Don't forget that it is a symbiotic environment. Spotify needs to be on the Apple ecosystem as it is massive and Apple needs to have Spotify in its ecosystem be

Don't forget that it is a symbiotic environment. Spotify needs to be on the Apple ecosystem as it is massive and Apple needs to have Spotify in its ecosystem because that's what the users want. As for payments, they all follow the same scheme more or less and redistribute about 70% of the revenue to the rightholders. If the services are priced the same, it's exactly the same for artists. The big difference is that Spotify has a permanent free tier, which admittedly makes less money short term, but it is driving acquisition of premium users faster than any other methods. The alternative being no revenue, it's just fine. Apple on the same topic doesn't care about razor thin margins on this product, or even losses. They are a hardware vendor, so as long as they still sell their devices, they will be fine.