It seems that we are going to have a summer soap opera, and the protagonists are going to be Apple Music and Spotify. Streaming music's top rivals are currently locked in a war over alleged discriminatory treatment that came to light this week, and a senator has even sided with Spotify accusing Apple of taking advantage of its superiority. Unexpectedly, Apple has responded to these accusations from Spotify, and it has also done so without biting its tongue too much. We tell you the whole story below.
Spotify accuses Apple
Spotify started the war this week with a direct indictment of Apple complaining that Apple takes a percentage of all subscriptions that Spotify gets from the application from the App Store hurts the streaming company. By subscribing to a service from the Apple application itself, you take 30% of all payments made.
The thing does not stay here, because Spotify has even accused Apple of withholding an update that the company has in the App Store in order to harm it and benefit its own music service, Apple Music. Perhaps this accusation has been the one that has led Apple to respond directly and clearly.
Apple responds to Spotify
The response from Cupertino has not been long in coming, and it has been through the company's lawyer. In a letter sent to Buzzfeed, Apple claims that Spotify tells half truths and spread false rumors about them.
Since Spotify has been on the App Store, the company has benefited greatly from its relationship with Apple. The app has achieved 160 million downloads, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the company. That is why we do not understand why Spotify requests an exception to a rule that we apply to all developers.
Our rules on the publication of applications in the App Store are very clear, and although we are competitors in this service, that has never been a problem in our treatment of other services such as Spotify, Google Play Music, Tidal, Pandora, Amazon Music or any other. from the other streaming music apps that exist on the App Store.
About the alleged hijacking of the update that Spotify already sent to Apple and that the latter does not publish in the App Store, Apple has also given its version of the story.
Spotify sent us an update to their app on May 26, but our review teams rejected it because it violated our App Store rules. The new update eliminates the ability to subscribe to the service from the app itself, and instead only includes an option to sign up for the service. This registration is the way to get the user's email, who is sent an email shortly after with a link to subscribe from the Spotify page, avoiding in-app purchases.
Our review teams contacted Spotify telling them what the problem was and asking them to send another update fixing this problem. On June 10, they sent another new version that continued to violate our rules in exactly this respect.
The rule that Apple says Spotify is violating In this new update that Apple supposedly has "hijacked" is the following (taken from Apple's official website):
Subscriptions from outside our applications: Subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, books, music, video and cloud storage services purchased from outside the application are valid. However, you cannot offer external links within the application itself that allow subscription from outside the application.
That is, Spotify can use the subscriptions from outside the application, but what it cannot do is get the new user's email thanks to the App Store application, and then send them an email with the link to subscribe, also eliminating the option so that the subscription can be done from within the application.
Waiting for the next installment of the summer soap opera ...
