It seems that we will have soap opera of the summer, and the protagonists will be Apple Music and Spotify. Maximum streaming music rivals are now locked in a war over alleged discriminatory treatment that have come to light this week, and even a Senator has been part of Spotify accusing Apple of profiting from their situation of superiority. In a way unexpected Apple has responded to these accusations of Spotify, and it has also done without biting the tongue too. You have the history below.
Spotify accuses Apple
Spotify began the war this week with a direct accusation at Apple complaining about the fact that Apple to take a percentage of all subscriptions getting Spotify give the application the App Store hurts the company’s streaming. To subscribe to a service from the application itself, Apple takes 30% of all the payments that are made.
The thing is not here, because Spotify has even accused Apple of retaining an update that the company has in the App Store to harm it and benefit to their own music, Apple Music service. Perhaps this accusation has been that has led Apple to respond in a direct and clear way.
Apple responds to Spotify
The response from Cupertino did not wait, and it has been by the counsel of the company. In a letter sent to Buzzfeed, Apple ensures that Spotify says half-truths and instills false rumors about them.
Since Spotify is in the App Store company has benefited enormously from its relationship with Apple. The application has got 160 million of downloads, getting hundreds of millions of dollars in income for the company. For this reason we do not understand why Spotify requested 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 like Spotify, Google Play Music, Tidal, Pandora, Amazon Music, or any of the other applications of music streaming that exist in the App Store.
About the so-called kidnapping update Spotify already sent to Apple and that the latter does not publish in the App Store, also Apple has given his version of the story.
Spotify sent us an update of your application on May 26, but our review teams rejected it because it breached our standards from the App Store. The new update eliminates the possibility of subscribing to the service from the application itself, and instead only includes an option to register for the service. This inscription is the way to get the e-mail address of the user, who shortly afterwards is sent an email with a link to subscribe from the Spotify website, avoiding the application integrated shopping.
Our review teams contacted with Spotify telling them what was wrong and asking them to send another update solved this problem. The 10 of June sent another new version that was violating our rules just in this same aspect.
The standard that Apple says that Spotify is violating in this new update Apple has supposedly “kidnapped” is as follows (taken from the official website of Apple):
Subscriptions from outside of our applications: subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, books, music, video and cloud storage services purchased occur outside of the apliucacion are valid. However you can not offer external links within the application itself that will enable to make the subscription from outside of the application.
I.e., Spotify can use subscriptions from outside of the application, but can do is get the email the new user through the app from the App Store, and then send you an email with a link to the subscription, eliminating also the choice so the subscription can be done from within the application.
Waiting for the next installment of the saga of the summer…
