I would be almost certain that Apple Music is already paying the 30% tax however since it’s internal it doesn’t really make a difference. Likewise splitting into a new entity does not change anything.
It changes a lot, since as an independent entity Apple Music (for example) is answerable to its own investors and board of directors, including having the pressure to be profitable. Right now Apple can subsidize them for as long as they force all competitors out.
Not sure that I completely follow your logic in regards to the "tax" here. With any product, you have two main things: production of the product and distribution of the product. Spotify doesn't NEED to be on Apple devices (they started off on the web), but they WANT to be on Apple devices (and Android devices) because they are great distribution channels for its product.
That said, how much is distribution worth to Spotify? Imagine that Spotify was not software, but instead it was a hardware device. Would they expect Best Buy to carry it for free? Would they expect Walmart or Target not to offer a store branded competitor? I think not.
When you don't own your distribution channel, you pay for distribution one way or another.
Mobile OS's are more than just a "distribution channel" though, because there's a significant amount of lock-in that prevents customers from buying your software from another distributor even if they want to. I think a better metaphor is like this:
A billion people live in a company town ("Appleville"). When they first decided to move there, they paid a lot of money to buy a house there, and in return they get access to all the benefits the town offers - nicely-built houses, well-maintained streets, and access to lots of public services. Because living in the town is so nice, houses there cost a lot more than they do in other areas.
While you live in the town, you've signed a contract that says you're only allowed to buy things from one store owned by the town's developer. Most popular items are available at the store, so it's never too much of an inconvience, but sometimes things are more expensive than they are in other towns, or they aren't available at all.
Every time you drive into the town, you get stopped, and a bunch of guards search your car. If they find anything in your car that you didn't buy from them, they take it, and you can't have it back.
If you ever do want to leave the town, not only will you have to buy a house somewhere else (and your existing house will be worth a lot less than what you paid for it), but you're not allowed to take any of the stuff in your house with you - it all just disappears forever.
Now imagine you're a new company trying to sell a product, and the store owner won't let you sell your product in their town for some reason (you aren't paying them enough, it violates one of their rules, etc.) Even if the people living inside the town want your product, they can't buy it unless they completely uproot their life and move somewhere else, which no one is willing to do. And so the town owner is able to kill your product, and prevent it from ever being a threat to them. (Meanwhile, the town owner copies your product and starts selling it in the store themselves).
The practice of stores like Walmart strongarming producers into reducing prices and quality is a well established problem with a number of articles and documentaries around it already.
In either case the difference between a store doing this and Apple doing this is that Best Buy is not the one of two practical ways to access the product, and consumers are not compelled to go only to Best Buy simply because they chose to go there once.
Figuring out the proper practices for phone app markets is difficult right now, because we really can't compare them to anything that already exists. Physical markets just aren't the same thing.
> I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%.
And then every PAID app will switch to FREE and charge for PRO, to circumvent the 30%. Oh, Apple complained it’s not technically a microtransaction? Fine, just separate every feature into a new purchase.
> If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor
If the vendor server is compromised or is down, a download from the App Store won’t work for a single app, leaving customers confused and complaining to Apple, who can’t fix the issue.
> And then every PAID app will switch to FREE and charge for PRO, to circumvent the 30%.
Then make it 30% of the first 20 or 30 dollars, and 5% or less after. That more than pays for Apple's verification work without letting them gouge repeat payments.
I believe it is not the problem of 30% cuts. It is the Problem of Anti-Competitive behaviour when you have a competing services without the cost of cuts.
This is not the same as Amazon offering their own label in their Store. Customers could shop in dozens of many other online retail or local retail. And Amazon does not charge other label 30% cut for stocking fees.
I believe Apple should charge a fair amount only when they have a competing product or services within its locked system. Had Apple Charge 15% for the first year on Spotify and 10% for all subsequent subscription it would have been much better. I don't believe the 5% would work, as I have seen many saying 5% should be enough. The cost of running microtransaction, processing, billing, legal, etc are just about break even at 5% even in the scale of Apple. I don't see charging 10% would seem unfair. ( In US at least, in EU the processing fees are much much lower )
Or Apple should never have made Apple Music in the first place. I still don't see any value in Apple offering it. iTunes was required for iPod. And it changes the whole music industry as a whole, along with iPod sold which ultimately saved Apple. No one will buy iPhone because of Apple Music, and Apple Music itself isn't even profitable.
This opens up a wide host of negative side-effects including the extreme ease of malware. I'd say the #1 value proposition for the App Store, and why most iOS users prefer it, is the guarantee of virus-free programs.
Why don't Apple/Google ensure AV/Malware protection is a default app? Why do we depend on Apple/Google protecting us from these big bad apps?
If not Apple/Google controlling it directly, I'd imagine there would be a reasonable market for malware/AV providers on mobiles, if not solutions provided by Apple/Google.
If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I'm aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.
Because that worked so well for Windows with malware,viruses, and ransomware.
Apple should take no cut, and profit only from the sale of hardware. By taking cut on software they are double dipping. Good software makes the phone more valuable for users and drives phone sales.
Apple did the same thing to Kindle for iPhone back when it launched.
We submitted the original version to Apple with a fully functioning store built into it—and were then stuck in submission limbo. Two weeks later, Apple announces their intent to build in-app purchasing.
The kicker: Apple wanted a 30% cut of every book sold on the store …and at the same time, had negotiated with book publishers that the publishers MUST sell all books at a 30% margin on ALL stores if they want to sell their books via Apple's own ebook store.
Aka we couldn't sell books at an increased cost, even if we wanted to. We would have had to take a loss on every purchase.
In the end, we had to remove all of the store functionality from the app, and weren't even allowed to link people directly to the web store for purchasing (or even instructions for purchasing).
Even crazier, Apple in some cases forces apps that use webviews to block out links to the Kindle Store that would normally appear. My iOS app [1] has speed reading and accessibility features that we overlay on websites, including the Kindle Cloud Reader.
Apple wouldn't approve our app until we blocked the Kindle Store button from loading on the Kindle Cloud Reader website. It never occurred to me that Apple would try to exercise control over how third-party websites are rendered inside webviews, but it turns out they do.
> It never occurred to me that Apple would try to exercise control over how third-party websites are rendered inside webviews, but it turns out they do
Wow. I'm not sure why this isn't all over the tech press. Apple forcing developers to modify third party websites is way, way over the line of what I would call ethical.
I'm generally an Apple fan, but this is nothing more than unrestrained corporate greed.
Yeah I generally try not to make waves that could cause us issues for App Store review, for obvious reasons. And I didn't really mind taking out the button since it wouldn't have generated revenue for us (we don't have an Amazon affiliate account). It just struck me as weird that Apple was trying to edit the web, so to speak.
It wasn't just Kindle. There were dozens of really high quality book reading apps that either sold old or hard to find books, comics, or even mangas. All of them evaporated over night once Apple forced the 30% cut. I'm still very bitter about that move.
Apple even went as far as making some Steve Jobsian rule that you had to sell your book for the same price on the web as you did in-app. So you couldn't make up for the 30% cut. That was a pure bad-faith move and Apple only recently rescinded that requirement.
My dad has had iPads since the first one, and it is still jarring for him to not be able to just click a "store" button in the Kindle app. (I believe it used to have a webview for the store built-in; I do not use the Kindle app)
He was very confused when it disappeared. I imagine most users feel this way. I had to coach my mom to sign up for Pandora on the website so she saved a couple bucks a month, and it was baffling to her why it costed more in the app.
Agreed. I am very aware of Apple policies on this regard and anything discussed in this thread, but still two weeks ago I wandered around in the Amazon app looking for 10 minutes on how to buy a book in Kindle version... then I realized I had to switch to Safari for that.
boy, that kind of "deep regulation" into UX design from a single arbitrary company should be illegal regardless.
people bought apple hardware and the operating system, not voted them the unilateral governing body on consumer choice in that platform. one should not be taken to imply the other.
IMO this is a problem with the shareholder-driven corporate structure. Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize value to their shareholders, and they have to show continual growth in order to see share prices continue to increase, which often leads to ant-consumer practices once organic growth becomes difficult.
Apple's a perfect example of this: they have a long history of making high-quality hardware products loved by consumers at an immense scale with high margins. In a more rational world, that would be "enough", and even if their revenue fluctuated somewhat from year to year, they could still easily support their activities and pay out generous dividends while focusing only on their core competency.
Instead we live in a world where a small drop in demand for a single product based on extrinsic market forces leads to a slew of articles heralding an "end of Apple". So they prioritize service revenue, and continue to squeeze more and more value out of every revenue stream which flows through their products.
It's insane that this is seen as necessary for a company which basically prints money, and sits inside a massive moat of wealth greater than the GDP of many nations.
Yeah, it was supremely frustrating for us. The original store experience was fully native, and still a far better experience than what the app has today :(
Probably would be deemed to violate the Guidline that "You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase."
This is why I'll never 'purposefully' own an apple product. I made a client buy me an iphone to test out their ios builds from (I'm the api/backend dev), I'll probably someday do react native stuff/cross platform and might cringefully get a cheap old mac just to build the ios app, but I'll do it begrudging the whole way to the app store..lol
Your post makes the case for itself, 30% of $13.32 is not $3.33. As Spotify raised their price to counter the apple fee, the also had to give 30% of that raise.
To get $9.99 (for the first year at the 30% rate) it'd be
Spotify fee: $9.99
Apple fee: $4.28
Total: $14.27
When they were charging $12.99 on iOS Spotify was only taking home $9.09 and Apple getting $3.87.
Really goes to show the insanity. Apple probably made more from a Spotify user than an Apple music user. (Of course, they're happy to have an Apple music user for the increased lock in.)
(But as others point out, Spotify showing this almost certainly wouldn't be permitted by Apple).
You put a walled garden... in another walled garden.
On a more serious note: I get it; among Apple users are the most happily paying people that you can find on this planet and if you have a product you want to make it available to them.
No wonder they think it their right to take a massive 30% cut.
An important thing is that the Kindle walled garden is an abstract free program that can be installed into most devices. It doesn't try to push the customer around. There are very different types of garden out there.
Publishers being bullied by Amazon can go somewhere else and reach the same consumers, for the most part. It's intertwined with how much the consumers are being bullied.
In the case of e-ink kindles it's sort of the same problem, but the kindle app is available on many platforms so it reduces the harm by a lot.
The disagreement spilled into public view last month when Amazon tried to dissuade its customers from buying Hachette titles on its website, removing discounts from some books or delaying shipments by as much as five weeks when items typically ship within three to five days. By refusing to buckle under the pressure, Hachette is leading the charge for publishers' fight against Amazon.
Most of that's talking about physical books, which isn't really relevant here.
Also screw a lot of those publishers. They were demanding control over the price amazon sells at, which should be none of their business. Lawmakers need to fix the first sale doctrine for digital goods.
> Besides, how far will a book publisher get if they can’t sell on Amazon.
So did you read the other article about how much Amazon charges in fees for small publishers and the demands it places on them?
So you don’t care about publishers of physical books who according to one of the articles actually go negative because of the “Amazon tax” but you do care about software developers who can’t sell loot boxes without a 30% cut going to Apple
What do you think is Amazon’s motive for selling Kindle books below cost if it isn’t to kill competition just to raise prices later?
The Kindle iPhone app still doesn't even link you to the website so you can buy books does it? It only looks like I can add it to a "list" that I assume I can view in the browser and then purchase.
> Apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.
Amazon played the victim here but book publishers preferred Apple’s model to Amazon selling their books at a loss to keep competitors out and to boost sales of the Kindle.
Same with Audible. I was sitting in an airport, after finishing my last book, spending so much time trying to figure out how to buy a book through the app on my phone. Was so confused.
I've used the Kindle app ever since it launched, and have followed this fiasco. The trouble for someone like me is I would rather purchase my content from Amazon since I can read it on any device, not just an apple device.
p.s. Do you know how I would go about recommending someone add the ability to have green or amber text on the black background?
This is possible in the iOS app that I built [1], which accesses your Kindle library through the Kindle Cloud Reader web app and injects a javascript that allows advanced coloring options. This is used primarily to enable our line-wrapping color gradients, which facilitate visual tracking, but you can also add colors without the gradients. Here are some screenshots of green/black [2] and amber(ish)/black [3]. The app is free to download and this feature has a free trial so you can see how it works. You can also use our Chrome/Firefox/Brave extension [4] for reading on the computer.
Unfortunately we cannot build a similar tool for Android, as Amazon blocks the Kindle Cloud Reader on all Android devices (including the Kindle Fire).
> p.s. Do you know how I would go about recommending someone add the ability to have green or amber text on the black background?
If you're on Android:
1. go to Settings -> Info -> About
2. Draw a lowercase h on the screen (anywhere), and you'll see a "special color mode enabled", and should get amber on black. another letter gives you green on black, but I forget which :( . There's a bunch of hidden color combinations there :)
I'm not sure that exists on iOS, though
---
For requesting it: help & feedback -> contact us -> give feedback is your best bet. I'm out of touch w/ the Kindle team, but at least several years ago many of the devs would obsessively read customer feedback (that wasn't deemed sensitive/PII)
Also: there were multiple ebook readers on the store at the time that were already selling books in-app. Several stopped development, others removed their in-app store.
I suspect we (Kindle) we're either the trigger for the in-app purchasing store, or really accelerated plans around it.
I wasted so much time trying to figure out how to get books in the iOS kindle app. When I finally figured out that I had to use my laptop, I was still confused at so why the iOS app was not saying anything about anything.
Technically you can use your iPad/iPhone, but you have to use a web browser instead of the Kindle app. A funny thing happens when you do — the website redirects you to the Amazon app, which then redirects you back to the website. Honestly, I don't know how Amazon does purchasing through the Amazon app without giving 30% to Apple, but it seems that they don't let you purchase books this way.
The 30% fee only applies to digital goods, not physical ones. It's part of why there's all the awkward hoops that the main amazon app goes through when you run into digital goods, but everything else is mostly sane
If that's the case, could Spotify work around this by mailing something to the customer every month (like a "Certificate of Subscription")? That way it'd technically be a physical good.
I imagine that would be insufficient to transform the purchase into that of a physical good. Might have a chance if it were a physical widget (USB key?) that you plug into your computer or phone to validate your subscription. Even that is walking the line, since you're arguably still buying a digital good, albeit one that is activated/confirmed via a hardware key.
So if I were to buy a sheet of paper from Amazon every month, that wouldn't be a physical good?
Or is the rule that the physical good can't be accompanied by anything beyond the physical object itself? If that's the case, then is Amazon not allowed to sell items via its iOS app if those items come with warranties?
Or what about video games? If Amazon is allowed to sell physical copies of them, then can Spotify go full-AOL-mode and send a CD with a Spotify installer on it every month?
Apple is not a robot. And they're already interpreting vague text against spotify wherever they can.
If you want a better answer, if a large percent of amazon app purchases became physical objects tied to upgrades you can use on your iPhone, then they would also get the hammer.
Precedent doesn't matter here, the rules will adapt to whatever is needed to require that 30% cut. (Unless Apple changes their mind first.)
My point is that we can get to a point where the only way Apple can actually enforce such a rule consistently is by forcing itself into the process of purchasing physical goods and dictating what physical goods can and cannot be sold.
More importantly: the more Apple tries to react to these tactics, the more evidence in favor of Spotify's case. It's a classic case of squeezing sand so hard that it slips through your fingers.
> My point is that we can get to a point where the only way Apple can actually enforce such a rule consistently is by forcing itself into the process of purchasing physical goods and dictating what physical goods can and cannot be sold.
Okay, you forced them into having a rule about an exceptionally niche category of physical goods. They already ban the sale of firearms, so this isn't even new. It causes them no problems.
> More importantly: the more Apple tries to react to these tactics, the more evidence in favor of Spotify's case. It's a classic case of squeezing sand so hard that it slips through your fingers.
Not when they're so obviously looking for a loophole. It would hurt Spotify's reputation more than Apple.
It's not that niche of a category, though. Any sale of a physical good with a warranty or separate registration process or "cloud" features or any other non-physical good/service that's tied to that physical good would be caught up in this. That's a pretty broad category.
Even if we wanted to stick to a narrow category of "subscription to a service that entails shipping physical media devices on a subscription", there are other apps in that category (though I don't know if they do let you actually sign up via the app): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dvd-netflix/id1169772776
Spotify could do something similar and pivot into the music rental business, kinda like an inverse Netflix. Whether that'd actually be better than just paying the 30% App Store tax is another question, of course :)
Which is especially unfortunate, since most Kindle users want this feature and (probably) frequently request it, not knowing that Amazon's hand is forced.
I don't get this. Can you elaborate? So you're saying because I bought an iTunes gift card that was $100 for $80, Apple will only ever get $10 of my actual dollars if I spend all $100? This is an interesting hack.
The claims in here are pretty wild, particularly around how Apple has favored its own products:
- Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri
- It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis
- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies
I genuinely hope Europe takes this seriously. The issue of the 30% cut alone is enough for further investigation, particularly as Apple now uses that as an advantage to undercut Spotify with Apple Music.
Especially one that isn't currently making money, presumably if Apple wasn't engaging in anti-market strategies they would have more revenue.
How much, I have no clue - but if they can't even have a "get premium now" button in the app then that's insane to me. The 30% fee Apple would take isn't a real alternative either, it's still not profitable.
> Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch
I'm not sure this is 100% true. From browsing the spotify support forums many moons ago, some guy had built a spotify playing app for the apple watch, but spotify squashed it. Given that some random dev could do this, it doesn't seem like apple prevented anything.
Counterargument: Apple's review process is more likely to let "some guy's" app slip through the cracks and make it in the App Store than the official app of one of its huge competitors with an install base of many, many, many millions of devices.
Perhaps. No one has any evidence of this in this case though, so it sounds like you're just taking a side.
On the other hand Spotify did squash this guy's app. That's a thing that happened. So it's not like the APIs aren't there.
So now we're taking Spotify's word that Apple is keeping them off the app store, while ignoring the fact that said app is possible and they themselves have kept an app off the app store.
True, I just offered a counterargument based on conjecture. So let's assume at least rational behavior on the part of Spotify. What do you think would be their rationale for not building a feature that would enhance their product and is desired by customers? What do they gain by blaming Apple for not building it? This isn't rhetorical... I think there are potential legitimate reasons they'd want to do this, I'm just curious about where your thinking is on this.
I _believe_ the issue here is some app developers were invited to visit Apple and (perhaps) get access to certain APIs that weren't going to be made available to normal app developers.
- If you're deep into iOS development you know that Apple apps - the ones shipped with the OS - sometimes do things that 3rd party apps aren't able to. For example the Music app gets to be the _default_ app to live in the control panel even if you hardly ever use it and are using Spotify most of the time.
- I believe - for the Apple Watch - some of the 3rd party apps which were already available on the day of the launch were a) invited to preview the Watch ahead of other developers and b) in some cases allowed to use undocumented APIs. Uber may be one example of this - https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/05/uber-removing-apple-gra...
As I read this "Time to Play Fair" website, it looks to me like Spotify is complaining they weren't invited to these preview sessions and thereby didn't get to learn about / get permission to use undocumented APIs.
My read from the linked timeline is that Apple didn't block Spotify from the Apple Watch, but rather wouldn't provide the API necessary to Spotify for offline-mode.
I inferred this from the vague wording in the earlier points and the clarifications in the later points.
> When Apple launches their new Apple Watch, they dismiss our proposals and won’t work with us to develop an app for it.
Notice, they didn't say they were blocked. Also why would building an app for the watch necessitate a proposal to Apple that requires Apple to work with them directly? Wouldn't you instead build your app and submit it for approval? This is probably because the Apple Watch SDK didn't provide all the functionality Spotify wanted, and so Spotify was trying to get Apple to add new functionality to the SDK.
> We submit a new proposal for a streaming app directly on the Apple Watch. Apple declines
> With WatchOS 4, Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch
Again, doesn't say they were blocked, just that proposals were rejected and the provided functionality made it difficult/impossible to do what they wanted.
> With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionality
Was this the functionality Spotify was proposing for Apple to make possible all along? In other words, was this the missing part of the SDK that Spotify had kept proposing to Apple and having rejected (not the app itself, which they didn't want to build without this functionality)?
EDIT: I'm also not saying they didn't build the app and submit it and have it rejected. They just never actually say that in the timeline.
It's one thing to make an app, it's an entirely different thing to get it through the App Store review process.
Did that guy's app make it on the App Store? He could have easily built it with private APIs which would work but wouldn't pass review (maybe, App Review is very inconsistent) or many other reasons why he could and Spotify couldn't.
Spotify is available (on apple watch) now, for whatever that's worth... Took me about 2 minutes from reading the complaint to playing Spotify (already had an account) on my watch. That includes downloading from the store and then to the watch (which has in the past, with other apps, taken a while)
> They state in their timeline that after many years Apple did allow Spotify.
This is a VERY different statement than the true one which is:
Apple didn't allow ANY streaming music (or audiobook, or podcast) apps on the watch due to not providing the API's. They didn't specifically block Spotify.
The Apple Watch has almost been available 4 years... In the first year and a half all apps were extremely limited. I'm not sure if that leaves "many" years for them to not allow Spotify.
If a random guy can make the app then Spotify could certainly have made an Apple Watch app.
If anything it makes the case that if it were so simple for a single random dev that unless Apple itself were preventing it there is no reason the app wouldn't have been released.
For god sake, it's about policy not tech inability!
You don't even need to read the website to know that. WatchOS has APIs like iOS, it's not a matter of being 'hard' to program. It's because if you're nobody, the spotlight is not on you every step you take. But Spotify being your competitor is being close watched.
But it was Spotify that asked the random guy to take the app down. If anything I would have thought it would be in Spotify's interests to keep it up - "look it's possible, but Apple isn't allowing us"
Of course, because this guy had no rights. It’s already technically possible without having to keep an app alive that’s infringing your property just to say ‘hey look’
If you read between the lines, it's clear that Spotify was able to make a normal watch app. But they wanted to make one that had special functionality not yet allowed by Apple, for any app, not just Spotify.
There is a fine line between reading between the lines and fabricating things. Can you point to what exactly in that website substantiates your implication?
Their timeline is a bit unclear. They claim that in 2015 and 2016, they were denied outright. In 2017 they say that "Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch". Then in 2018 they say that "Apple finally allows enhanced functionality for the Spotify app on the Apple Watch".
Until watchos 5, 3rd party apps couldn’t do lte streaming. That said, lte was new in watchos 4, the tslk was that apple wanted to initially restrict it for battery life reasons.
Spotify could have made a watch app that provided controls and had offline somgs. They didn’t, and kept shutting down spps that did, or buying them and shutting them. This was a major sore point against spotify on the apple watch subreddit. Even now they’re dragging their feet, iirc.
The watch is a new, battery constrained device. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to limit 3rd party apps for a bit while sorting out how to work with the size constraints.
I’m guessing apple will add lte support for 3rd party apps in watchos 6. Meanwhile, 3rd party apps have had the ability to make apps with offline support since June 2018. Most audio apps have added this.
Spotify....has not. What’s the holdup? Apple watch users are pretty frustrated with spotify: if all the other audio apps can do it, why haven’t they?
(Lte is an edge case: few watches have lte, and even fewer have an active lte plan. Offline audio is the main use case spotify still isn’t doing)
I don't know about the others, but Spotify is BSing about being blocked on the Apple Watch.
Until WatchOS 5 the APIs to do something like Spotify didn't really exist. There were workarounds, like by abusing the workout API, but unsurprisingly these has significant drawbacks, were unstable and Apple cracked down when they found API abuses.
Apple "blocked" Spotify only in that it hadn't (yet) released APIs that supported their use cases.
It makes me wonder how disingenuous their other claims are.
I do think services should have more options than Apple allows for accepting payment.
> - Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch / HomePad
But they've blocked every streaming music thing, right? It wasn't a vindictive campaign targetted at Spotify as this timeline is suggesting - no-one got to build streaming music apps for the Watch or HomePod IIRC.
I believe this is their point: Apple deliberately leaves those features unbuilt in order to give itself a market position that others can't compete with
Which raises the question: to what degree does a platform owner have a responsibility to support the businesses of others?
Rephrased, Spotify seems to think it has a /right/ to run its software on Apple platforms in an identical fashion to Apple's first-party software. Does that mean Apple has an obligation to provide an equivalent technical capacity for literally any software that runs on its devices? An app store? A payment provider? A cloud provider? A health data store? An update mechanism?
Microsoft used to be roundly criticized for supposedly building private APIs into Windows that Microsoft Office was allowed to use either because they were undocumented, or Office got the documentation far ahead of anyone else.
I'd say if you're selling $1200 computer devices, one principle of that is ownership and that you get to run what you want, not what Apple wants. We seem to have come a long way on this site from fighting Tivoization of embedded platforms, and unrepairable, unfixable, unhackable consumer electronics, to people making excuses for a super locked down platform, and not even on the excuse that it helps security, but from a philosophical standpoint that somehow Apple is morally right to do whatever they want.
Yes, you have a choice of not buying Apple software, just like you had the choice of not buying Windows and using Linux, or building a MythTV instead of a Tivo, but keep in mind, in the latter case, this was only possible because the CableCard standard was forced by law on the cable industry.
Apple can maintain their high levels of security and privacy without their 30% cut of subscriptions, it's a false dichotomy to pretend their behavior is anything but rent seeking.
>Microsoft used to be roundly criticized for supposedly building private APIs into Windows that Microsoft Office was allowed to use either because they were undocumented, or Office got the documentation far ahead of anyone else.
At the same time though, Microsoft wasn't preventing other developers from using those hidden APIs (if they could find them) nor preventing them from publishing their own competing apps. Sure, Microsoft's behaviour at the time was anti-competitive and sometimes even predatory, but they were never so on Windows to the extent that Apple is today on iOS.
> Which raises the question: to what degree does a platform owner have a responsibility to support the businesses of others?
I wish you'd stopped here because this is an interesting question, but the rest of your comment feels like it stretches things a bit.
What Spotify seems to be saying (correct me if I'm wrong), is that Apple does provide the technical capabilities for third parties to do as they're asking, but Apple is rejecting proposals purely on whim. It's not like there's not a API to stream music on the Apple Watch or play music through HomePod. It's all there. Apple's just blocking them from using it.
Once you publish an API you’re stuck with supporting it. When I’m hacking around with a library I wrote for my own use, I might do all sorts of things while I’m iterating but don’t want others to consume until they are fully baked.
The same thing about not allowing others to use “private APIs”. No guarantees are made about any methods that I didn’t make public. If I change that method in future releases, and your software that depends on it breaks - so be it.
Windows is full of backward compatibility hacks because one piece of software that wanted to use an undocumented method.
Apple has since day one had APIs that it used privately until they were fully baked and made public. Do you think that Apple waited two or three years to make share extensions public because of competitive reasons?
> Rephrased, Spotify seems to think it has a /right/ to run its software on Apple platforms in an identical fashion to Apple's first-party software. Does that mean Apple has an obligation to provide an equivalent technical capacity for literally any software that runs on its devices?
Yes.
> An app store? A payment provider? A cloud provider? A health data store? An update mechanism?
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes.
To do otherwise, is to invite platform owners to be (potentially abusive) monopolists with a license to favor their own services instead of promoting and maintaining fair competition in markets on top of that platform. In western societies, since the last century, that has been behavior which has been regulated by law and courts.
For comparison, Android keeps a very clear line between the 'Platform', and the 'Apps'.
Every API on the platform is available to all apps which have the necessary permissions.
Sure, it might look like Google has taken over key low level features of the device like updates and wifi location, but in fact from the platform perspective, all those components have an open API and can be replaced.
The only fly in the ointment here is some of the API's require powerful permissions which aren't allowed in store apps, but you can still sideload them, or use an alternate store.
This may have changed recently, haven't used an Android in a bit, but this wasn't true (and still probably isn't).
Specifically my company wanted to break our app into multiple apps and give a way for people to easily install the companions. If you send the user to the Play Store page, about 75% of users would dropoff, in user studies much of it was confusion about what to do once they saw the play store page.
Google has an api that is a much simpler flow than the full store experience which has much lower user dropoff. If you're curious where it's used, one example is the Google Drive app to install the Docs, Sheets, etc.
The API validates that the calling app is an app signed by the Google dev cert.
This isn't a security issue, you could just ship one app with all the functionality. It's clear they just wanted to reduce user drop off in a flow, but now provide that option to others.
I understand the potential for abuse even though the api still checked with the user. It wouldn't bother me if no one had access to the API, we'd just have to deal with it. But it felt anti-competitive that Google had it and we did not.
IIRC there are a few other similar non-security private APIs and they also felt anti-competitive to us. That said, it was no where near on the order of Apple, where it's commonplace on iOS.
I believe that API is in the play store itself. If your user used a third party store, you could ask them to give you an API to install other apps with no user interaction too.
As far as the platform is concerned, any app with the right permissions can install any other app. It just so happens that only the play store and other stores have that permission.
That's true; you're right that there is a open platform between the AOSP layer and the APK apps that run on top of it.
As you point out there is a fly in the ointment (which is enhanced by Google making it very difficult to ship with anything but the Play Store).
As an app developer like Spotify, the platform is the base of devices out there in the wild and how I build on top of them which, for me, is inclusive of the play services and play store.
Android definitely is a lot more open than iOS. But when the Play Store enforces a mechanism that favors Google, it's not of a practical difference to my livelihood than when the App Store has policies that favor Apple. If you have a really loyal following, like Epic/Fortnite, it's better than nothing. But even then the barrier to your users is huge and even the most establish companies with technical user bases will have a hard time crossing it. Nevermind the fledgling startups or developers with non-technical user bases.
You can also ask if Netflix has a /right/ to send their videos to consumers using Comcast's network. Or if Bing has a /right/ to be accessible on Google Chrome.
EDIT: This is no longer true, and doesn't exist in the guidelines
[---- obsolete info ----]
Yeah, it's a bit of a grey area.
However, App Store policies explicitly forbid apps that duplicate iOS and first-party functionality IIRC. Now that Apple has Maps, and Apple Music, and Podcasts, and..., and... should they enforce those rules?
> However, App Store policies explicitly forbid apps that duplicate iOS and first-party functionality IIRC. Now that Apple has Maps, and Apple Music, and Podcasts, and..., and... should they enforce those rules?
You should probably pull out the relevant quote from the guidelines. I don't think this is a thing anymore, at least in the way you're describing. If they did enforce it it would be a huge blow to the App Store.
This is for the lawyers to make sense of, but in electing to be a platform provider, they should be held to higher standards in my opinion.
They did indeed have "the service" in question, it was just limited to Apple's own offering.
It's a scenario not unlike net neutrality: an infrastructure provider that is also a content provider can put themselves or select customers in a position where free market forces are hindered or suspended in order to achieve a monopoly-like status.
> They did indeed have "the service" in question, it was just limited to Apple's own offering.
Again, there's a difference between "Siri can talk to our music service" and "We have a stable public API that 3rd party vendors can hook into to connect up to a music service". They're not the same thing, and one is a lot easier than the other.
None of the above was an argument about how easy or hard it is to build a service (though Apple has enough resources to build anything they want within the scope that they operate).
Given that they are a platform provider, maybe doing the bare minimum to get their own stuff working, but not enough to get any alternatives to work, is a strategic choice on their part.
"If Homepod only works with Apple Music, more people will switch"
No, a hardware manufacturer has no requirement to support any specific software. An infrastructure provider, however, has (in MY opinion) a requirement to support what they support to an equal degree, or it amounts to… market manipulation? Something not quite fair, some kind of abuse of power which is to the detriment of all other participants in the market, customers and companies alike.
Obviously, America as of today disagrees, seeing as net neutrality is not held in very high regard.
I look forward to roads that only support Fords, water pipes that only support Nestlé water, and stairs that only support Nike shoes.
> I look forward to roads that only support Fords, water pipes that only support Nestlé water, and stairs that only support Nike shoes.
Thankfully, America is not (yet) stupid enough to let private companies build our critical infrastructure, and thankfully "voice controlled speaker" is as critical as chewing gum.
I'm sure Spotify has no problems with the knowledge of its engineers, I just found the APIs in 5 min. In fact, number 4 of this page explains your comment: https://www.timetoplayfair.com/facts/
It's also funny because Spotify won't let other people integrate their streaming service on a device (even only for premium subscribers) if you don't follow a huge list of restrictions.
> It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies
Is this talking about the Apple Watch-Podcasting issue? Until recently, podcast apps on the watch had issues saving where you are in an episode because they couldn't constantly run in the background; you could still play audio in the background without your app, you just couldn't watch the percentage played. Fitness tracking apps were allowed to run in the background forever, so some podcast apps told the API they were fitness apps to get around the restriction [0]. Apple later removed this loophole and created the APIs necessary for podcast apps to work on the watch [1].
It's 30% for "in-app purchases" which is a specific API which allows one-click payment for one-time purchases or subscriptions ONLY FOR digital goods, and the payment goes through the iTunes account (eg: credit card).
If you buy a real world product or service, you need to use a third party payment service like Stripe (or Apple Pay, if you want), there is a 0% commission fee from Apple. This is why Amazon can distribute an app on iOS that allows to buy whatever you want without Apple getting a cut; well, anything but digital goods, like Kindle books, which in fact can't be bought from Amazon iOS app.
And most importantly, it's not 30% for Apple Music.
What do you mean it isn't? Apple Store could trivially take a 30% cut of the Apple Music revenue, and the only thing that would change would be the distribution of revenue between Apple Music and Apple Store in Apple's revenue reports. The total revenue would be the same.
Exactly, but Apple can run their streaming service as a loss leader because they still get to book the 30% revenue on the store side. Spotify can't recoup that 30%.
This effectively gives Apple an extra 30% margin for their streaming music service.
It seems that 30% is for features that are delivery in app, since Uber and Deliveroo are delivered outside app they have a lower cut. It's just commission cut rules by Apple.
Regarding Apple Music I'm not sure what that supposed to mean. I'm pretty sure that Spotify doesn't charge the same for "Spotify Premium" and "McDonalds" ads.
Apple have a monopoly on the distribution of iOS apps, so they are required to offer fair terms to all app vendors, including themselves.
Apple could charge themselves the 30% App Store fee for Apple Music, demonstrating that the App Store is a fair marketplace that doesn't artificially advantage Apple's own services. It would then be incumbent on Apple to prove that Apple Music is priced fairly, rather than being deliberately operated at a loss to squeeze other streaming music services out of the market.
Yes. So costs of putting up an ad are reflected in the relevant departments. Large corps do this all the time, transferring money from the left pocket to their right pocket.
It's somewhat similar to net neutrality proposals. AT&T doesn't have a monopoly as an ISP. However, if AT&T starts/acquires a video streaming service, they should not give unfair advantages to their own service because they want to compete with Netflix.
Not absurd. Different departments in the same company have budgets of their own. If a department wants to buy an ad from their own paper, it should affect their remaining budget, just as it should show up on the Ad department's revenue.
Sure, but this would not affect Apple music, it’s not like they would shut it down. The Apple eco-system is so popular because Apple takes a holistic approach, they wouldn’t mind at all losing money on Apple music if it increased iPhone earnings.
Technically it does? Apple could be taking a 30% cut all Apple Music subscriptions for hosting the application and processing the payment. Apple then gets the remaining 70%.
Do they actually take a 30% cut? If they're accounting in that manner, then it's likely that Apple Music is running at a substantial loss, which would constitute predatory pricing under EU competition law.
You have an overly simplified view of Apple Music.
It’s on multiple platforms, it’s tied to Beats, it has a relationship with iTunes Store, there is advertising involved etc. So there could be multiple licensing and revenue sharing deals that mean Apple Music is not running at a loss.
I don't see how blocking a company actively trying to monopolize podcasts from using the Apple recommendation API is monopolistic. Apple podcasts (either intentionally or just from neglect) have always been backed by open RSS podcasting.
-Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch
The newest version of WatchOS does allow it. The first generation of watchOS really didn’t allow any apps - just remote views of iOS apps (yeah I’m simplifying it).
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod
Apple doesn’t have any apps on the HomePod. Now we are going to force all single purpose devices to ship with an SDK?
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri
Apple also just came out with any third party integration with Siri a version or two ago. Again we want the government to dictate the timeline when they build features for apps?
- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies
Netflix also blocked its API from most third parties years ago. Can we sue Netflix?
- Apple blocked Spotify from working with Apple Watch
How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for HomePod
How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?
- It blocked Spotify from building apps for Siri
How? By not providing API's to do what they wanted? yawn Next?
- It blocks Spotify updates on a regular basis
Wakes up Ok here we have the first real issue, BUT even with that said this is SUPER one-sided. We have only Spotify's word and given their liberal stretching of the truth (or outright breaking it in some cases) I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
- It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies
I'm going to need more info on this because it is super vague.
The problem isn't the amount of the Apple tax, and it buries the lead to make it about that. The contention here is that applying rules like this arbitrarily in a way that at least appears to favour your own products over your rivals is an abuse of your position.
If the commission rules in Spotify's favour (which I would think is likely, given the dim view they've taken of such matters previously), then I'd be astonished if Spotify doesn't file lawsuits in the US under the Sherman Act.
In any case, having this fight happen, and in public, can only be good for indie developers if it forces Apple to apply it's rules arbitrarily.
For a long time I've been confused about the rules of monopolies. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE into Windows so much so that the US threatened heavily to break up the company.
Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...
They bundled _while_ having a monopoly. They could have bundled or they could have had a monopoly, but doing both is where it crosses the anti-trust line since your customers are effectively captive.
What does Apple have a monopoly on? What does Amazon have a monopoly on? Google arguably has a monopoly on search which could put them in an unfavorable position should an antitrust case be brought against them (maybe why they added DDG to a default search engine choice in chrome, see judge, there are other search options!).
This has very little to do with monopolies and much more to do with enforcement.
The most persistent misconception about antitrust regulation in the US, and one repeated over and over on HN and in this thread, is that it only applies to businesses in a monopoly position. While the original Sherman Act of 1890 explicitly targeted monopolies, the 1914 Clayton Act expanded its scope to encompass a range of anticompetitive practices, including predatory pricing. [1]
A market actor need not be a monopoly to engage in these behaviors, only a dominant position that they are abusing.
i feel this is dangerous thinking. maybe apple doesn't have a monopoly on a particular market in terms of market share, but their influence on businesses, markets, policies, etc. is massive and is basically indistinguishable from a market monopoly. with their amount of money and position in the market, they have near limitless influence on other companies and ways of abusing this influence to act in their favor. they've done it many, many times, and continue to do it.
The term monopoly should be well defined. If you apply that definition to the real world situation and ask yourself the question "What does Apple have a monopoly on?". How is that "dangerous thinking"?
You can argue the term isn't well defined or you can disagree with the definition. But you can't say it is "dangerous thinking" when someone simply applies the definition.
i thought it was clear what i considered dangerous thinking, that is the assumption that apple doesn't have a monopoly in the strict sense of controlling a certain commodity or market and thus no one needs to worry about their behavior with regards to competitive or anti-competitive practices. the implication in the comment i replied to was that apple doesn't have a monopoly according to its definition and thus there's no need to worry or consider anti-trust things. that is dangerous thinking because there is more to worry about with today's mega-companies than the strict definition of a monopoly. it is this dangerous thinking that has allowed them and these other larger companies to exert major influence on markets, economies, competitors, suppliers, policies, and governments.
> But you can't say it is "dangerous thinking" when someone simply applies the definition.
>but their influence on businesses, markets, policies, etc. is massive and is basically indistinguishable from a market monopoly...
That won't hold up well in a court of law. That's the problem, we need to change the law. Because the law as it is currently written, just doesn't see something like Apple as anything close to a monopoly.
Imho, the modern monopoly phrasing should be "a substantial market share" (where substantial is defined both in absolute terms AND as a userbase large enough to be self-sufficient and fund best-of-breed category development).
Iff that is true, you should be prohibited from preinstalling, offering, or endorsing any marketplace... without a customer being able to substitute another at their discretion.
Thereby requiring that you make any and all technical considerations necessary for an alternate marketplace to interface with the end user in exactly the same way your marketplace does. (Aka a public, dogfooded API, and no secret internal API shenanigans).
That wouldn't fly. A small company could release a best of breed product, and everyone could say it meets the definition of a monopoly. Unless you mean that the company would have to have a certain minimum marketshare AND ALSO would have to have best of breed product. (But even that would be problematic. We could likely get courts to go for something like 60%+, or even 50%+ with effort. But the courts are just gonna have a big problem with anything less than 50%.)
I'm not saying these businesses should be illegal, simply that there are additional responsibilities on them once they scale. Post-monopoly, maybe "significant market participant" would be better terminology.
There are two considerations that contribute to the ultimate consumer ills:
(1) Do I, as a user, have robust choice of alternatives with equivalent functionality? (Absolute market share * , coupled with self-sustainability)
In the case of the Android / iOS duopoly, I do not.
(2) Is the owner of the product using its dominance in such a way that users of the product must contribute post-initial-sale revenue to that owner?
In the case of Android & iOS, I must.
Monopolies will arise naturally in technology. And they're healthy: FAANMG deliver amazing technologies.
But a single choice should not allow a company to passively leverage your demand ever after (e.g. by attracting suppliers, from whom they can then take a cut). This extends beyond marketplaces and app stores, but they're the current offenders.
Amazon's shopping marketplace is the trickiest example. Is Amazon a "significant market participant" in online sales? Yes. Does the Amazon seller marketplace allow Amazon to extract additional revenue from suppliers by gatekeeping access to Amazon users' demand? Yes.
In Amazon and Walmart's cases, they should probably have retail cleaved from their logistics chains.
* I'd put this number low enough that the total number of large competitors should be sufficient to promote true choice. By gut, 2 is probably too small, 3 seems dicey, so let's say 25%.
>In the case of the Android / iOS duopoly, I do not...
???
Why's that?
Serious question.
And
>But a single choice should not allow a company to passively leverage your demand ever after...
That's how things have always worked though. And I'm not only talking about the tech industry now. I'm talking about nearly everything. Literally everything from Automobile manufacturers obliging you to buy accessories which fit only their vehicles, to sewing machines, even simple things like shaving razors.
We have to narrow our focus if we want the government and the courts to take us seriously. These shotgun approaches that qualify nearly every major corporation in nearly every market sector for a breakup just make us seem like amateurs.
You can't have a marketplace that you participate in? That just makes no sense. I mean think about it, you've just snared Walmart, Target, and dozens of other retailers with similar web presences in your net. You have to have something more tailored to tech companies, or you have to go with the laws as they stand. You can't say, "Oh, I just want to handicap companies comprising the top 25% of every market sector in the country." That makes you seem unreasonable.
i wasn't necessarily making a legal argument, but i agree with you. our government has stopped caring about corporate influence because they benefit from it while it hurts society as a whole.
"their" platform. nominally you can install whatever you want using profiles, but effectively having to do so is an artificially high barrier to entry for competing app stores (not to mention you have to pay apple $100/year for the 'privilege' of installing whatever you want on your own device for a year. no way to do so permanently.)
the degree to which apple has singlemindedly anticompetitively abused their vertical integration frankly astonishes me. the breaking point for me was opening the music app on the at the time 'latest' ios to be presented with a full page ad for apple music.
utter garbage and I hope they get what's coming to them before they have a chance to worm out of it.
The law will not see a company as having a monopoly just because they have a monopoly on their product. (Especially when that product has a minority market position.)
Now there is a completely separate question of unfair competition, but this has to be answered on an App by App basis. Does Apple have an app that provides the service in question? Does Apple disallow competing apps which provide that same service? Is there a compelling reason for the prohibition (Security, physical safety, etc.)?
There's an awful lot that goes into those questions. That said, it seems to me that if Apple is prohibiting spotify from being on its devices, this could be unfair competition. I don't really see any issue of safety with spotify. (I don't use it though, so if there is some safety or security issue with it, I'll freely admit I'm wrong.)
Then, of course, the issue of the tax. That's a non-starter. Apple, actually any company, is allowed to charge for services rendered. They can't be compelled to provide app store and ecommerce services at no cost.
> The law will not see a company as having a monopoly just because they have a monopoly on their product.
Having a monopoly on Clorox bleach doesn't mean you have a monopoly on bleach. You have to define what the market is.
The issue is that iOS app distribution and Android app distribution are two separate markets, in a way that Clorox bleach and Great Value bleach are not. The apps being distributed are not the same (they have to be written specifically for each platform), the customers for each are almost entirely disjoint, etc. You can't substitute one for the other. You can't distribute your iOS app to iOS devices via Amazon or Google Play.
It's like operating a school. You don't have a monopoly on schools, but you control what kind of books and equipment your students have to buy. If you specify commodities (e.g. any laptop with a minimum spec and a web browser), you don't have a monopoly there either. But if you require the students to buy a specific thing that only you provide, now you have a monopoly. You've created a market with no viable substitutes and no other competitors -- that's what a monopoly is. And that's what the App Store is.
> They can't be compelled to provide app store and ecommerce services at no cost.
Nor is that what's needed. What's needed is competing app stores for iOS apps.
Who cares if the Spotify apps for Android/iOS are coded differently ? It’s irrelevant. Users have access to the same app on both platforms with the same functionality. And Apple is not stopping these users from moving to Android.
And yes Apple has a monopoly on their products. So does every company.
> Who cares if the Spotify apps for Android/iOS are coded differently ?
It's a different product. It's like saying who cares if you can't sell shoes, go sell boots. Different products, different markets.
> Users have access to the same app on both platforms with the same functionality.
Not if Apple doesn't accept it in their app store.
> And Apple is not stopping these users from moving to Android.
Charter isn't stopping a homeowner from buying a house in Comcast's service area either. Having to replace a $1000 phone in order to get a $1 app is a prohibitively high barrier.
Moreover, in the market for app distribution the customer is the developer. Saying "you can sell to Android customers" is like a company with a regional monopoly in California saying "you can sell to customers in Texas" as an argument that they don't have a monopoly in California.
> And yes Apple has a monopoly on their products. So does every company.
Clorox has a monopoly on Clorox bleach, not on bleach, and other bleach is a perfect substitute. Apple has a monopoly on their App Store, which is the sole app store for iOS and there are no viable substitutes.
I don't even see why Apple needs a reason. As has been noted, they don't have a monopoly, and it IS their app store. I don't see why they can't just openly reject competing apps. If I'm running a doughnut shop where I sell my own doughnuts, I can let another vendor come in and sell coffee but turn away a competing doughnut maker.
Now... that doesn't mean that Apple aren't jagoffs in this matter. I'm sure they have bullet-proof fine-print, but the best attack one can make on them is that they're stealing from vendors by letting them waste development resources and then changing the rules when the development's done.
But Apple also sells phones, and selling music is just a side job. A better analogy is if you own the fairgrounds and an unlimited amount of booths that you to rent to food vendors, and you also sell doughnuts alongside the other vendors. But you don't let a competing doughnut vendor rent one of your booths. Is that anti-competitive? I don't know.
It’s one of the most fundamental parts of their ecosystem.
And your analogy is really bad. If you own a fairground and a doughtnut shop then it is not illegal to exclude competitors. It’s normal business practice.
Compared to Apple's main business of selling hardware, selling music is a side job.
And the fairgrounds analogy is better than the doughnut shop one. I didn't say it was perfect, but it illustrates the point. I also did not say that it was illegal or that it wasn't normal business practice--that's why I said "I don't know".
Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. Having a popular or high-quality product is not the same as having no competition. You can run an ecommerce business online entirely through instagram if you wanted to.
Amazon theoretically is abusing it's market power by being selective about which products it sells in it's stores. When they removed competing AppleTV/Chromecast products from their own and seller lines, to promote their firestick, that was monopolistic behavior. There's also arguments that Amazon is promoting their own line of products on their platform as well, by replicating products that end up being successful, but this is a new area for antitrust that needs to be sussed out.
Again, having a popular product is not a monopoly.
Monopoly is tied to access to competition. Monopolies have market dominance, but not all market dominant companies are monopolies. Windows was more of a monopoly in the 1990's because you went into a computer store and could typically only buy windows machines. This limits consumer options.
You can type https://www.bing.com into your browser right now, or any other number of accessible competitors, meaning that while popular, Google is not a monopoly. Consumers have a myriad of options and choose one because of it's quality, which is how competition on open markets work.
However, this argument falls apart when you look deeper into the fray of competition and examine barrier to entry.
Because so far search seems to be a self-perpetuating machine, it can be unfair to compare google and other searches as the amount of data Google already has could pose as an unfair advantage.
What if some other company had the same amount of data? Could they be doing a lot better job? Would the favor for google products dissapear?
really the entire concept of a 'store' has been bastardized by these companies (another thing we can thank apple for) and is a misdirect.
the locked down software platforms wherein users can't install anything on their own devices without the owning company's say-so is the artificial monopoly. they're trying to get away with adding things like device management now to weasel out of it but in reality these are artificially high barriers to entry for any competing software distribution services or 'stores'.
when Amazon can barely even get a foothold in a competing ecosystem with its own 'app store' you know it's anticompetitive and it's working.
Amazon can build their own phones and run their own store. In fact they did.
It’s just that their products were terrible and consumers didn’t want them. And the barrier to building your own ecosystem really isn’t that high anymore. We have hundreds of Chinese companies doing this today.
Agreed, and this is where some set of standardization is needed for antitrust law.
Store doesn't mean much. There needs to be a difference between hosting an online store that sells your own products and services, and hosting an online platform that sells your own things but also allows other businesses to sell on it as well.
The latter needs more guidelines on how the host ensures competition, especially when it starts to get market dominance and abuses control of the platform to promote it's own products.
Apple clearly has a monopoly on the sales and distribution of iPhone apps, and as evidenced by Spotify, they are wielding that monopoly anti-competitively.
"Just use a different smartphone" isn't a real defense in my opinion, any more than "just use a unix workstation" would be to Microsoft's desktop computer monopoly in the 1990s.
Comparing Apple to 90s Microsoft is a bad analogy. Apple has like sub-20% market share of smart phones. Google/Android is the 90s Microsoft in the smartphone market, not Apple.
Comparing Microsoft to Apple in the 2010's is a bad analogy. Microsoft tried to bundle a web browser by default. Apple outright bans competitor apps and takes a cut of almost every transaction that happens on the device.
Consumers have a viable and realistic alternative in Android and 80% of consumers choose to use that alternative. Consumers did not have a viable and realistic alternative to Windows in the 2000s.
My point is that Apple and Microsoft are different situations. You can't look at just the market share and ignore the other dimensions where they are arguable behaving worse than Microsoft ever did.
The illegality of what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer was contingent on them holding a monopoly on personal computing. They were using their monopoly as leverage to obtain other advantages. Apple does not have a monopoly on smartphones. Looking at marketshare is essential.
This argument is so prevalent, but it needs to be unpacked: would most iPhone customers buy a totally different phone only to run an app that Apple doesn't allow? Whether or not someone can switch phones isn't really the issue, but whether or not the phone has replaced general-purpose computing and access to the entire software industry is the issue.
Microsoft never had a monopoly. Apple existed at the time, as did Unix variants.
The attack on Microsoft was grandstanding BS, while the government has allowed the REAL customer-harming monopoly of Ticketmaster to not only continue but grow with its acquisitions of LiveNation and StubHub.
I was there, it was more like the US threatened to break up Microsoft, and then Microsoft, their army of lawyers, and the courts laughed the government out of the room. The government had to settle for lesser sanctions. ("Sanctions" which, in my opinion, were not sanctions at all.)
>Fast forward a decade later and apple, google and amazon bundle a crazy amount of unrelated services into their platforms without the regulators raising an eyebrow...
That's because the "sanctions" solidified that practice as explicitly legal. So now EVERYONE started doing it. The only thing you needed to do was to allow other people to put their unrelated services on your platform too. You could even charge other people for that if you wanted. (And you didn't even have to let unrelated services on your platform in certain cases. For instance, at the time, Windows was riddled with viruses and bugs, so where the safety or security of the consumer was concerned, you didn't have to allow or even have certain services on your platform. Little known loophole there.)
The problem was really that the issues on the face of it, to someone like me, a young developer activist at the time, were not really the questions dealt with when you finally get into court. The law is about the law, and there was no getting around it.
I became convinced that what we should be doing is trying to change the law. I'm just to old to put that kind of effort into agitating for changed laws any longer.
EDIT: It's probably only fair for me to add that the courts turned out to be right in the Microsoft case. History has shown that information processing paradigms can change on a dime. (PC to mobile). The law is there to provide reasonable safeguards to all actors in a market, and ensure that competition is fair. It's just that "fair" in the eyes of the law, looked a bit different than "fair" did in my own opinion.
> Microsoft got into a lot of trouble when they bundled IE
I think it is an impressive PR achievement by Microsoft that you remember it this way.
As a more recent example, when Google was fined related to Android, they tried to spin it as "being fined for bundling the play store". That is of course not what they were fined for, but it makes a nice memorable headline.
Microsoft bundled IE for the express purpose of putting Netscape out of business and used their market power to kill netscape. It’s not illegal to be a monopoly, it’s illegal to abuse that monopoly position. Google can make Maps and chrome and whatever, but they can’t force Samsung to not bundle a competeing maps app.
Counterpoint (and I say this as someone who currently makes a living via Apple's platform): Apple reserves a fair bit of system integration/functionality to their first-party apps. For example, on iOS no navigation app other than Apple Maps can actively navigate when the device is locked.
I'm not familiar enough with Android to know if Google does this as well.
Android has plenty of its own problems, but not so much in this category. Android users can set default browser, email, SMS app, etc., where iOS does not allow this. Any navigation app can work while the device is locked, it's enabled by a permission called "Draw over other apps", IIRC.
In my opinion, the problem with Android is not that you can't add to its functionality, which you can, but that you can't effectively limit Google's privacy-invasive functionality (much worse than iOS's) unless you can unlock the bootloader.
At that time Microsoft completely dominated desktop operating systems to the extent that it was an effective monopoly. It them attempted to leverage that position to try and squash other browser makers.
I agree that Apple is trying to squash Spotify, but I don't believe it doesn't have an effective monopoly on mobile phones.
Isn't their argument about the Apple Store and being able to put their product into the Apple Ecosystem? I didn't read any of it as saying they have a monopoly on phones.
no one is arguing it has a monopoly on mobile phones, the argument is and has always been that they have a monopoly on the ios software ecosystem they've built.
Yes, but from an anti-trust perspective, 'a monopoly on this thing I built' isn't an issue - arguably every company has a monopoly on that. It becomes an issue if 'this thing I built' captures an overwhelming economic sector, to the extent that consumers have no choice.
Currently consumers do have a choice - and more chose Android than Apple.
At the point where there is a threat to the Android ecosystem, with the possibility that app writers, consumers and handset manufacturers are forced to quit the platform because it isn't viable.
I believe this is because previously antitrust law was used when things were bad for competition but nowadays the thinking is more that antitrust laws should be used when things cause higher prices.
>nowadays the thinking is more that antitrust laws should be used when things cause higher prices.
That’s exactly what is happening...Spotify can offer price $x to their customers but Apple’s rules are forcing the price to be $x + 30% Apple Tax. Spotify has articulated numerous acts Apple has taken to ensure Spotify can’t circumvent the Apple Tax...Apple coming out with a competing App and being able to charge $x sans their own tax is just the icing on the anticompetitive cake.
This is one of the biggest issues with Google as well...where company was advertising on Google for $x, once google uses its position to determine they want to compete Google starts competing with their own customers for the same ads jacking up the ad pricing.
This basically ensures both Apple and Google can use their dominate market position and platforms to determine markets, market prices, and then unfairly compete with the market incumbents by offering the original $x price without the google/Apple Tax. There is no leaving the Apple/Google platforms at that point or you are basically waiving the white flag and telling your customers to go over to the Apple/Google product.
The difference is that Netscape Navigator was a paid application. Microsoft was bundling their product, which was free, with their OS. They OS was dominating the market, which meant that majority of people didn't have to buy from Netscape. They were forcing out the competition.
When Apple, Google and Amazon are releasing unrelated services into their platforms it isn't to starve out competitors but just expand their business. They aren't, as far as I know, drastically undercutting the prices of their services to levels that aren't sustainable for other companies to compete.
> They aren't, as far as I know, drastically undercutting the prices of their services to levels that aren't sustainable for other companies to compete.
The linked Spotify page says exactly the opposite.
> Because Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge, they are able to hugely undercut us and charge €9.99. To our fans, this just looked like we were ripping you off
This particular part of the argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least looking at the US pricing. Apple Music is $9.99 a month; Spotify Premium is $9.99 a month and includes Hulu. If not paying the IAP charge means Apple could "hugely undercut" Spotify, then shouldn't Apple Music be, well, cheaper? By at least 30%?
(N.B.: I'm not defending the specific 30% cut that Apple takes or any of their other demands, just going "hmm" at the bit you've quoted.)
Spotify is saying they had to increase the price to $13 to sell on the store. This price was not popular so they left the store to maintain the $10 price across the board. This was back in 2016, not what is offered now.
> 2014 June
> So, we give IAP a try. That means we are now charged Apple's 30% tax and sadly have to increase our price for our fans... to €12.99 a month.
> 2015 June
> Because Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge, they are able to hugely undercut us and charge €9.99. To our fans, this just looked like we were ripping you off
> 2016 May
> We opt out of Apple's payment system and the artificially uncompetitive price we had to charge for using it
I was responding more so to the bundling of services rather than to the App Store specifically. Though, you could argue that the App Store and/or Apple Music are services that are bundled
> They aren't, as far as I know, drastically undercutting the prices of their services to levels that aren't sustainable for other companies to compete.
Difficult to compete with free on a large scale, you can only compete on niche audiences at that point. Gmail feels like a good example here that effectively drove out most of the other competition's relatively limited free tiers for personal users, leaving only larger businesses and privacy-oriented individuals to continue to pay for email.
I agree that Spotify is taking the right stance. In their position, working on whatever team is responsible for fighting Apple, I would also do anything in my power to fight.
Having said this, Apple can do as they please. They control the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the user accounts. The same was true of Twitter who effectively squeezed access to their API until one or two desktop clients remained.
The only two ways out of this is to legislate a lower rate (through campaigns such as these), or to create a competing platform that lowers costs for its users. Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?
Well, that's not entirely true, Apple can't exactly do what it wants. As other comments point out regarding Microsoft, Microsoft were forced to allow IE to be debundled and other competing browsers installed, because having a monopoly on a platform and using that platform to enforce anti-competitive practices is illegal under anti-trust law.
So given Apple's marketshare (not a monopoly per se though pretty substantial), and given they both control the platform that people pay money to access, and promote preferential treatment of a first party service at the expense of any third party services, it sounds pretty ripe for an anti-trust lawsuit.
The same I believe has recently been applied to Google in the EU for using its monopoly to promote its own product search results above other online stores.
The only difference now is, the teeth of anti-trust regulators are a lot more dull than they were in the 90s, for various reasons.
You've misremembered the Microsoft ruling. It wasn't about Microsoft having control over computers running Windows - that alone does not a monopoly make. What made Microsoft a monopoly was that over 95% (can't remember the exact number) of all computers were running Windows.
Being anti competitive and being a monopoly are 2 similar but different things. What we are seeing today is the same as train Barron's of us history they control the track/os and do all they can to make it harder/costlier for others to move stuff on their tracks doesn't matter if they own all the tracks/OS or not.
Microsoft only got in trouble because they originally sold Internet Explorer as a separate product in retail stores. Then when Netscape Navigator became popular, Microsoft responded by bundling IE into Windows for no additional charge. If MS had never released IE separately but instead just made it an OS feature from the start they would have had a more defensible position.
They have a monopoly over their own app store. It's not like Spotify can just choose to distribute their iOS app directly or through a 3rd party app store
Except that if I don't like one store, I can always go to another. That's the case with Android, and at least to an extent with Windows (even store apps can be distributed and installed by package if you don't want to use their store, plus classic Windows apps are still a thing). With iOS, it's Apple's way or no way at all. There's no competition.
Changing countries is usually not even possible because of immigration restrictions. And even if you could get past that you are looking at years/decades before you are a proper citizen.
Speaking of which, even just developing for iOS is a painful chore compared to Android. Unfortunately when the client and the users want iPhones, folks like us have to develop for them. In this world, it's fuck or walk.
If you run a business and then complain about where your customers prefer to buy your products... you're literally complaining about the fact that you have paying customers. You're free to not support the people who keep you in business but they're then also free to not keep you in business anymore.
it theoretically would be fine to dev for apple, if they added proper progressive web app support (or gave users the tools to build this out themselves) but of course that would hurt their interests by introducing competing (even if inferior) software distribution methods to the native effectively walled garden monopoly they have now.
As a developer, you should be listening to your users, not telling them what to use.
Also, iOS is a treat to build on. Not sure what your source on that is, but they don't have the device and OS fragmentation of Android, to say the least.
My source is me, having to develop and manage a cross-platform mobile app (Android and iOS). Doing anything with the latter platform is an uphill struggle, from the platform itself to publishing the app. On the other hand, working with Android is pretty smooth despite the fragmentation; most issues with it are purely visual and easily fixed.
A better way to put it is that Apple has a monopoly on selling apps to iOS owners. So yes, Walmart and Apple can both have a monopoly on their "shelves", but Walmart doesn't have a monopoly on their customers. Their customers also shop at grocery stores, Best Buy, online, etc. If I don't agree with Walmart's terms my potential customers can still buy my product at any of these other stores.
The other issue here is using dominance in one market to expand into another. Walmart may sell their own branded stuff, but even then they're still a retailer buying and selling things. Compare that with Apple where building phones and selling online music subscriptions are different markets.
This is a good point -- the friction in switching from shopping at Walmart to shopping at Target, for example is pretty low (provided both exist in you local area).
The friction of switching from iPhone to Android is high for most people: purchasing an iPhone quality Android device and repurchasing apps could easily exceed $1000.
> The friction of switching from iPhone to Android is high for most people: purchasing an iPhone quality Android device and repurchasing apps could easily exceed $1000.
But...so could the cost of buying a iPhone quality iPhone (without trade in or other discount the XS Max seems to be $999 to $1499.)
This is like saying I’d like to have a Dodge Viper engine dropped into my Subaru Outback to get more HP, but that’s not the way things work. If I want Viper HP, I need to buy a Viper (or do the mods myself and accept the outcomes, ie jailbreaking)
when the store also controls the ordinance it lives in and makes shoppers approve several big red "THIS STORE IS UNSAFE" banners if they even think of shopping anywhere else, then yes, that store having a monopoly over its shelves is an issue.
”because having a monopoly on a platform and using that platform to enforce anti-competitive practices is illegal under anti-trust law.”
I don’t think that’s what the US law says. Most platforms are proprietary, and their makers have a monopoly on them (you don’t see people complain that Tom-Tom, Volkswagen, Miele, Boeing, etc. shield of their platforms for third-party software)
What is illegal under anti-trust law is having a monopoly in a market and using that monopoly to hurt consumers.
If you want to use anti-trust law in this case, you’ll have to convince the judge that “iPhone applications” is a market, and not “smartphone applications”. Doable? Maybe.
I think (but am not sure) you will also have to show that Apple’s behviour hurts consumers (as opposed to just other companies)
right, but their own app doesn't have the same restrictions. They can advertise the premium offering within the iOS app, they don;t need users to go further down a rabbit hole to find the premium offering.
I guess the crutch of Spotify's argument is that 30% is too high to charge while having their own competing app that isn't required to pay the same fees. Effectively using their unilateral control of the App Store and IAP to squeeze a third party competitor
> Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?
I believe this is also against Apple's Terms of Service. IIRC, they have a "most favored nation" clause which prohibits you from offering a lower price on a competing platform.
They did for e-books, which they got sued for and lost.
I believe they also used to have it for subscriptions to things like video services (i.e. if you offered a web price and a 'through the store' price, the store price couldn't be higher), but dropped it.
I don't believe they've kept it anywhere. But if Spotify sells through the App Store they'll lose all their profits to Apple's commission, to sell at the same price, or they'll have to charge appreciably more (at non-competitively high prices) for their app store customers (or raise prices everywhere and subsidize their customers acquired through the app store.)
How can they insist anything at all about pricing on another platforms? Even if somehow it was possible, what a about discounts; are you saying app sellers cannot have platform specific discounts? What about region sensitive pricing (I know about it on Steam where the same item is much cheaper in Bangladesh than it is in the USA, no reson why Play Store can't do it).
1. "Subscriptions must work on all of the user’s devices where the app is available. Learn more about sharing a subscription across your apps."
2. "You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase."
I think this implies that the subscription must be the same for all devices and you can't treat iOS differently. Pretty sure having a lower price if you subscribe on Android would violate that second clause.
> 2. "You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase."
Right, the app must not say that subscribing outside of the app is cheaper.
Unless there is proof of the contrary, the statements you point to do not imply that a provider cannot charge a different rate on a different platform.
Another piece of evidence: on the site, on June 2014, they mention raising the price to 13 Euro to make up for the 30% charge. I don't think they raised the price for web subscriptions at that time.
"Imagine if Spotify offered a lower rate for Android users... Wouldn't that send a very clear message to Apple?" - That is exactly what Spotify should do. They need to use the fact that Apple is married to its platform against them. Charge Apple users 12.99 and Android users 9.99 and then beat them by offering superior content. If Apple users want to sign up online then they can get the 9.99 price.
How does Spotify do this and remain competitive with Apple's $9.99 offering. The offering Apple can make because they don't have to pay themselves a 30% cut.
Well the fact is that they can’t so long as Apple is manipulating their platform but they can encourage people to leave the Apple platform which is far more devastating to Apple than losing music subscribers
Whether they have the numbers or not this war was inevitable from the moment Apple announced their music subscription service. Ultimately it's going to come down to who does it better and by better, I mean which one helps people find new songs the best. But I will say one thing, I have had the iPhone since the very first model and I have never been closer to abandoning IOS because its price to value ratio is quickly becoming unfavorable. Anything that tips it further is not good for Apple especially now that they are no longer disclosing iPhone sales numbers, an indicator that they are declining.
> Having said this, Apple can do as they please. They control the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the user accounts.
I disagree. Apple created the App Store and invited 3rd parties to host their apps there, so they should have to play fair for whatever the legal system deems is a good definition of fair.
phone choices are inelastic. users do not drop phones and switch to a competing platform because they cannot install an app, it's the other way around. besides, with that logic you have no guarantee against ALL platforms becoming locked down (as they more or less have) to compete.
it has been "this will" and not "this does" for the better part of a decade, I think it's time for people to realize that theory and practice are two very different things and the first does not vindicate the second.
Yeah, this does seem like a thorny issue. It feels like a shopping mall; you have this big space with a lot of people, a lot of things going on. If you didn't know what it was you could easily mistake it for a public space, but it most certainly is not.
But then you have the complication in the analogy that afaik, the landlord doesn't usually operate stores?
Similarly, at a local level, it looks pretty bad, Apple has advantages in its environment that allows it to operate in sort of unassailable ways. But indeed, if you zoom out, the big driver Apple has is millions and millions of iPhone users.
Apple has users that want its products, spotify wants market access to those users, the link imo is "do the users want spotify more than apple?". And the answer I would think is no, but then that brings up I think the reasonable issue that there's a larger barrier in switching devices than there is in switching apps. Sorry for the ramble, the whole thing seems like a mess.
they'll argue that they already have this while blissfully ignoring the fact that they've made its barrier to entry on their platform artificially high.
I hope they continue to do so, in so much as I would like Apple to experience some backlash for having inconsistent stances when it comes to the app ecosystem and their rules.
Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.
You cant move to another platform without losing access to all your "purchases" - there is no free market. They have monopolies within ecosystems they created.
They should be FORCED to have an open platform, with users able to access multiple 3rd party storefronts on multiple platforms. They can market themselves as official/curated/whatever they want but the user should have the choice.
>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.
There's nothing wrong with providing an app store as long as that store offers fair and non-discriminatory terms to all vendors. Charging app developers for the costs of running a store and maintaining an ecosystem is perfectly reasonable; using those charges to stifle competition isn't.
Engineers tend to want neat, perfect solutions that require no human judgement, but they're very rare in the real world. There are obvious and major disadvantages to a free-for-all versus a walled garden, for both developers and users. Customers have a right to choose a tightly-controlled platform, just as they have a right to shop at a grocery store that refuses to sell poisonous food. Banning app store bundling is a scorched-earth approach that would do more harm than good for the average consumer.
>Setting aside the store issue for a moment, what you suggest is impossible if Apple is also making apps.
No, it's very easy to implement and commonplace in all sorts of businesses. Apple need to treat their in-house app development teams in exactly the same way as they would treat a third-party developer - they get the same APIs, they get the same documentation, they go through the same approvals process and they pay the same fees.
Apple can hardly claim that they lack the expertise to compartmentalise information in this manner - prior to the iPhone launch, the software team had never seen the hardware and vice-versa.
>No, it's very easy to implement and commonplace in all sorts of businesses.
Can you provide a software example?
> Apple need to treat their in-house app development teams in exactly the same way as they would treat a third-party developer - they get the same APIs, they get the same documentation, they go through the same approvals process and they pay the same fees.
Nobody should believe that a company paying fees to itself will change its behavior. The app development team would still act in Apple's overall best interest and not seek to maximize its own profits.
Even if we somehow accept that there is a real divide, it's still not equal footing. Say that Apple Music and Spotify both have $0.75 in expenses for every $1 they charge on app store. After the 30% cut, both would have loses of $0.05 per dollar of revenue. For Apple, that's a fictitious loss and their actual cash flow is a positive $0.25. For Spotify, that $0.05 represents an actual nickle they have to give someone else. Apple can continue on doing that indefinitely while Spotify can't.
Amazon are already very, very close to that state of play - developers within Amazon are required to design their infrastructure based on standard APIs, to facilitate the commercialisation of those systems via AWS. Chinese walls are commonplace in any kind of reverse-engineering as a protection against claims of copyright infringement.
>For Apple, that's a fictitious loss and their actual cash flow is a positive $0.25. For Spotify, that $0.05 represents an actual nickle they have to give someone else. Apple can continue on doing that indefinitely while Spotify can't.
That would constitute predatory pricing, which is illegal under EU competition law.
> Customers have a right to choose a tightly-controlled platform, just as they have a right to shop at a grocery store that refuses to sell poisonous food
i have been thinking more about this and i think you are right. on GOG i am (depending on rightsholdet) able to add games to my library that I own on steam. if this was the norm, enforced through consumer rights, it would allow users the ability to purchase licenses through a store of their choice.
> vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.
Congratulations, you've just reinvented the desktop adware / malware market. We know that if this is possible users will be manipulated into making bad decisions which are hard to recover from, and in many cases those bad decisions will be made for them by their carrier.
What I would support is that the app store should be more open: no refusing apps for competing with the built-in apps, and removing the ban on purchases which don't go through the platform — let the store owner charge for payment processing but e.g. Amazon should be allowed to sell you a movie on iOS without paying Apple a cut simply by using their payment system instead.
It's not really blindness... it's a trade-off I'd be willing to make to still own & have full control over the hardware I buy. Unless we can find a better middle way to achieve this.
Also, is Android as malware infected as GP describes? He singles out desktops, but Android does allow side-loading apps and people still near exclusively download apps though the play store. Adding a few other stores of big&trusted companies to painlessly load apps doesn't seem that risky to me. But would certainly add competition. I really don't understand why I must have a Google account to download Microsoft office.
Android does have malware distributed through side-loading but my objection was really the part I highlighted about “prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS”. If you don't have an app store at all the malware numbers will go way up because 100% of your users are going to be trained that it's normal to add stores or direct install apps and then you're going to see all of the shady download.com-style operations SEOing their way into people's search results, with fun variations like phone carriers pre-installing stuff which is ad-supported or the process of backroom deals.
> I really don't understand why I must have a Google account to download Microsoft office.
This is a related but separate issue: most of the value comes from trusting Google to verify that the app you found searching for “Microsoft Office” is actually published by Microsoft. Having a Google account saves you from having to manage accounts with every software publisher you use — which is huge for most people — but it's not really a prerequisite for user safety the way having a review step makes it a lot harder to spam popular application names.
> Vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.
So then how would a novice user get apps the first time they boot up their phone? They would have to know where to get apps from. That seems like an easy way for users to end up downloading a bunch of malware because they think it's the official Apple or Google app store when it's just a random website.
Having a built in app store has huge advantages in security and usability for the end user.
Microsoft were pushed to add a screen to the Windows installer asking the user which browser they wanted to be the default. That would work perfectly well for app stores.
I feel like that would solve the problem that GP was referencing but just create a whole bunch of other issues for users and developers.
"Find Spotify on [list of ten app stores here]." One of the advantages for users and developers is that if you want an app on iOS (and for the most part) Android, you know exactly where to find it.
It's by no means a dealbreaker, but something to consider.
>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS, vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS.
That comparison doesn't really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.
>They should be FORCED to have an open platform,
Just because YOU want this doesn't mean the Apple users want it. I'm utterly content with a single, curated-by-Apple app store for iOS. I like the stability it affords the platform.
I'd never accept it on a general-purpose computing device, but for my phone it's perfect.
it's not a monopoly (which your parent also didn't say), but since it's still the biggest piece of pie in the marketshare it's certainly not a "minority" as your parents parent said
>That comparison doesn't really work, because MSFT had an effective desktop monopoly. By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.
Market share is not the only criteria for determining whether a company has a dominant market position under EU competition law. Apple have a substantial share of the mobile phone market and they have a total monopoly on iOS app distribution. If you want to sell apps to ~27% of consumers in the EU, you have no choice but to go through Apple. End users might have a meaningful choice, but developers don't, which is highly relevant in this case.
They can, but that doesn't stop Apple's behaviour from being anti-competitive and illegal under EU law. Apple only control a minority of the smartphone market, but they exert a stranglehold over that share and use that stranglehold to artificially disadvantage competitors.
I am not a lawyer (and it seems the law may differ significantly between the US and Europe) but I think all companies want to disadvantage their competitors, so whether or not this is illegal really hinges on the definition of artificial.
Do you have an example for a case where the EU fined a company for anti-competitive behaviour where the company did NOT control a majority of the relevant market?
> Just because YOU want this doesn't mean the Apple users want it. I'm utterly content with a single, curated-by-Apple app store for iOS. I like the stability it affords the platform.
And you should be able to choose that. But should you change your mind, you should be able to take your purchases with you and go elsewhere. Although apple is in the spotlight here, all of these vendor-locked app-stores are the problem.
> By contrast, Apple is a minority player in the mobile market.
That's Apple's magic trick. They only own the top 20% of the market (evading monopoly attention) but they extract almost 100% of all profit in the smartphone market. No idea how you'd legislate against that though..
Their magic trick is creating products and services that people want to buy.
No one told Google to skimp on customer service and make 18 chat programs that don’t work. No one told Microsoft to drag their feet on preventing malware from destroying the usability of their system. It was Microsoft’s choice to profit from letting manufacturers sell computers riddled with malware that you had to spend hours to remove after buying. It’s google’s choice to not offer product support such that you can’t use their “flagship” devices for 5 years.
Apple invested in setting up their retail stores, training employees well, making their devices easy to use, and now they are reaping the rewards.
Sure, by why should the profit matter when we want to determine what is a monopoly and what isn't? Consumers have a choice, no matter what Apple makes.
Apple invests billions into R&D, design, manufacture, and UX design for its devices. Your logic would then see them dealing with picking up the pieces for bricked devices, hacked passwords, lost data, viruses, etc.
Using an Apple devices is accepting a benevolent dictatorship, and it's a trade off tonnes of users are happy to make.
The devices are currently costed for, presumably, a certain volume of support issues which I can only imagine is enormously minimised by the walled garden of the app store.
>Just as Microsoft were stopped from shipping a browser with their OS
They were never stopped from that.
They were stopped for abusing their monopoly (e.g. threatening OEM PC vendors that unless they bundled this or that, they wont get Windows for a special price, etc).
And that when they had a monopoly (e.g. close to 98% of the desktop AND business market) -- which in itself is not illegal.
More technically, they had to provide a version of Windows that didn't ship with IE, and iirc a version that allowed new users to pick an alternate browser.
Vendors could solve the whole problem by letting users choose which default apps they want to install in the beginning. In order to make it simple, they could offer bundles. >95% of the users would choose the 'Apple Apps' bundle on iOS and the 'Google Apps' bundle on Android and the 'Microsoft Apps' bundle on Windows. And the few people choosing the 'Privacy-First' bundle with Firefox and Ad-Blocker are those people who would install an alternative browser anyway.
But instead, they are greedy and want 100% of the users of their platform to use their apps.
Apple has an absolute monopoly on its own platform.
They are certainly complying with the laws in this regard, but the reality is that anti-competition laws need to change to deal with companies of this scale and reach.
I am talking about the actual definition of a monopoly, not that defined by antitrust laws, hence my second sentence about how the law (consumer law, anti-trust, or both) needs to change to prevent these walled gardens.
I agree Facebook and google are also problems. Amazon too, likely others. They all have their walled gardens - and whats worse is when they "go to war" with each other, affecting the users tied to their services (financially or otherwise).
> I am talking about the actual definition of a monopoly, not that defined by antitrust laws, hence my second sentence about how the law (consumer law, anti-trust, or both) needs to change to prevent these walled gardens.
I didn't mean that your definition of a monopoly is incorrect, but that you can't just narrow down the market until you find a monopoly. Because if you could, every company has a monopoly (which wouldn't make any sense).
This isn't narrowing down markets until we find a monopoly. This is a trillion dollar company abusing access to their captive market. The only option for users is to leave their ecosystem and lose access to all of their purchases. If that isn't covered by current anti-trust law, then the law is outdated and should be changed.
> The only option for users is to leave their ecosystem and lose access to all of their purchases.
The user signed up for that, so IMHO he gets what he deserves. The only I think I would change is to disallow the use of the word "purchase" when the user only buys the right to access some DRM-ed content.
Forced? That doesn't sound like freedom. Forced to enable your competitors to compete with you on your own platform? Forced to develop a platform upon which competitors can reduce your payoff on that investment?
Look at Google Play store. Much more "open," and a shitload of malware, scams, and shit software. Without curation of any kind, you end up with shit. It's the Tragedy of the Commons applied to apps. Build it, and they will ruin.
Judging by number of sales, people seem to either like these walled gardens or don't care about them.
For those of us that care about freedom, we can just buy a phone that's compatible with LineageOS (or Replicant if you're willing to go full Stallman) and install it.
> vendors should be prevented from shipping an App Store with their OS
The problem here isn't the quality of the App Store. The problem is that Spotify has no alternative.
Apple is a hardware developer, a software developer, and a software retailer. The problem is how tightly coupled those three roles are on the iPhone.
You can't run iOS on other hardware.
You can't run another OS on the iPhone.
You can't install apps on iOS except from the App Store.
You can't use the App Store on other OSes.
Those are the underlying problems.
Users can't use part of the ecosystem. They have to invest in the whole thing, giving Apple more control and reducing consumer mobility.
This is long overdue. I really hope this leads to something.
The anticompetitive behaviour described on that website is just the tip of the iceberg. Apple is doing a lot worse behind the scenes. Cellular service on Apple Watch for example - as a carrier you can't just provide service for the Watch - you have to be an "approved" carrier and this means being friends with Apple and selling iPhones among other things (you only provide SIM-only plans and not interested in selling phones? Tough luck.). Same for visual voicemail, etc.
Whenever Apple's 30% take on the App Store comes up, people on this website get all up in arms about it. Let me provide some perspective, which I think is sorely lacking:
I sell physical goods on Amazon. They charge me 15% for this privilege. The only reason they don't charge more is because physical goods have lower margins than digital goods (my margins after it's all said and done are somewhere between 10-15%). And, you know what? I'm happy to pay Amazon their 15% because they're bringing me customers that I wouldn't have otherwise.
Perhaps thinking about it like this is instructive: does Amazon have an obligation to let me sell on their platform simply because lots of consumers choose to buy stuff from Amazon? Does Amazon have an obligation to change their fee structure so that I can more easily compete with Amazon Basics branded products?
Should Apple charge a smaller percentage to subscription services that can't afford to give up 30%? Probably. It would net Apple a percentage of something, rather than the 30% of $0 that they're getting now. And it would be a better experience for Apple's customers. But it is in no way unreasonable for Apple to expect to get paid for originating sales of software and subscriptions. And it is certainly not unreasonable for them to get paid significantly more than credit card processing fees.
The Amazon Basics point is interesting. They are able to capitalize on other's R&D and market research with almost no cost. If you want to sell a product, you have to do some amount of research to determine if it will be profitable. They are able to just look at selling statistics and launch their own version of popular, profitable to produce items.
This feels like an abuse of their position as a marketplace platform, but it isn't that different from grocery stores creating white label/off brand products.
Maybe it only becomes an issue when they promote their own items and bump original products down the search results. This is closer to the behavior that Spotify alleges Apple is doing.
Thing is, unless your app is already somewhat popular, Apple won’t do anything for you. Maybe you get more customers. But maybe an app like Spotify invested enough in marketing to reach new customers without Apple‘s health.
The problem is that it’s really hard to measure how many customers Apple really brings and how many would find an app through other means.
Amazon is similar. Listing your products on there does not lead to sales. So, in addition to the 15% cut, I pay Amazon roughly 5-10% more to advertise my products as sponsored listings. But I can tell you that Amazon has resulted in way more sales than advertising on Goole and sending customers directly to our site. There is tremendous value to being on Amazon. Despite the constant declarations of Amazon having a counterfeit product epidemic, customers are comfortable buying on Amazon. They know that Amazon will have their back if we rip them off. As a result, there are lots of consumers who only buy certain classes of goods from Amazon. And it is Amazon, not me, who has cultivated that relationship. It makes sense that they charge me a significant amount to participate.
The difference is that for a mobile app, it's either apple's way or highway(more like nothing). You can't very well be a significant app developer by ignoring iOS. And apple does not allow users to sideload your app on the store. So the amazon analogy is disingenuous at best. You can still operate a website or dozens of other ecommerce platforms to sell your goods. But without app store, there is no way for you to reach iOS users. iOs users are almost 50% of mobile users and contribute much higher percentage of revenue.
Amazon has an obligation to play fairly in the marketplace at large and they don't. They operate at a loss. They shouldn't have to let anyone on their platform. But they should also play fair. As it relates to Apple, the iPhone or Android are literally the only reasonable means of accessing online services on the go. They are a platform of a higher order than Amazon and should allow others to play in their sandbox. I don't know what the right number should be — probably it should be zero. 30% is insane.
You’re missing the point: Apple seems to be abusing its power as a platform to unfairly charge content based providers with 30% tax while not applying it to themself. On Amazon, it would be comparable to charging you 15% while not charging themselves the same on their Amazon Basic products.
The timing of this is interesting in the context of Elizabeth Warren’s recent proposal to forbid platform operators from also being participants on their own platforms.
It looks like they’ve filed a complaint with the EU Commission; I wonder if it will become a talking point in US politics as well.
For the purposes of reasoning about this, Apple iOS and Apple's iOS App Store and the iOS Apple Music app are all the same entity, equivalent. It doesn't matter that it's not in the App Store, it ships on the phone alongside the App Store. That's the same as being in the App Store and getting autoinstalled on every device.
This exemplifies some of the reasons proprietary app store lock-in is bad for consumers.
Progressive Web Apps -- web apps that are installable and available offline without any app store -- are a viable alternative, and ultimately a threat to Apple's app store racket. It's likely why iOS Safari continues to drag it's feet on PWA support.
> Progressive Web Apps [are] ultimately a threat to Apple's app store racket
Honestly, no, they're not. Even the Gold Standard of PWAs - the Twitter Lite app that Google (the patron saint of PWAs) helped them build - provides an inferior experience compared to native apps.
People bring this up often - Apple refuses to improve Safari to bolster their App Store - which completely ignores all the valuable improvements Safari has made to give web apps more native-like features, like backdrop-blur for blurred backgrounds and CSS Snap points for native JS-less carousels. Chrome doesn't support either of these.
You conflate the current state of PWAs with their ultimate outcome. If web apps are as good as native for most people, there is no need for proprietary app stores. This does indeed conflict with Apple's app store business model.
And despite it adding certain CSS standards, mobile Safari on the whole remains the IE6 of the mobile browser world. Apple drags its feet on web app standards support for a reason similar to why Microsoft dragged its feet with IE6 web standards support.
Counter point: the discoverability on all of the app stores I've tried has been pretty terrible. Unless I know the name of an app that I'm trying to install I almost never find what I'm looking for. Most often I search for 'the best app to do X' on Google and then put a name from that into the app store.
App store UX is so horrible I’m sure it is intentional. But I have no idea what they’re trying to achieve. In the case of Apple’s store, I have literally never wanted to browse any of the curated lists of apps, just to open the search view which doesn’t even have the search textbox focused by default!
In theory that's an easy problem: anyone could make an "App Store", especially considering they wouldn't have to host binaries or deliver updates.
Something mimicking today's stores would essentially be links you can rate and comment on. Kind of like Reddit, but with a different UI and no direct user submissions.
But crucially, they’d have no way to moderate for bad actors. You can’t just kick a webpage off the net. Things like Reddit style voting can be gamed, just like app store search and reviews are today. Whoever has the most resources wins, not necessarily who has the best product.
> But crucially, they’d have no way to moderate for bad actors. You can’t just kick a webpage off the net.
Yeah. You could technically still kick them off the store for the sake of maintaining trust— like a forum.
> Things like Reddit style voting can be gamed, just like app store search and reviews are today. Whoever has the most resources wins, not necessarily who has the best product.
Wait, isn't this like current App Store ratings though? I wouldn't be worried about this. It is already the case that many people invest a lot of resources in trying to game the App Store. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The App Store gives you discoverability and could be argued as being one of the reasons for a 30% cut.
If your app can be distributed as a PWA, then the question becomes: is the App Store (which gives you discoverability) worth the 30% revenue cut? For some PWAs the answer will be no.
Why do you need ecosystem own by one company?
You can have Ubuntu laptop, Android phone, WebOS TV. They all support Spotify and Netflix, you can cast videos from Android phone to your LG TV.
The problem with going that route is that you have to be involved in creating and maintaining a great user experience. I love ubuntu, but it's not without it's quirks that require a certain amount of troubleshooting to overcome.
I don't think this is about Spotify versus Apple - its about Apple versus its customers. I want to be able to choose what music service I want, and I want the price to be competitive. And not just music.
This is why I think the "if you're not the customer you're the product" mantra is overly simplistic. In this case, you can still pay $1000 for a phone, and it only makes you a more valuable product for Apple to sell to its (developer) customers.
It's about Apple and anyone they consider a (potential or active) competitor. As far as customers come into it, Apple wants to be able to milk them dry and keep them from using anyone who might provide a similar or better service than their own, as well as take over any profitable channels they don't already have support for.
Phones now have the same level of processing power as portable computers. We shouldn't be obligated to only run applications that are siphoned thru a third party "trusted clearinghouse", be it the smartphone or the operating system vendor.
If I want more safety or I am not a Power User, I can flick a switch on the device to allow that binding behavior to happen. Heck, they are giving me the 'free service' of taking care of app security for me, I could even pay for that if I am serious about having my apps checked and stuff.
Phones are computers. You own the hardware, you should be able to install whatever you want. Always.
Is the argument about protecting the masses of non-tech people? Great, make it an opt-out. And still: There ought to be someone keeping tabs on that big brother (gov regulations? agencies) or else shady behavior can ensue as well.
> Phones now have the same level of processing power as portable computers. We shouldn't be obligated to only run applications that are siphoned thru a third party "trusted clearinghouse", be it the smartphone or the operating system vendor.
I pay a lot of money for iPad Pros and Google Pixelbooks for precisely this functionality. When the user can run anything they want, the result is the unsafe landscape of malware we see on common desktop OSes.
As OP mentioned, that could be enabled with a toggle. An example of this all being for the benefit of walled gardens, take rooting. Obviously if a user is going through the trouble to attain true ownership of their phone and os, they are doing so because they want to be in control. Phone carriers openly fight this at every turn because they want us to be forced to use their BS apps, known as bloatware, and prevent users from no longer seeing ads. This is all about money. Microsoft is trying hard to do the same on desktop now with all their in-os ads. Protecting users is the single most bullshit line ever and they all use it.
There's an interesting philosophical question there. Can a vendor who has 15% marketshare really be called a monopoly?
Sure, they have complete control over who publishes on their own platform, but that sort of thing happens all the time without anyone batting an eyelash at it: The major console vendors do this, as did all cell phone vendors in the pre-smartphone era. My digital camera does this.
That leaves me thinking there's no real ground for invoking antitrust laws on this issue. Though there's still plenty of room to say that these policies are consumer-hostile and not in the public interest, and therefore there ought to be a law against it.
> There's an interesting philosophical question there. Can a vendor who has 15% marketshare really be called a monopoly?
Philosophically interesting perhaps, but legally irrelevant. EU competition law is primarily concerned with dominant market positions and the abuse of that dominance. As the junior partner in a duopoly, Apple are inarguably powerful enough to substantially manipulate the market.
40% share is a general principle, but it isn't absolute. Apple have a ~27% market share for smartphone sales, but they have a considerably larger share of the overall mobile app market and the App Store obviously has a 100% monopoly on iOS apps. They're in an effective duopoly with Google, which considerably reduces the competitiveness of the market and therefore the threshold for market dominance. It's also worth bearing in mind the serious concerns within the EU about the hegemony of major tech companies.
From your source:
>The Commission also takes other factors into account in its assessment of dominance, including the ease with which other companies can enter the market – whether there are any barriers to this; the existence of countervailing buyer power; the overall size and strength of the company and its resources and the extent to which it is present at several levels of the supply chain (vertical integration).
Apple clearly score very highly on most of these points.
you're comparing different markets. that's like saying Earth has 1/8th the marketshare on planets therefore nothing that happens here can be called monopolistic.
Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic.
There is a stronger case against Amazon for selling Amazon-branded, well-moving products like batteries and diapers, even though they don't stifle the other brands.
> Antitrust would not apply here as Apple's share of the smartphone market is less than monopolistic.
Having had to take antitrust training at my company in the past few weeks, I can say that you are very mistaken if you think antitrust only kicks in when the company is a monopoly.
Antitrust covers in general anticompetitive practices, and has done so since the original Sherman Antitrust Act. So, for example, colluding with another business to fix prices is covered under antitrust, even if the sum of the businesses concerned do not constitute a monopolistic power in the industry. The other common category is the various rules around the preference of a company's other product lines over competitors--the line between "legal" and "illegal" is a little more blurry here.
You can fall afoul of these conditions if you have "sufficient market power", which is a substantially broader claim than "monopoly power." I don't think there's any lawyer that would try to claim that Apple doesn't have "market power"--note that the smartphone market, from an OS perspective, is basically a duopoly.
You _might_ have an argument here: "The other common category is the various rules around the preference of a company's other product lines over competitors". We'll see what the courts decide
In a more fitting analogy, Amazon is actually a model citizen compared to Apple.
Both Hulu and Netflix compete directly with Prime Video, and both 1) are available as free apps for Kindle and the Amazon Fire Stick TV and 2) literally rely on Amazon hardware to run through AWS.
It’s important to define exactly what is “anti-competitive.” If Apple banned Spotify or Deezer, that could be considered anti-competitive. But they aren’t. Netflix has original programming, is that anti-competitive? Don’t Netflix originals compete against non-Netflix shows for streaming revenue? Are there alternatives to Netflix? Yes. Are there alternatives to the App Store? Yes: Spotify could, for example be web-only if they wanted to. Spotify also could sell on macOS, Windows, Chrome, Android, and Linux. “Having an app” isn’t a particular right, but even a requirement for reaching users. Also, they don’t have to sell their subscriptions via in-app purchase; that can be done via web without paying Apple’s commission.
Microsoft got busted for undercutting Netscape with their own product in a way Netscape is incapable of competing with.
On the other hand, you say Apple is free and clear for undercutting Spotify with their own product in a way that Spotify is incapable of competing with.
While I was ready to leave a comment about Spotify not playing fair with artists, I have seen Apple's unfair business practices first hand with developing apps and bluetooth devices.
Unfortunately they are abusing their power, and are being flat out unfair if you want to develop a bluetooth device or app.
If you want to vet apps to ensure a safe environment, that's fine, but these practices go beyond that and are unfair.
The big labels aren't important, they're going to get their money anyway. This hurts the smaller labels, like my label, and countless others who never see a god damn dime from Spotify streaming.
Meanwhile, Bandcamp streams the songs for free but they allow you to pay what you want. I've made at least 10x the profit from selling tracks on Bandcamp than I ever did in the streaming world.
If Spotify wants to play fair, they need to pay artists more for streams. This site is just another instance of tech bros thinking they know better and meanwhile fucking over everyone else involved.
The problem is how do they break apart what to pay people. If they pay your record company a dollar every time a artist of yours is played and life time they get played say 100,000 times sure thats great for you. But are they going to make 100,000 off you? Sure they can make you a loss leader and parrot that they are a platform for the little dude.
But what happens when a major label demands that they also get a dollar every time a song is played. The next time Taylor Swift releases a new album the entire country of Sweden would be owed in Royalties.
Yea digital streaming doesnt pay jack. Even the best paying streaming services only pays .0064 cents per stream. Of course that doesnt add up to much considering they only have .65% of the market.
At the end of the day duder it sucks that you dont make shit from streaming services. It really does. But with how the entire streaming payout model works it just is NEVER going to be profitable for smaller artists. It 100% caters to artists that will pull in 100 million streams in a month. But how much does platforms like Spotify help artists on your label get noticed? I constantly try to find new artists that have under 100,000 listens on their top song to see if its some hidden gem or the next big thing.
> If Spotify wants to play fair, they need to pay artists more for streams.
How? 90% of their catalog is owned by big labels. They cannot sign up artists directly because it will put them directly into competition with the labels.
They are trying to move towards paying artists directly [1], but you have to be eligible (most likely read: not signed up for a label already).
Can I ask, what does a record label actually do nowadays? I understand that in the past they would've handled physical manufacturing and promotion, but now that anyone has access to bandcamp and spotify, what do they offer? (Asking as a non-musician)
As a user, I much prefer the Android model. For example I can buy and browse Kindle or Audible books directly in the app. I don't use Spotify but I imagine it's a similar experience.
Apple policies do not really benefit anyone. Kindle iOS users will simply open Safari to buy their books, making their experience worse.
Either Apple should really remain objective and not have horses in the App Store race, or follow the same rules on its own apps that they impose on others, or change the rules to benefit everyone (including the users).
In all seriousness, when people say "iPads are better tablets because of software compared to Android tablets" I really do raise an eyebrow.
If your use case for a tablet is to read books or comics (which I suspect it is for many people! A lot!), then the iPad is terrible because of this specific limitation, and Android tablets are much easier to use. Shame Google seems hellbent on destroying them - the Pixel C really was a very, very nice comic reading tablet when it wasn't suffering hardware failures.
Just because Apple can currently do this shit legally, doesn't mean that they should.
Software platforms are marketplaces and company behind such platforms yield great power, even if technically speaking they aren't yet a monopoly.
Hardware devices should not be legally allowed to be locked down in the way that Apple devices are. Not sure how many people remember, but Microsoft eventually being forced to provide choice in browsers was a great outcome and allowed Firefox and Chrome to flourish. Yes, Microsoft was at that time a monopoly, whereas Apple right now isn't, but Apple has the potential to be a monopoly. They are after all the richest software company in the world.
Apple succeeded where Microsoft failed, they normalized “trusted computing”, which brought everything we feared.
I very much prefer EU's consumer protectionism in these regards and I'm hoping they'll do something about walled gardens such as Apple's.
I just don't understand why most people think Apple don't have a monopoly market position. Of course Apple is the monopoly on the App Service market ([1] App store generated 93 more revenue than google play in Q3). We are talking about app service rather than the phone units sold.
It's one things to compare app sales from one market to another, but the broader issue is that Apple maintains a monopoly on the store itself. There is no Google Play store on iPhone.
And... listening to SCOTUS oral arguments recently, that sounds like it will be changing soon.
I’ve been waiting to see Spotify follow Netflix and create their own label, instead of just curated playlists. They’ll otherwise always be at the whim of renegotiations. (Not entirely relevant to the post, but seems like it’s an avenue for them to go to break a little from other players).
I hope this never, ever happens. I love that I can basically listen to any music I like on Spotify. (I know there are exclusivity deals in music streaming but so far it hasn't affected me.) Compare that to the fragmented video streaming marketplace where services try to distinguish themselves with exclusive and/or original content. If you want to watch N shows, you have to subscribe to N different services. And none of the services have a comprehensive movie library (at least where I live).
Can someone help me stop playing the world's smallest violin here?
Spotify knowingly built a low margin business living in the pocket of the labels (who force Spotify towards razor thin margins) and Apple/Google (who have, since before Spotify launched, operated app stores for their platforms which are to some extent curated and which are not free market economies).
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?
The crucial line in their argument is this:
> giving up 30% was too much for us to keep our prices low for our fans. Unfortunately, the end result is that you can no longer upgrade to Premium through the app.
How is this Apple's fault and not your fault? Every market place takes a cut from the vendor. Your business not being able to sustain the cost of doing business is nobody's fault except your own.
Apple should not be allowed to send push notifications about products or services they prohibit other apps from sending. They shouldn't arbitrarily restrict Spotify from updating the app (virtually no information is provided about what infractions Apple saw, and history suggests that companies are great at presenting one side of the argument and then we find that Apple has a legitimate grievance). They should not be able to charge Spotify more because of their competition.
But to suggest that Apple should be forced to allow Siri integration with Spotify? Homepod? Apple Watch? Ridiculous.
Monopolies where prices rise are bad news. But look at UK football coverage. On top of my free-to-air channels (£150 p.a. TV licence) I need a Sky Sports subscription (minimum £25 per month) and a BT Sport subscription (which necessitates one of BT Broadband - gross - or Sky) which I think is around £5-£10 per year. The top flight football is fragmented across all three providers. Is that better for me?
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.
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).
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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. 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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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."
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The payout per play is basically different between free and premium users as they add more to the revenue shared by all the artists.
If you look at revenue for premium users, then it's probably much higher than that, but when you add free users, it will lower the average.
A solution you might think would be to remove the free-tier. But that will only do one thing: cut a (admittedly smaller) revenue stream for artists, cut a promotional stream for artists and less possibilities to upsale premium accounts to free users.
Someone who isn't even a free user will either not listen to music or pirate it. Is that preferable?
A lot of artists admit that Spotify pay-out per stream is certainly lower, but it's still dominating all the other streaming revenues, as long as you are actually an artist who has the potential to make any. Some unknown artist selling 1 CD for $10 on bandcamp with no listen on streaming services will probably think differently.
I remember a (deleted) tweet from the rapper Nipsey Hussle where he posted his payout breakdown. It's been reblogged since deletion and is preserved:
>ATTENTION EVERYONE:
>
>1 Million Streams on YouTube = $690
>
>1 Million Streams on Spotify = $4,370
>
>1 Million Streams on Apple Music = $7,350
>
>1 Million Streams on @Tidal = $12,500
>
>1 Million Streams on Amazon Music = $4,020
>
>Don’t shoot the messenger.
>Jus Sign up 4 @tidal
>
>— THA GREAT (@NipseyHussle) January 15, 2018
The only thing about payout $ is that you have to take into account how many streams you actually get on each service. Are we to believe that Tidal's payouts would stay they same if they had Spotify's much greater listenership? Or Apple for that matter? Streaming services pay the rates charged to them by the record companies based on myriad listenership demographics.
I believe the labels are charging the services, and those labels pay the artist. Am I wrong on that? The labels set the price to be paid, don't they?
Quote: "Early last month, the US Copyright Board (CRB) officially ruled in favor of a 44% increase on streaming music royalties for songwriters and publishers."
Care to guess how much of those services' content comes from publishers (read: labels), and how much those services already pay to them (hint: as much as 70% of their revenue)?
Also, strangely enough, the article quotes everyone except Spotify, Amazon etc. But is happily quoting .... (substitute expletives) various music vultures^W associations who directly benefit from this arrangement (and not the songwriters).
Downloading and Streaming are two different royalty models.
Legally, you have to pay more expensive royalties if you download music (referred to as "right to reproduce") rather than stream (right to transmit), so a special type of downloaded file must be used that can't be exported in any way. This is what Apple are prohibiting.
> That’s why I nearly jumped for joy during the watchOS 5 announcement in June, when Apple unveiled most of my list of watchOS changes needed to make good podcast apps.
In my understanding, an Apple Watch Spotify app would surely be technically feasible as of watchOS 5 (but I might be in the wrong here, I haven't tried myself more than read the available API docs).
Seems like there's still the issue of networking, and I guess if the accusations about the Spotify app rejections are true then I wouldn't be surprised if a Watch app that allows offline playback would get rejected.
> Seems like there's still the issue of networking
Yes, but I would guess that limitation is done for some "legitimate" technical reason. Streaming Apple Music on the watch just kills the battery life in my experience, and it seems pretty on par with Apple's M-O of limiting expensive hardware access to third parties (like multitasking back in the days). But who knows, could perhaps be out of some evil anti-spotify spite.
> I wouldn't be surprised if a Watch app that allows offline playback would get rejected.
I've been with Apple Music and Pandora for years. A few months ago my teammates at work convinced me to try Spotify: I love Spotify! Both the content and the UX work for me.
While this post represents Spotify's view without having Apple's to contrast it with, it seem eerily similar to the "Browser War" days leading up to Microsoft's admonishment. Apple seems to be the equivalent of a drunkard walking a fine line.
I guess now I know where Spotify's priorities have been over the last few years as their Android app regressed.
Your war with Apple seems to have distracted you from the one platform you are on good terms with. As a premium subscriber it's very frustrating to not be able to pause music on the lockscreen anymore. Or using the headphone controls. Or why a blocked song keeps being played in discover weekly. Get your act together or you'll lose your android customers to Apple too.
> As a premium subscriber it's very frustrating to not be able to pause music on the lockscreen anymore. Or using the headphone controls.
I just wanted to say that I am also a Spotify Premium subscriber using the Android (Pie) app and I don't have any issues with these two features. I cannot comment on the blocked songs, since I do not use that functionality. Have you checked the forums to see if other users are experiencing the same problems? Maybe there is a specific fix for your device.
I'm on android pie and I'm not the only one having these issues, go to the play store listing and sort reviews by latest version, many are complaining about the lack of lock screen and headset controls.
The app is extremely unstable on Bluetooth as well, I now leave my expensive wireless earbuds at home because Spotify can't handle more than 10 seconds of continuous wireless playback without cutting out.
I hate to say this, but one of my main gripes against Apple - the unfair advantage they have in pricing by not having to "pay themselves" 30% - has lost some strength in my mind.
Every grocery store takes a cut of every item sold on the store. The store owner determines the percentage. Just like Apple. Grocery stores make similar/nearly identical products to the third-party merchandise they sell. Just like Apple. Grocery stores can routinely undercut the pricing of third-parties due to not needing to "pay themselves". Just like Apple.
Damn. I really wanted to hate EvilBigTech for this.
The rest of Spotify's points I have no issue, but this one doesn't hold as much water for me anymore.
I think the fact that Apple prevented them from using payment methods that didn't go through them makes it significantly worse though - to carry the analogy (perhaps to far) the grocery store prevents the packaging of the products it carries from mentioning the website where you can order other products or something.
All companies do this. Back in days, even Evernote started doing that (with disguise "API bandwidth limits"). Nowadays, Evernote is irrelevant, so nobody complains.
The only difference here it that Apple's customers have $$, so everybody wants to be on their platform and everybody make noise.
And these politicians are talking on both side of their mouth: first they say how "3rd-party apps are stealing data" so platform must to have more checks when adding an app on their store. And when platform tries to enforce the rules they complain how platform needs to be "more open".
When I'm on Spotify on macOS and press play on my keyboard, it always opens up iTunes instead. Am sick of this second party support for everything especially when the Apple versions are so dire
A week before launch of an SVOD product I worked on, Apple chose to reject us in spite of months of meetings and reviews with their app teams and assurances we were in-bounds since we were working with them for launch featuring.
It came down to the fact we required an email address and password for IAP so you could bring your subscription to the web or other platforms. While everyone else in the category did this, they decided that policy was going to change and we were just going to be the first people to deal with it. Since having an email-based account was core to the architecture and the UX, I went through a week of refactor hell to make emails/passwords optional to meet our launch date.
Since other apps still get to do this, it's clear the policy change message was BS. I've suspected a lot has had to do with Apple's ambitions in the streaming space and their desire to be in a position to offer bundling and other over the top services. They're already trying to control the UX with the TV app and are offering companies better rev share rates to do the integration work. Cutting back from 30% is how Apple incentivizes even heavier integration into their ecosystem.
Apple keeps doing this: Google and the Google Phone app, Netflix, Spotify, my product...more that we haven't even heard of, since not many are as big as the ones I've mentioned. The idea that this is somehow about protecting the consumer rings hollow.
Spotify is platform neutral. All things being equal, that's enough to use them vs. Apple/Google/Amazon anything.
Those three serving up things like music or movies are ancillary to their main product. Spotify has a vested interest in being the best music platform. Apple as an interest in selling more phones and computers, which may be benefited by a good in-house music app.
What will be the real innovation if the platforms are more open?
I'm looking forward to the Chrome dev tools and v8 that comes out of this.
Microsoft/IE antitrust led to a retraction in unhealthy Microsoft dominance (see IE6) and a rise in Firefox and eventually Chrome. Rise in Chrome led v8, node and better dev tooling (and by extension a richer JS ecosystem and maybe things like ClojureScript tangentially).
When the platforms monopolist/duopolists get retracted that will pave the way probably for more open source apps in the app stores and maybe a few other large corporations (like Google did for Chrome) dominating. Maybe better cross-platform tooling will come out of this? It's fun to think of what this will allow.
They have some valid complaints, but "if we use Apple's payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so" isn't one of them.
The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app.
Apple has long allowed content providers to opt out of using Apple's own payment system (and paying Apple a cut), but without being able to point users to your payment website, this rings hollow.
As far as Apple Watch goes, the API to allow for downloading content to local storage and playing it back in the background landed in last year's Watch OS update.
> They have some valid complaints, but "if we use Apple's payment infrastructure, we have to pay them a cut for doing so" isn't one of them.
But Spotify doesn't want to use Apple's infrastructure and is compelled to do so regardless.
Spotify is saying that if using Apple payment infrastructure was free, then not allowing other options would not be a problem, but since it's not free, not allowing anything else is a problem, not that Apple charging for the use of its payment infrastructure is a problem in itself.
Oh come on, why play dumb at the behest of a corporation? They ARE compelled to use Apple's payment platform on Apple devices, which is the problem and you know it.
Nobody's claiming it's impossible. That's a strawman.
What Spotify is complaining about is that it is possible, but at a massive inconvenience to users, (having to manually type the payment url into safari etc that they need to find manually first), which makes it so that most just decide the burden is not worth the hassle. That's how anti competitive behavior manifests itself, usually. Technically, anything is possible, Spotify can develop an iPhone competitor and then ship the app there, but come on, we both know that's unrealistic.
>Spotify doesn't want to use Apple's infrastructure and is compelled to do so regardless
I believe I mentioned that not being allowed to provide a link to their payment website within their app was anticompetitive in my initial post?
However your assertion that Spotify is forced to use Apple's in app payment system is simply not true. Especially given the fact that they no longer use it at all for new users.
> However your assertion that Spotify is forced to use Apple's in app payment system is simply not true.
But they absolutely are if they want to offer the same level of experience as Apple Music can.
What they're doing now is significantly degrading the user experience compared to Apple Music, which is the whole premise behind them complaining. I don't know why that needs explaining.
What you're saying is effectively akin to 'the iPhone is not limited to running iOS, because you could disassemble the SoC, reverse engineer the HW and load your own OS on it".
Am sure it would theoretically be possible, however nobody sane would say 'Apple allows multiple operating systems to run on the iPhone'.
> The thing I find to be anticompetitive is that Spotify cannot provide a web link to their own payment processing web page within their app.
Well, you probably can’t advertise your apartment on AirBnb and then Link people to your own payment service that bypasses AirBnb’s fee either. It sort of makes sense.
There's a lot of things I like and are consumer-friendly about the App Store, mainly around privacy and security. But the "Apple tax" is absolutely where it veers into a level of concentrated power that concerns antitrust law.
Yes, I get that you can switch to Android and Apple doesn't have an actual monopoly. They still wield a lot of power to force this 30% tax down everyone's throats. Specifically it's the power of "bundling" which is a potential antitrust violation.[1]
The implied reasoning behind Apple's restrictions on bypassing the tax is to ensure a positive customer experience. By selling things through Apple they take on the role of an intermediary merchant that can do things like refunds and otherwise ensure a positive, trustworthy customer experience.
But we need only look at the Mac App Store to get an idea of how much consumers truly value this value-add. On that platform, vendors and consumers have the freedom to directly interact, while Apple has still enacted a pretty good level of privacy and security protections (through revokable developer certificates and sandboxing). Many simply bypass the store. And the tax there would make even less sense for strictly ongoing content subscriptions that pose no additional security or privacy threat.
I hate to be that guy, but Apple built their own platform and they can bend the rules as they see fit.
Spotify should just quit said platform if they don't like the rules and ask their "fans" to follow them over to other platforms. I know this is not likely to happen but, oh boy, what a move. Let's all jump into the water and let the Apple platform be an Apple service ghost town.
On the other hand I do want to see Apple slapped on the hand by the European Commission and level the ground for all developers, specially indie ones.
Interesting tidbit: "FairPlay" was the name of apple's proprietary iTunes DRM technology that was eventually mostly phased out due to the aftermath of Steve Jobs' open letter [1]. I wonder if the naming parallel is intentional?
> "Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone's records."
I remember when Apple's M.O. was to build insanely great hardware, and make money selling that hardware. It was the Other Guys who would do shady things like bundle browsers with OSes and do things explicitly against users' preferences to promote their own platform and ecosystem. Apple never really started with that until the iPhone.
Now they do all of this ecosystem-lock-in stuff because they're not solely interested in revenue from hardware sales now. It's lame and scummy and un-Apple.
I'd love to be able to use the Google Assistant and Signal Messenger on my Apple Watch, and use Spotify on my HomePod, and use iMessage on my Pixelbook. Real shame that I pay top dollar for hardware and that I can't.
Apple owns their platform. It cost a fortune to develop, and it's theirs.
Imagine it's the 1800s and you wanted to develop technology to let anyone listen to music anytime. You'd have to invent the computer, an operating system, and the internet (some means of distribution), then invent Spotify. (Or maybe not all those things in their entirety, but just enough to support the Spotify's functionality.)
Since it's 2019, there are platforms that provide the operating system and means of distribution, and Spotify merely has to deliver an app that floats in high-level-land. They then complain that that platform, who did all the work Spotify didn't have to, isn't being "fair." What does that mean? What are they rightfully owed?
Why doesn't Spotify create their own OS and App Store, and develop/distribute Spotify there? Because it's inconceivably hard? Surely that's why the people who did it get to set the rules.
Maybe Intel should only allow Apple to run Intel approved apps on Intel Mac's, because it's Intel's CPU running the show? And what about the modem chip vendors? Shouldn't Qualcomm put a firewall in firmware and filter all traffic on the iPhone that it hasn't approved? What about the ISP carrying those packets? Shouldn't they lay claim to packet ownership?
This platform ownership piffle Apple has sold for eons is pure horse shit, and the EU regulators will rule as such. Simply put, a fridge manufacturer cannot control what items get stored and cooled in the fridge, after the customer has paid in full for both the fridge and the item. And the fridge manufacturer certainly cannot restrict items only sold though it's own stores
It would be nice if the platform-independent music sites (Spotify, Tidal, Beatport, Bandcamp, etc) joined together to fund a web framework for music streaming that didn't require the same level of system access as a native app. That would allow them to escape the App Store tax, and the headaches related to Apple's review process, deployment issues, etc.
Right now, Apple owns the moat. The fairness Spotify is asking for requires people to give up money on the table. Because of that, a well-intentioned public awareness campaign is no substitute for legal action.
PS - I'd love it if more news websites were structured like the simple timeline on this site. I'd like to see how the situation developed over time, rather than seeing a stream of articles littered with links to past stories. Just give me one timeline I can scroll through, and I'll decide which of the linked stories I want to click on.
I think we should break the monopoly of app store and play store. Platforms should enable other stores to play well along with their stores. It is ridiculous at this day and age to go through a process like app store / play store approval after you've spent so much money building an app. The web works fine without a single party deciding what should or should not be on it. We should treat app store as a service for distributing apps and providing services to update and charge people for those services. It should be distinct from the platform itself. The platform should stick with publishing a spec for how an executable should be and standards to verify the veracity of the distribution with certificates and digital signatures. I think if there is a region that can enforce this change, it will be the EU and the rest of the world will follow.
A recent law passed in India seems like the kind of regulation that is needed to prevent this kind of behaviour https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/amazon-how-india-ecommerce-l...
Essentially what the law says is that if you own a platform you can't create and sell products on it. This law targets Amazon and Flipkart since Amazon also uses their own website to sell Amazon basics products. Amazon also uses internal metrics to determine which new product categories to launch which other sellers on the platform won't have access to. Apple and Google app stores should also have similar restrictions.
Wow... Spotify had an opportunity to make a good case and then threw it all away because they got greedy.
A company not providing you and API you want does not equate to them blocking you. FULL STOP.
Spotify had some decent arguments (re: 30%, IAP, payment) but it fell 100% flat when they started giving equal importance to things that were not targeted at them. The lack of music API's on homepod, watch, iPhone are not some direct slight against Spotify and to pretend they are only shows Spotify's inflated view of themselves. Put simply: NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU.
Spotify is twisting the truth to it's breaking point in this post with just enough truth sprinkled around that you might not notice the bullshit.
The complaint is that Apple is withholding certain APIs from public access, though nothing technical prevents it from doing so, other than anti-trust issues. There is certainly truth to that! When Apple is both an app publisher, and API publisher, these anti trust issues are bound to pop up
> The complaint is that Apple is withholding certain APIs from public access, though nothing technical prevents it from doing so
And once Spotify proves that then maybe we can have a discussion. There is no data to support that claim. I can think of a number of reasons why they weren't ready to provide audio API's like battery reasons. Also Apple has released audio API's both before Apple Music (iPhone) and after (Watch). Spotify is just mad they didn't get them sooner.
I don't think this goes to trial, but it's trivial to prove unfair API advantages to the manufacturer. Either provide the same API to others, or concede to anti-competitive charges.
NO ONE is willing to give Apple the benefit of doubt, after they have unilaterally, retroactively mucked with app store rules to kill competition. The most egrageous case was with Steam, whose game streaming app was found to be non compliant after apple retroactively applied change of policy.
There are always 2 sides to it. Especially when one side makes the other look like a blithering idiot.
A few points:
* Without Apple, Spotify would be worthless and not reached any users at all, never grown
* Apple is doing the heavy-lifting of building and distributing Apple Watch, HomePod, iPhones. Spotify is creating little additional value in comparison
* Spotify repeatedly tried to cheat Apple's system and they were blocked and rejected (in my opinion) rightfully. They tweaked wordings, they even linked to a website that first looked harmless and would be MODIFIED after the app is approved.
I'm not sure Spotify's behavior is ANY better.
This reminds of the whole browser war situation with Microsoft many years ago which Microsoft was forced to allow other browsers. It, however, feels different from Apple who seem to be able to just get away with this behaviour unchallenged.
There should be an alternative App Store, plain and simple. As long as the sandbox for apps exist, users will be pretty safe. Apps should work the same way sandboxing works on PC browsers. Apple constricts Safari iOS because they don't want web apps to be fully competitive with native apps. E.g I prefer to use Overcast.fm over web than the native app, but most times, my podcast streams will stop abruptly in mobile safari, that i'm thinking of trading my privacy to Android for a pixel 1. Only thing that saves me, is I hardly use my phone, otherwise the limited functionality of iOS for devices you pay hundreds for is painful.
I'm glad that Spotify is taking this stance. Apple and Google Play together have an effective monopoly on the mobile device app market, which is worth about 70 bln USD per year. Cost of entry and network effects make it essentially impossible to have new competing app stores, so barring new regulations the market will remain as un-free as it is. It's therefore about time for regulators to step in if we want to promote innovation in the app market that doesn't necessary align with the self-interests of Apple and Google, so I'm glad a relatively well-known company such as Spotify is pushing for this.
Anecdotally spotlight has had a hard time finding the Spotify app for me recently. (I use spotlight like an app launcher.) I chalked it off to some mojave bug with my new laptop but a tiny part of me was thinking conspiracy.
However, I'd like to point out something that doesn't sit well with me.
Spotify uses this same kind of extraction mechanism on the artists that use its platform.
The complaint loop is complete. We have artists complaining about artist 'hosting' companies complaining about application hosting companies.
I believe the solution lies in different, non-zero sum economics, but haven't been able to think of anything for music. I do, however, have some pretty cool ideas for longer form text and video content.
> We – and our partners – use cookies to deliver our services and to show you ads based on your interests.
Seriously? Y'all want to sniff/sell my data and run ads on a website that's supposed to "raise awareness" about "consumer unfairness"? Jerk move. Yeah it's all technically legal, but it's definitely tacky. You're making it rather hard to sympathize with you.
It's hard to have much sympathy when you know that this was written by the marketing department of a company with a $30bn market cap.
This looks to me like a blatant attempt to latch on to a perceived popular sentiment that Spotify thinks they can use to to have the government give them a big advantage that they didn't have before.
Call me cynical but it's hard to see this as anything but self serving.
Sure, but if another company with a $1T mkt cap is abusing it's market position to the detriment of a $30B company, wouldn't you want to hear about it?
After all, if they treat Spotify this way, how do you think they'll treat your app in the future if it happens to compete with them in someway?
The HomePod is a horrible device unless you want Siri in a can. The source selection is just so locked down for whatever reason, so unless you're all in with the Apple ecosystem, you're going to be missing out something.
The HomePod would be a incredible bargain even if it didn't support Siri at all, and were just an AirPlay compatible speaker. Everyone who complains about Apple Music (myself included) and Siri's uselessness are mostly ignoring the fact that it is the single best compact speaker, audio-wise, shipping today. It's an order of magnitude higher audio quality than everything within 10%-1000% of its price range.
Has anyone noticed in CarPlay that Spotify sounds much quieter (and worse) than Apple Music? I have always had a suspicion that this was Apple’s doing, but now it seems much more likely. But if I’m wrong someone please let me know! I’d really love to know what is causing it. It almost makes me want to subscribe to Apple Music just for listening in the car.
Apple's actions are not good and will eventually discourage companies from developing anything more than marketing apps for the App Store. You don't want a big piece of your revenue stream dependent on Apple app sales and Tim Cook's whim. Maybe this is why there are so many Cr-Apps and fewer and fewer "killer apps" anymore.
This makes me curious if this is how Uber(Jump Scooters) is undercutting Lime and Bird on Scooter and Bike pricing in my city (Dallas). Uber is $0 to start a ride + $.15 a min. Bird and Lime and $1 to start + $.15 a min.
Is this partially because Apple takes 30% from Bird and Lime, but not Uber?
Eh this is just one big company trying to get more profits by complaining against another.
Spotify is not the good guy here.
Spotify works just fine on apple products (I use it), who cares about using Apples payment processing system (which they have a right to charge for), it's a Spotify service, so i should pay through Spotify which i do.
Given the increasing importance of smart phones in our lives it seems like we would benefit by having a modern day equivalent of the Carterfone decision[1] for smartphones.
Its been a super long time since I have looked into developing on the iOS side -- are there restrictions on Safari which would prevent Spotify from going to an all PWA type deployment for iOS and peacing out from the App Store? What would the API for Safari restrictions be to overcome? Thanks in advance.
AFAIK Safari has great support for PWAs these days except for not being able to show a native banner that allows the user to install the PWA on the home screen.
When I've first read about the 30% apps tax I couldn't believe my eyes. That's insane. It would be Ok if the actual devices were at least 10 times more cheap and Apple was making the actual profits relying on apps taxation only but given how much iPhones cost it's ridiculous.
It’s thanks to crap like this & the total lack of original innovation on the iPhone platform, that I am seriously considering the Samsung S10, after 8 years of exclusive iPhone use.
Post-Jobs Apple is over & done for. They are in “rent collection” mode now.
So long & thanks for all the fun. It was good while it lasted.
I think if you own the platform you shouldn’t be allowed to compete. E.g. You can’t write apps for your OS. You can’t sell your own products through your own market. Etc. I’m surprised this hasn’t been legislated by now... we all remember Novell & WordPerfect... it never gets better.
This is part of a bigger war to maximise the duopoly of music and video streaming, perhaps analogous to the triple/quad play in telecoms.
It seems that Spotify's latest salvo is timed to capitalise on the rumoured event[1] and maybe even influenced by previous decision by Netflix to breakaway[2] from the two main revenue generating platforms (Android & iOS). Whether or not it will be beneficial to their business model(s) long term - only time will tell.
Apple needs a new goose and a contender in the ring to keep institutional investors happy, at least until a new market strategy[3] is cemented and next round of R&D, technological advancements, tooling etc. take effect and come to fruition; especially considering the recent battery recalls[4] and lower than expected demand for flagship products, So, I would assume they have carried out some due diligence to avoid any punitive measures by the EU or invite excessive regulation.
Nonetheless, it might turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for Spotify, despite a ruling in favour of an app with some clout in a dominant ecosystem. For example, Amazon has decided to fight[5] Google/Apple on many occasions, with no obvious benefits. Microsoft has largely capitulated to Amazon & Google on some of their efforts e.g. Cortana v Alexa, Edge v Chrome..
This isn't about a 30% take rate on IAP (that's fine). This isn't about apple having apple music.
The problem is that Spotify is not allowed to take credit card input directly in the app. The problem is that Spotify isn't allowed to redirect users to a webpage to collect payment.
> Apple decides to open up the App Store to outside app developers and lures them in by the hundreds. They ask users – want to order a pizza, find your nearest florist, or look up how to do the Soulja Boy dance? “There’s an app for that.”
I'm 100% behind Spotify on this issue even though I don't use the service.
BUT
If you're going to ask someone else to play fair, then maybe you should do the same i.e. have a revenue-sharing model that is fair to all of big labels, indie labels, and independent music producers.
Interesting to see this given Spotify doesn't play fair by locking in data in their app for developers.
See: https://freeyourmusic.com [not mine, but read why this exists]
I've submitted a complaint about this requirement to use specific purchase systems against Play Store and App Store two years ago but they didn't see it as a problem because, apparently, you can switch from GPlay to Apple products or vice-versa.
Spotify is a shady company that doesn't pay artists as well as Apple, it doesn't have a sustainable business model and now that they're public they're hiring PR firms to make timetoplayfair.com and spam HN because they're accountable to investors.
Spotify doesn't play fair with intellectual property, they were founded by a guy than ran an ad supported torrent company and got enough early market share to go public, but it's not sustainable. Now they expect less of a cut to gain market share because they didn't build something sustainable, unique or based upon a higher standard of ethics. No tears to be shed for this company's standard of fairness. Plus the product has other issues which I noted when I was a customer but were ignored as this company is simply interested in the bottom line; so I cancelled my account, which was not easy.
That would probably be fine...until Apple created a rule to discourage and then eventually ban all apps that used that pattern without going through their API.
Someone - please commoditize mobile phone hardware. I want to be able to get a phone and assemble my on stack on it. Without any playstores / subscription services / location tracking / snooping built in.
Because Apple rejects their app whenever they try something like that, or even have phrasing suggesting that users do so without actually redirecting themselves.
According to the website, the debate is that Apple does not currently allow apps to do what you are describing.
A few quotes from the timeline:
> Apple now prohibits buttons or links to any other external ways to pay.
> While we haven’t been able to include any buttons or external links to pages containing product info, discounts, promotions, etc. (even if they don’t link directly to a payment system!) since Feb. 2011
This is exactly why I moved from the iPhone to an Android phone about a year ago: I couldn't use Siri to play things on Spotify – that's pretty much the only thing that really bugged me about iOS.
As an extension, not only is Apple guilty of the absurd 30% tax on IAP, Google does it too and I think its very unfair that you cannot choose your own payment processor. Apple and Google should be viewed as an oligarchy of some sort being that they control almost all of the mobile market. The fact that there is almost no oversight to their business practices and their ability to literally take any app off the market or charge whatever processing fee they want is ridiculous. Its not like any company can also just set out to build their own app store since Google and specially Apple would never allow them to compete. I could go on this topic for days since I just know how much mobile developers are so vulnerable and powerless against the app stores.
Isn't it a little ironic that Spotify complains about Apple's cut while their entire business model is exactly the same? If anything, they are less fair to artists than Apple is to devs.
I wonder if companies like Spotify would be willing to help invest in developing FOSS devices that compete with Apple products. It would be one way to fight back and advance their own business.
Just to add to the debate - when in was working in the music industry and had a view of the data (~ 3 years ago now), the money Apple Music would pay per stream was higher than Spotify...
Regardless of Spotify or not, Apple has become a state of the art bloodsucker while delivering flat out products. Making the switch to Android has never been more convenient.
I hope the EU takes this seriously just like they did with Microsoft. They shouldn't charge the 30% if they have a competing product and are undercutting it.
For what it's worth, I don't think Spotify is asking the European commission to impose regulations, but rather asking them to enforce the regulations they already have.
You can already write web apps (which can be pretty sophisticated these days) and users can even “install” them right on their home screen. This capability has been there since the original iphone though the power available to web apps has grown enormously.
Unfortunately not every app can work his way, e.g. access to PII-sensitive sensors. But nothing stops Spotify from doing this — it’s how Spotify works on a laptop anyway.
hard to feel bad for spotify, another publicly traded company maximizing profit and posing as a person, but it does highlight the downsides of rent-seeking behavior.
it's almost like private markets are bad and always lead to this sort of bs in every single real world case.
yeah good for you, many of us never even got into it to begin with. I will say my job got me a macbook pro (after decades of windows usage and hackage) and this bitch is still kicking ass 5 years later. Big ups for the laptop. iPhone, who gives a shit it's a phone. Some people are super into it, i'm like dude i dont fucking care about the screen, the camera, the unlocking your face with a picture. If think all that jazz is worth $800+ be my guest.
Why do you think that "iOS is still much more secure"? The fact it's a closed source system means only we are not aware of many potential security risks. Apple has really bad reputation because of serious security bugs discovered in Mac OS recently. It might be similar with iOS devices.
I'm no great fan of Google, but it's a little harder to point the finger at them.
F-droid works perfectly well on any Android device, and is a viable alternative to Google Play (for some users). Android .apk files can be installed on any Android device with one switch flipped - and the first time you attempt to install an .apk file, it points you to the setting. Chrome extensions can similarly be packaged and distributed from another source (i.e. GitHub) and are treated as first-class chrome extensions alongside their store-installed counterparts. Apps installed on an iPhone via Xcode (only available for macOS, which is only available on Apple hardware) expire after 7 days and refuse to open unless they are re-deployed. They last for a year if the user pays Apple $99/year for a developer certificate.
Google's platforms don't have people spending money as much as iPhone users do, but they are not nearly as locked down or restrictive.
But Apple not only has unilaterally changed the rules themselves time and again, but also frequently decides to interpret (and re-interpret) them in ways to disadvantage rivals like us.
Spotify isn’t so much a rival as it is a serf on Apple’s farm though, right?
Apple could just remove Spotify from the app store altogether, for fun.
Spotify isn't really complaining about "unfairness". Business complaining are really just them trying to mobilize customer outrage to force a better deal for them. Apple created an ecosystem, and is allowed to charge what they want for it. Other vendors charge markups: retail, a business with notoriously low profit margins, charges about 15% markup. This is because price elasticity of groceries is exceedingly high: customers have extensive choice and it's not an immediate/emergency good. Restaurants charge about 60%. Clothing can be 300%, high fashion more. But nobody complains about that.
We need to stop thinking of the app store as a "tax" and more as a retail outlet, because it is just a digital retailer. The 30% effectively amounts to a markup.
> [Apple] frequently decides to interpret (and re-interpret) them [App Store rules]
This is a hard line for Apple to walk. Other platforms have issues with this too, and can't always come to one perfect interpretation. See some of the issues with Youtube policing pedophilia recently and having to take some drastic (and very unpopular) steps. What was okay previously isn't now.
On Apple's payment system: they run a walled garden. Though there are disadvantages to this, there are also advantages to it. The case could be made that this has massive security benefits (iOS malware, anyone?) and can also keep users from having their payment details tricked out of them by forcing them through one channel. Think it wouldn't happen? An app tried to trick iPhone users into scanning their fingerprint to authorize a large Apple Pay charge to the scammer. It could be worse without the security.
> Siri still won’t talk to us today
Need some more technical detail here, but why is the onus on Apple to do the work to integrate with your platform the way you want to do it? Apple does provide SiriKit: https://developer.apple.com/sirikit/
> [they] won’t work with us to develop an app for it [the Apple Watch]
Again, why should Apple have to work with you? What you're effectively looking for is a support contract. Pandora managed it.
> Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge
Yes, it's called vertical integration and there are huge benefits to it. It's been one of Apple's core business practices from day one. They control huge parts of their supply chain, even developing their own phone chips (which may well end up as desktop-grade CPUs and could provide a huge consumer benefit in terms of microarchitectural advancement). This isn't unfair. Undercutting is not unfair.
App store tightening is of course designed to protect Apple's revenue stream. They've seen other developers stop using IAP, and want to ensure the App Store remains dominant. Not unfair. It's Apple's right to say what they sell and don't sell on their store.
> "level playing field"
See the article linked at the top of this reply. Spotify is trying to keep users in its platform by preventing playlist transfer (and even prohibiting apps that do it for them, so not an issue of just not developing the functionality). That's at least as anti-consumer. Business do this sort of stuff all the time, and Spotify is more committed to its revenue than to "fairness".
Spotify is just salty because they didn't get the deal they wanted and because Apple is trying to push users toward its products over Spotifys. Not really nice of Apple, but not "unfair".
It's also very bad on the "There's an app for that" image.
The other parts of the page are very nice though. The font contrast is fine and the font has a nice weight to it. When they want us to read something they actually still know how to make a proper webpage. And it works fine without JS.
Glad I searched before commenting, it's the first thing I noticed. Could be a covert tactic to trigger Apple though, more deadly than a computer virus, will probably shut infinite loop down for a day.
European Commission is the only antitrust regulator with teeth, I'm glad that single market area is coming into its own. The regulator for the 21st century that corporations actually listen to. Without them, we would be here debating how this doesn't satisfy antitrust laws to the American standard, which would be beyond the point but a typical discussion.
Going to take another 50 years before that succumbs to regulatory capture.
Well I want to make a startup but dont want to to get wrecked by Facebook or Google or Apple. I guess I'll wait until lawmakers break them. Or else they dont deserve innovation.
I really hope Apple dies and burns. They have good PR but thats it. They lie and deceit developers just like Google. Bait and Switch.
There should be government regulation of Apple, Facebook and Google. These corps are just too big and control our democracy.
Apple is starving innovation by deliberately not supporting many thing on the Safari iOS browser and prevents competition illegally by restricting 3rd party browser engines.
Taking a 30% rent on purchases is blatant theft. More people need to speak out. #AppleRentSeeker
Because Apple is unable to increase revenues, it's now trying to increase by using uncompetitive tactics and illegal restriction of competition.
What does iOS Safari not support? It uses WebKit, so more or less full technical/js support, it has ad blockers, tracking prevention, a built in password manager that uses the iOS keychain... not sure what else I’d really want for web browsing.
I'm anti-electron as anyone (hello VS code waves). But for spotify, it seems to make perfect sense. I'm not interacting with it in a way where the downsides of electron (latency, etc) really make a difference.
CEF is still Chromium related, it’s not that much different.
As far as resources usage goes, Spotify is definitely worse. If you browse through a few artists and albums, memory usage quickly soars pst 500MB and can reach 1GB, which is ridiculous. iTunes doesn’t do this at all and hovers at 200MB in most cases.
Spotify loads wholly separate copies of all JavaScript dependencies for each major sub component on screen. Efficiency is not even remotely that dev team’s strong point.
You might have forgotten this because the market has copied almost everything they’ve done, all of their aesthetic choices, etc — Apple creates products that are highly, highly opinionated. The Apple consumer isn’t buying access to a generic computing device, they are buying a point of view.
Sometimes that point of view is compatible with what you, personally, want. Sometimes it’s clearly obnoxious and Apple needs to change course. No matter what the case may be, however, it’s still a situation of a very specific point of view being sold to a consumer that has actively made a choice that this is, in fact, the point of view that suits their needs.
You’ve got to remember that the iPhone was an EXTREME case of this. The entire mobile industry thought the whole touch screen typing thing was never going to work at scale. I myself wasn’t completely convinced. Yet here we are. You can’t have the good without the bad.
I agree with this for the most part - it is just that time has shown that that POV has changed (such as allowing native apps and the app store ecosystem for one). I just don't think that carrying on a grudge against a product that is hugely popular with users (but of course is not without its own downsides) based on a point of view that was held nearly 10 years ago is a particularly sensible way to go about things.
For the most part I'd definitely agree, Apple has done some great things that went away from the established norms - but in this case, given that the song I listen to on Spotify will sound identical to listening to it on Apple music, the whole thing does stink of Apple giving itself the upper hand.
I was at the Spotify office the day the news of Steve's untimely death broke. It was a solemn day, and the the one senior executive I spoke to expressed true sorrow, as if a longtime friend had passed. Jobs was incredibly respected by the Spotify crew, as far as I'm concerned.
On 5 October 2011, Spotify was a freshly minted single-billion unicorn. Factually, no-one had plural billions of dollars on the line at that time, not even the senior exec I quoted.
Spotify was also comparatively small at the time, with limited hierarchy. The entire office - execs and rank-and-file alike - was respectful, with a fair number visibly upset and mourning.
There’s been several lawsuits’ worth of material uncovering highly preferential treatment afforded to Spotify by Facebook, which both parties pretended didn’t exist. I’m sure a Google search can help you out with this one.
As for your second comment, well... You’re aware that the parent post is a website that was specifically created to ax-grind, right?
Your comment is effectively only gossip and broad accusations. Leaving your anecdote aside, what dirty tricks and favoritism do you have in mind exactly?
Considering your other comment with "billion dollar investors" in a company that was barely worth 1 billion dollars back then, this definitely reads like a made-up story.
Doesnt really matter where the sentiment comes from if we’re to have an efficient economy. There should be more choices available. Any idea what made the spotify execs wish death on Jobs?
'Any idea what made the spotify execs wish death on Jobs?'
Does it honestly matter? First of all its probably just a joke. But second of all if we assume he said it the day he died that means the joke was made in 2011 when Spotify was a small company. When chances are the joke was made when they were still just in Sweden.
I have no idea what kind of justification you are trying to make for Apples behaviour here, but you think it is justifiable. If this was Microsoft instead of Apple you would probably be on Spotify's side. And it should not matter if it is Spotify or someone else, Spotify have the money and resources to be able to try and fight apple, so many other app makers don't and Apple shits all over them.
I believe that Apple should take some cuts but not as high as 30%. I believe for some categories like microtransaction based apps Apple should take maybe 5%. Plus, I think that if Apple has a competing service, then it should waive the tax altogether. It's only fair.
If the only function of the App Store (or Play Store) is to provide hosting and some quality control then I don't see why apps can't be hosted on a secure website from the vendor - as far as I'm aware, Apple requires you have some sort of website anyway.
At least Google allows installing apps without the Play Store, perhaps it's time Apple permitted something similar with its apps? This could solve this whole problem and have other positive side effects such as people being less likely to jailbreak their iPhones.