8 ms·

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

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?

pedroaraujo 8y ago
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.
- georgespencer 8y ago
  > 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.)
  - pedroaraujo 8y ago
    > 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.
    - georgespencer 8y ago
      > 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.
Blackbeard_ 8y ago
RE: Football 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.
- georgespencer 8y ago
  That's a really great point which I hadn't considered! Thanks.
- Mindwipe 8y ago
  > Until they entered into a rights sharing agreement. Also worth noting that the rights sharing arrangement on Sky's end is... <drumroll> ...mandated by a settlement from a previous anti-trust case!
5trokerac3 8y ago
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.
- georgespencer 8y ago
  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?
  - 5trokerac3 8y ago
    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.
    - georgespencer 8y ago
      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.
xrmagnum 8y ago
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?
- georgespencer 8y ago
  I use Spotify on my Apple Watch all the time. But there isn't the particular integration which Spotify wants: you can't store music on it.
- spac 8y ago
  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
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
    Apple has a monopoly on iOS devices, just like MS had on the PC.
  - Mindwipe 8y ago
    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.
laumars 8y ago
> 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.
- sib 8y ago
  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.
  - laumars 8y ago
    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.
    - ric2b 8y ago
      Lots of Android phones have unlocked bootloaders and it's easy to sideload apps without rooting/jailbreaking.
      - laumars 8y ago
fauigerzigerk 8y ago
>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. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-to-break-up-apple.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-t...
alanfranz 8y ago
> Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible? Because Apple+Android = de facto monopoly.
- tontonius 8y ago
  Technically that's called a duopoly.
  - alanfranz 8y ago
    Agreed.
endorphone 8y ago
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.
dalbasal 8y ago
~~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.
jdietrich 8y ago
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law#Abuse_of_dominance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law... http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm
- Mindwipe 8y ago
  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).
- georgespencer 8y ago
  > I think you're wrong Hmm! What about? > 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?
joeblau 8y ago
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. [1] - https://stratechery.com/2018/antitrust-the-app-store-and-apple/ https://stratechery.com/2018/antitrust-the-app-store-and-app...
hokumguru 8y ago
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.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  yeah... not mentioned on Spotify's timeline either. 2016
  - joshstrange 8y ago
    That's because they twisted the facts like crazy. They might have had a good argument before they got greedy.
aklemm 8y ago
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.
intellix 8y ago
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?
m-p-3 8y ago
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.

pedroaraujo 8y ago

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.

georgespencer 8y ago
> 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.)
- pedroaraujo 8y ago
  > 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.
  - georgespencer 8y ago
    > 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.

Blackbeard_ 8y ago

RE: Football 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.

georgespencer 8y ago
That's a really great point which I hadn't considered! Thanks.
Mindwipe 8y ago
> Until they entered into a rights sharing agreement. Also worth noting that the rights sharing arrangement on Sky's end is... <drumroll> ...mandated by a settlement from a previous anti-trust case!

5trokerac3 8y ago

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.

georgespencer 8y ago
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?
- 5trokerac3 8y ago
  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.
  - georgespencer 8y ago
    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.

xrmagnum 8y ago

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?

georgespencer 8y ago
I use Spotify on my Apple Watch all the time. But there isn't the particular integration which Spotify wants: you can't store music on it.
spac 8y ago
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
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  Apple has a monopoly on iOS devices, just like MS had on the PC.
- Mindwipe 8y ago
  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.

laumars 8y ago

> 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.

sib 8y ago
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.
- laumars 8y ago
  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.
  - ric2b 8y ago
    Lots of Android phones have unlocked bootloaders and it's easy to sideload apps without rooting/jailbreaking.
    - laumars 8y ago

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

>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. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-to-break-up-apple.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/sen-elizabeth-warren-wants-t...

alanfranz 8y ago

> Why do I have to allow you to develop software for my proprietary hardware, just because it's technically possible? Because Apple+Android = de facto monopoly.

tontonius 8y ago
Technically that's called a duopoly.
- alanfranz 8y ago
  Agreed.

endorphone 8y ago

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.

dalbasal 8y ago

~~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.

jdietrich 8y ago

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law#Abuse_of_dominance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law... http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm

Mindwipe 8y ago
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).
georgespencer 8y ago
> I think you're wrong Hmm! What about? > 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?

joeblau 8y ago

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. [1] - https://stratechery.com/2018/antitrust-the-app-store-and-apple/ https://stratechery.com/2018/antitrust-the-app-store-and-app...

hokumguru 8y ago

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.

dwighttk 8y ago
yeah... not mentioned on Spotify's timeline either. 2016
- joshstrange 8y ago
  That's because they twisted the facts like crazy. They might have had a good argument before they got greedy.

aklemm 8y ago

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.

intellix 8y ago

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?

m-p-3 8y ago

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.