In a nutshell, the music streaming company has publicly expressed its displeasure with the Silicon Valley giant, publicly lashing out at Apple over its controversial 30% App Store fee for in-app digital service transactions.
Here’s the backstory: Spotify refused to let Apple charge up to 30%. That means the company can’t sell audiobooks in its iOS app, a business it’s trying to break into. Instead, Spotify has proposed three workarounds it believes are in line with Apple’s policy. But they were all ultimately rejected after a review of the App Store, forcing the company to essentially give up on offering its customers a way to buy audiobooks within the iOS app.
For potential book buyers, the effect is obvious. Scrolling through Spotify’s library of audiobooks and tapping on a selected book, iOS users will get a message: “Want to listen? You can’t buy audiobooks in the app. We know it’s not ideal.”
While Spotify doesn’t have real leverage to force Apple to accept its workaround for in-app sales of audiobooks, it’s using the skirmish to attack Apple in the media and focus on 30% of the company’s apps, which It has long been criticized by streaming media and other industries.
“We are talking about this because it is reflective of Apple’s anti-competitive practices across the board,” Harry Clarke, deputy general counsel and Spotify’s chief competition lawyer, said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that it’s important for the company to raise the issue in the media because Spotify users may not understand why the audiobook experience in the iOS app So cumbersome, adding that many users “don’t know” the company’s back and forth with Apple.
For its part, Apple isn’t directly targeting Spotify with a PR campaign. The company filed a general statement about its dispute to CNN, saying “reader apps have no problem adding audiobook content,” but that Spotify’s approach to in-app purchases violated its rules.
Spotify’s public war with Apple is part of a larger trend of other big tech companies targeting the iPhone maker. Mark Zuckerberg has also blasted Apple’s iMessage security features, arguing his WhatsApp is more secure. Amid Twitter owner Elon Musk’s much-publicized spat with Apple, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has again criticized the company, particularly over the fees developers must pay to gain access to the App Store.
And that public pressure is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Spotify said it plans to continue to publicly press Apple on the matter. “We are going to continue to amplify this issue,” Clarke said, “to help people understand the negative impact Apple’s policies are having.”
Spotify filed the aforementioned EU antitrust lawsuit in early 2019 as part of a years-long dispute, followed by a lawsuit called the Coalition for App Fairness in September 2020.
Spotify and Apple Music have long been rivals, not to mention Spotify has also expanded the audiobook market. Although there have been no new disputes recently, the contradictions between the two parties still exist. If there is a new farce, we will share it with you as soon as possible.
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