When Apple launched its music streaming service now just a year ago, Spotify ensured not feel any concern. And it seems that it was right, since they have come to double its number of paying subscribers in just a year. But yesterday we learned something interesting: Apple may be interested in buying Tidal, another music service in streaming that offers high quality sound and, most importantly, has the exclusive of some artists as Beyonce (although their jobs also come to Apple Music) or Madonna. This Yes could worry about Spotify.
Few hours before the start to circulate this rumour, Re/code had made public a letter from Spotify to Apple that complained because the Cupertino had rejected their latest update, something which, according to Spotify, had done to harm competition. But as history has at least two versions, Apple has a very different opinion and believes that they intend to violate the App Store rules and, what is worse (for them), take advantage of your application for iOS and the App Store to get new customers and add subscriptions.
Spotify want to get subscribers from your application for iOS
The problem, according to Spotify, is that Apple intends to stay with the 30% of the money gotten from your application for iOS, the same both percent paid for all applications and which may fall to 15% from the second year of subscription. On the other hand, Apple believes that Spotify must acquire customers using other routes and that the application for iOS should be only to use the service. In fact, the App Store rules are equal for all, and under the section on payments we can read the following:
3.1.1 shopping within the app: if want to unlock features or enhancements within your application (for example, subscriptions, coins of a game, a game, access to premium content or levels to unlock the full version), you must use the purchase within the application. Applications should not include buttons, links, or other summons directing the customer to a mechanism of different IAP […] purchase purchase
3.1.2. subscriptions: The autorenewal subscription should only be offered using the purchase within the application and should be used only for newspapers (such as magazines), business applications (such as enterprise, productivity, professional creation or cloud storage), multimedia applications (e.g. video, audio, voice, or share photos) and other approved services (e.g. dating, diets or meteorology) […].
Who is right? Maybe it all depends on the beholder it is. The problem of which is complaint Spotify is that Apple wins much money to its coast, but them of Cupertino have their own standards and, if like enter in its App Store, have that meet them. Apparently, Spotify would have violated one or the two previous standards, adding information (via link or a button) so that users made at your service from outside of the app and/or changing the way in which is the automatic renewal of your subscription. We’ll see how it all ends.
