Streaming Beef: Spotify Says Apple Abuses iOS to ‘Squash Competition in Music’

by Charlotte Hassan

Spotify has had enough of Apple’s anti-competitive, profit-milking, iOS abuse…

Spotify has previously thanked Apple for increasing the rate of growth in their subscriber numbers, and for helping the service reach 100 million active users.  Spotify’s Vice President Jonathan Forster previously said…

”Since Apple Music started we’ve been growing quicker and adding more users than before.  It’s great that Apple is in the game.  They are definitely raising the profile of streaming.  It is hard to build an industry on your own.”

But, despite the streaming platform thanking Apple for being in the music streaming market, it also says that the tech giant is anti-competitive. Spotify accuses Apple of adopting unfair practices for their own financial advantage, regardless of what effect this may have on other streaming services.

Well, Spotify thinks that Apple’s 30% take of the in-app iOS subscriptions, and their rule which prevents other streaming services from setting lower price options on their own websites, is completely unreasonable.

Spotify’s Global Head of Communications and Public Policy, Jonathan Prince, has now fired back with these comments…

“Apple has long used its control of iOS to squash competition in music, driving up the prices of its competitors, inappropriately forbidding us from telling our customers about lower prices, and giving itself unfair advantages across its platform through everything from the lock screen to Siri.

“You know there’s something wrong when Apple makes more off a Spotify subscription than it does off an Apple Music subscription and doesn’t share any of that with the music industry.  They want to have their cake and eat everyone else’s too.”