9 ms·

Spotify says Apple won’t approve a new version of its app

81 points by djug 10y ago

IBM 10y ago
This is a game being played out in public. It wasn't a coincidence that Elizabeth Warren mentioned Apple Music yesterday in a speech (among other tech companies). http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/spotify-makes-case-against-apple-in-congress-119976 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/spotify-makes-case-aga... http://www.recode.net/2016/6/29/12060804/elizabeth-warren-apple-google-amazon-competition http://www.recode.net/2016/6/29/12060804/elizabeth-warren-ap...
skynetv2 10y ago
How Apple is not hit by anti-trust cases across the world on a range of topics is baffling!
- kartD 10y ago
  Because they aren't a monopoly, they have like 15-20% of the smartphone market. Only Google would have to worry about anti-trust cases
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    To hell with this "monopoly" crap. The term do not apply to the topic at all, and never has. All it matters is that a company, or groups of companies, are big enough to distort customer choice to their benefit. This either directly in said market, or by being large in a related market that they can use as leverage.
    - JohnTHaller 10y ago
      The way the laws are written, you can be insanely anti-consumer and anti-competitive all you want if you aren't a monopoly. Apple is a distant number 2 to Android in the phone space. So they can dictate things like: our app store and our app store alone, you can't even manually install apps from anywhere else, you can only use our browser engine and no competing engines, etc. Microsoft, for instance, couldn't pull these kinds of things with Windows because it is more of a monopoly on the desktop due to it having >90% user share.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        MS could be below 50% and still be in trouble if they were still the big dog of the pack.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        How is all that different to a rule like, e.g. "when you come sit at our restaurant', buy OUR food, don't bring outside food".
        JohnTHaller 10y ago
        It's more like you bought takeout food but had to sign a licensing agreement that you would not be permitted to add your own seasonings when you got it home. Unless they were certified seasonings purchased at our restaurant. Using our branded credit card. And they sue anyone that attempts to market seasonings for their restaurant without paying them 30% of the sales price.
        coldtea 10y ago
        Yes, but you're sitting there eating that takeout food at a place (platform) that somebody else created. And even the sale of takeout food happened through that same platform.
        JohnTHaller 10y ago
        Nope. I bought that takeout food and brought it home. I'm not using my iPhone in an Apple store. I'm using it in my apartment. If we're making a clumsy (and inaccurate) analogy to the physical world, this is how far you take it to demonstrate the absurdity of it.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >Nope. I bought that takeout food and brought it home. I'm not using my iPhone in an Apple store. The "restaurant" is the iOS, not the Apple store. I only used the physical location (a restaurant) as an analogy. You're using the App in an environment Apple created.
    - wvenable 10y ago
      Don't all businesses do that? Walmart? Costco? Verizon? AT&T? Bestbuy? The consequence here is that you are saying a company should not be able to control what they sell in their own stores. That seems pretty extreme.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        The tricky bit there is that apple both sell their own products and services alongside being a retailer for third party products and services. In the end though, someone has to file a complaint with a relevant regulator for anything to happen. And i suspect few wants to go through the years of court rigamarole opposite Apple's legal team.
        wvenable 10y ago
        There are plenty of companies that sell their own products and services alongside being a retailer for third party products. Even in that situation, I don't believe there is any legal or moral requirement that they stock competing products (unless in a monopoly scenario). It might seem like a crappy thing to do but the alternative is completely unsustainable.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >The tricky bit there is that apple both sell their own products and services alongside being a retailer for third party products and services. And Costco etc don't do that?
        snowwrestler 10y ago
        This is true of any large grocery or drug store chain, at least in the U.S. I can go into CVS and buy Allegra allergy medicine, or--sitting right next to it on the shelf, also in a purple box--the CVS generic brand with the same amount of the same active ingredient, for less. Allegra could pull their product from CVS shelves if they wanted to. But it seems that having access to CVS customers is worth more to them than the sales they lose to CVS generics.
      - TarpitCarnivore 10y ago
    - baddox 10y ago
      How can you "distort customer choice" if you're only at 15% market share? I thought that's the whole point of using antitrust mechanisms against monopolies, but customers in monopolized markets literally don't have another choice. If Apple is only at 15% market share, it's pretty clear that people using Apple products are doing so because they prefer them to the (much more popular) main competitor.
    - tluyben2 10y ago
      If there is enough choice for the consumer then why does it matter what a company distorts? The market will crush the company if it goes too far right? You can always not buy Apple and buy Android (outside Google Play Store). Why would they go after Apple for this?
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >All it matters is that a company, or groups of companies, are big enough to distort customer choice to their benefit. That's what all companies are supposed to do.
  - WayneBro 10y ago
    In the US it's more like 40 to 50%
  - itsdrewmiller 10y ago
    Depends on what market you are looking at. They have 2/3 of the mobile app market by revenue...
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Revenue has never been a monopoly factor. If I sell a single phone for $1 trillion and somebody buys is, I don't have a "monopoly by revenue".
- wvenable 10y ago
  How does this work in brick & mortar businesses? Is there precedent for forcing a retailer to stock a particular product?
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Things may get hairy if said retailer have their own brand of products that they present front and center. Or in some way play favorites with the brands they carry. But there are not really any hard and fast rules for this, similarly to how there are not hard and fast rules regarding corruption.
    - scarface74 10y ago
      Retailers always play favorites with brands based on how much companies are willing to pay them. This is nothing new, hidden, nor is there anything illegal about it.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Because no entity has filed a complaint...
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  Because outside of silicon valley, Apple is a much smaller #2 to Android. Same with their laptop/desktop business. This is why Apple gets to engage in behavior Microsoft never even dreamed of with Windows. Can you imagine the hubbub if Windows on the desktop only had the Microsoft app store and didn't permit any other app store? Or only allowed Internet Explorer and didn't allow any other browsers unless they were just UIs and skins on top of IE? Or locked Windows down so you couldn't even install an app unless it was through their app store? Apple gets away with all of this on iOS because they're not a monopoly, so they can engage in all kinds of anti-competitive behavior as long as their customers don't mind and leave for Android. So far, they don't.
- edko 10y ago
  There is a rule that forbids OS X app developers from selling an app that is in the app store at a lesser price somewhere else. I am really surprised that this is not considered anti-competitive price fixing.
RKearney 10y ago
The app is rejected because Spotify tried to bypass the In-App Purchases system to obtain payment information form subscribers, thus bypassing the 30% cut Apple takes. This isn't a new requirement at all. Spotify is free to remove signups all together from their App, requiring users already have signed up for an account on their website. This has always been an option.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  And this would be fine, except that Apple Music has an advantage here, because they don't get the 30% fee (or allow the user to sign up through the app) Spotify chose to fight this fight and I guess it's good for them
  - SG- 10y ago
    Well they did build out the entire platform themselves.
    - Oletros 10y ago
      Apple built Spotify?
- phn 10y ago
  Yeap, bringing Apple Music to this discussion is disingenuous. The article is pretty light on details, but it seems Apple is simply asking Spotify to follow the rules all developers have to follow.
  - ape4 10y ago
    Ignoring Apple Music is disingenuous
- foota 10y ago
  It didn't sound to me like spotify is directly signing up people through the app, rather that they are requesting them to sign up via the website.
Dotnaught 10y ago
Apple's App Store Review Guidelines used to warn against taking complaints to the press: "If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps." https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/2016-06-13/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/2016... The current version, published on June 13, 2016, omits that statement: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
- developer2 10y ago
  It's about the scale of your app. If you are small fish, going to the press isn't going to accomplish anything. Spotify can afford to press the matter. What worse can Apple do to them? Remove their app from the store? Spotify can afford to litigate against that kind of anti-competition.
  - Longhanks 10y ago
    It's not anti competition. There are app guidelines which say "you mustn't work around iTunes payments". They exist since many, many years. Spotify chose to comply with them. Apple didn't suddenly change them. It's not anti competitive from Apple if Spotify NOW chooses to call them unfair. Above that, it's Apple's store, with Apple's rules, on Apple's OS. You either comply with the rules or you don't get to put your app on the App Store.
    - SamBam 10y ago
      Such an argument didn't help Microsoft in their anticompetition suits. If "your" store is directly tied to other companies' livelihoods, and design "your" rules deliberately to hamper competition, there can be a strong argument for an anticompetition suit.
      - redial 10y ago
        The Microsoft situation is rather different. At the time they didn't make hardware and they where forcing pc manufacturers to preinstall certain applications on their computers thus distorting some markets. Apple makes their own devices, they are not forcing any OEM to include the App Store on their phones, or Safari or even Apple Music. And they are not forcing consumers to use the App Store either as there are other more popular choices. Walmart is tied directly to many companies' livelihoods. They still have the option to charge for the privilege of selling thru their stores and those companies have the option to refuse.
djrogers 10y ago
Interesting that Spotify would start pushing this issue so hard following immediately on the heels of Apple reducing their cut to 15% for subscriptions after the first year [1]. There had been rumors of Apple extending this reduction to some companies for a while now, wonder if Spotify had been left out of that? [1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/whats-new/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/whats-ne...
endlessvoid94 10y ago
This is a PR stunt.
praveenweb 10y ago
I think sometime last year, Amazon removed the sales of Apple TV and Chrome cast from their platform. The platform decides what is profitable for them. After all the consumers and the businesses have their choices open on what to use. But i seriously want Apple to be diplomatic in this issue and allow whatever is best for everyone.

81 points by djug 10y ago

IBM 10y ago

This is a game being played out in public. It wasn't a coincidence that Elizabeth Warren mentioned Apple Music yesterday in a speech (among other tech companies). http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/spotify-makes-case-against-apple-in-congress-119976 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/spotify-makes-case-aga... http://www.recode.net/2016/6/29/12060804/elizabeth-warren-apple-google-amazon-competition http://www.recode.net/2016/6/29/12060804/elizabeth-warren-ap...

skynetv2 10y ago

How Apple is not hit by anti-trust cases across the world on a range of topics is baffling!

kartD 10y ago
Because they aren't a monopoly, they have like 15-20% of the smartphone market. Only Google would have to worry about anti-trust cases
- digi_owl 10y ago
  To hell with this "monopoly" crap. The term do not apply to the topic at all, and never has. All it matters is that a company, or groups of companies, are big enough to distort customer choice to their benefit. This either directly in said market, or by being large in a related market that they can use as leverage.
  - JohnTHaller 10y ago
    The way the laws are written, you can be insanely anti-consumer and anti-competitive all you want if you aren't a monopoly. Apple is a distant number 2 to Android in the phone space. So they can dictate things like: our app store and our app store alone, you can't even manually install apps from anywhere else, you can only use our browser engine and no competing engines, etc. Microsoft, for instance, couldn't pull these kinds of things with Windows because it is more of a monopoly on the desktop due to it having >90% user share.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      MS could be below 50% and still be in trouble if they were still the big dog of the pack.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      How is all that different to a rule like, e.g. "when you come sit at our restaurant', buy OUR food, don't bring outside food".
      - JohnTHaller 10y ago
        It's more like you bought takeout food but had to sign a licensing agreement that you would not be permitted to add your own seasonings when you got it home. Unless they were certified seasonings purchased at our restaurant. Using our branded credit card. And they sue anyone that attempts to market seasonings for their restaurant without paying them 30% of the sales price.
        coldtea 10y ago
        Yes, but you're sitting there eating that takeout food at a place (platform) that somebody else created. And even the sale of takeout food happened through that same platform.
        JohnTHaller 10y ago
        Nope. I bought that takeout food and brought it home. I'm not using my iPhone in an Apple store. I'm using it in my apartment. If we're making a clumsy (and inaccurate) analogy to the physical world, this is how far you take it to demonstrate the absurdity of it.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >Nope. I bought that takeout food and brought it home. I'm not using my iPhone in an Apple store. The "restaurant" is the iOS, not the Apple store. I only used the physical location (a restaurant) as an analogy. You're using the App in an environment Apple created.
  - wvenable 10y ago
    Don't all businesses do that? Walmart? Costco? Verizon? AT&T? Bestbuy? The consequence here is that you are saying a company should not be able to control what they sell in their own stores. That seems pretty extreme.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      The tricky bit there is that apple both sell their own products and services alongside being a retailer for third party products and services. In the end though, someone has to file a complaint with a relevant regulator for anything to happen. And i suspect few wants to go through the years of court rigamarole opposite Apple's legal team.
      - wvenable 10y ago
        There are plenty of companies that sell their own products and services alongside being a retailer for third party products. Even in that situation, I don't believe there is any legal or moral requirement that they stock competing products (unless in a monopoly scenario). It might seem like a crappy thing to do but the alternative is completely unsustainable.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >The tricky bit there is that apple both sell their own products and services alongside being a retailer for third party products and services. And Costco etc don't do that?
      - snowwrestler 10y ago
        This is true of any large grocery or drug store chain, at least in the U.S. I can go into CVS and buy Allegra allergy medicine, or--sitting right next to it on the shelf, also in a purple box--the CVS generic brand with the same amount of the same active ingredient, for less. Allegra could pull their product from CVS shelves if they wanted to. But it seems that having access to CVS customers is worth more to them than the sales they lose to CVS generics.
    - TarpitCarnivore 10y ago
  - baddox 10y ago
    How can you "distort customer choice" if you're only at 15% market share? I thought that's the whole point of using antitrust mechanisms against monopolies, but customers in monopolized markets literally don't have another choice. If Apple is only at 15% market share, it's pretty clear that people using Apple products are doing so because they prefer them to the (much more popular) main competitor.
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    If there is enough choice for the consumer then why does it matter what a company distorts? The market will crush the company if it goes too far right? You can always not buy Apple and buy Android (outside Google Play Store). Why would they go after Apple for this?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >All it matters is that a company, or groups of companies, are big enough to distort customer choice to their benefit. That's what all companies are supposed to do.
- WayneBro 10y ago
  In the US it's more like 40 to 50%
- itsdrewmiller 10y ago
  Depends on what market you are looking at. They have 2/3 of the mobile app market by revenue...
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Revenue has never been a monopoly factor. If I sell a single phone for $1 trillion and somebody buys is, I don't have a "monopoly by revenue".
wvenable 10y ago
How does this work in brick & mortar businesses? Is there precedent for forcing a retailer to stock a particular product?
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Things may get hairy if said retailer have their own brand of products that they present front and center. Or in some way play favorites with the brands they carry. But there are not really any hard and fast rules for this, similarly to how there are not hard and fast rules regarding corruption.
  - scarface74 10y ago
    Retailers always play favorites with brands based on how much companies are willing to pay them. This is nothing new, hidden, nor is there anything illegal about it.
digi_owl 10y ago
Because no entity has filed a complaint...
JohnTHaller 10y ago
Because outside of silicon valley, Apple is a much smaller #2 to Android. Same with their laptop/desktop business. This is why Apple gets to engage in behavior Microsoft never even dreamed of with Windows. Can you imagine the hubbub if Windows on the desktop only had the Microsoft app store and didn't permit any other app store? Or only allowed Internet Explorer and didn't allow any other browsers unless they were just UIs and skins on top of IE? Or locked Windows down so you couldn't even install an app unless it was through their app store? Apple gets away with all of this on iOS because they're not a monopoly, so they can engage in all kinds of anti-competitive behavior as long as their customers don't mind and leave for Android. So far, they don't.
edko 10y ago
There is a rule that forbids OS X app developers from selling an app that is in the app store at a lesser price somewhere else. I am really surprised that this is not considered anti-competitive price fixing.

RKearney 10y ago

The app is rejected because Spotify tried to bypass the In-App Purchases system to obtain payment information form subscribers, thus bypassing the 30% cut Apple takes. This isn't a new requirement at all. Spotify is free to remove signups all together from their App, requiring users already have signed up for an account on their website. This has always been an option.

raverbashing 10y ago
And this would be fine, except that Apple Music has an advantage here, because they don't get the 30% fee (or allow the user to sign up through the app) Spotify chose to fight this fight and I guess it's good for them
- SG- 10y ago
  Well they did build out the entire platform themselves.
  - Oletros 10y ago
    Apple built Spotify?
phn 10y ago
Yeap, bringing Apple Music to this discussion is disingenuous. The article is pretty light on details, but it seems Apple is simply asking Spotify to follow the rules all developers have to follow.
- ape4 10y ago
  Ignoring Apple Music is disingenuous
foota 10y ago
It didn't sound to me like spotify is directly signing up people through the app, rather that they are requesting them to sign up via the website.

Dotnaught 10y ago

Apple's App Store Review Guidelines used to warn against taking complaints to the press: "If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps." https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/2016-06-13/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/2016... The current version, published on June 13, 2016, omits that statement: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

developer2 10y ago
It's about the scale of your app. If you are small fish, going to the press isn't going to accomplish anything. Spotify can afford to press the matter. What worse can Apple do to them? Remove their app from the store? Spotify can afford to litigate against that kind of anti-competition.
- Longhanks 10y ago
  It's not anti competition. There are app guidelines which say "you mustn't work around iTunes payments". They exist since many, many years. Spotify chose to comply with them. Apple didn't suddenly change them. It's not anti competitive from Apple if Spotify NOW chooses to call them unfair. Above that, it's Apple's store, with Apple's rules, on Apple's OS. You either comply with the rules or you don't get to put your app on the App Store.
  - SamBam 10y ago
    Such an argument didn't help Microsoft in their anticompetition suits. If "your" store is directly tied to other companies' livelihoods, and design "your" rules deliberately to hamper competition, there can be a strong argument for an anticompetition suit.
    - redial 10y ago
      The Microsoft situation is rather different. At the time they didn't make hardware and they where forcing pc manufacturers to preinstall certain applications on their computers thus distorting some markets. Apple makes their own devices, they are not forcing any OEM to include the App Store on their phones, or Safari or even Apple Music. And they are not forcing consumers to use the App Store either as there are other more popular choices. Walmart is tied directly to many companies' livelihoods. They still have the option to charge for the privilege of selling thru their stores and those companies have the option to refuse.

djrogers 10y ago

Interesting that Spotify would start pushing this issue so hard following immediately on the heels of Apple reducing their cut to 15% for subscriptions after the first year [1]. There had been rumors of Apple extending this reduction to some companies for a while now, wonder if Spotify had been left out of that? [1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/whats-new/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/whats-ne...

endlessvoid94 10y ago

This is a PR stunt.

praveenweb 10y ago

I think sometime last year, Amazon removed the sales of Apple TV and Chrome cast from their platform. The platform decides what is profitable for them. After all the consumers and the businesses have their choices open on what to use. But i seriously want Apple to be diplomatic in this issue and allow whatever is best for everyone.