Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

buzzfeed.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 222 posts

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#141

Post by canuckintime »

oddevan wrote: post #60
tomdell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding something. The specific, supposed violations weren't mentioned in the article. It was just mentioned, as an aside, that Spotify claims Apple is pressuring them into forcing all iOS Spotify users through Apple's pricing scheme. If the violation were that Apple was forcing Spotify to pay Apple 30% for subscriptions, then that would be a very clear breach of the spirit of anticompetitive…

Except that's already happened. That's been the rule since the App Store was set up. And Spotify responded by having the in-app price be $13 instead of $10. Spotify's other option is to not allow signups in the app at all; I believe this is what Dropbox and Amazon do to avoid falling afoul of these rules. Spotify is trying to have it both ways here.

That's NOT been the rule since the App Store was set up. Apple added in-app purchases to the App Store in late 2009 and started enforcing it for digital goods/subscriptions in 2010. Previously developers could link and sell their own digital goods/subscriptions in the app.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#142

Post by canuckintime »

coldtea wrote: post #27
cloudjacker wrote: post #19

Apple's App Store has always been an antitrust violation waiting to happen. and by happen, I mean filed in a court. There is nothing "applied equally" to other developers. Onlookers will say developers agreed to the contract, so no sympathy, a Federal Judge on the other hand will rip that contract to shreds and take a dim view on Apple's practices. And no, Google Play's robo rejector isn't exempt.

> Apple's App Store has always been an antitrust violation waiting to happen. There's nothing "antitrust" about the App Store operation, since Apple isn't a monopoly -- it's in fact a minority player in the mobile market. (And no, you can't be a "monopoly on your own platform" -- it has to be the overall market). In fact game console manufactures (among many other fields) have historically had much more draconian res…

DOJ has already previously said the Apple's in-app purchase policy could be investigated for anti-trust violations:

https://gigaom.com/2013/08/23/in-ebook-case-doj-claims-apple...

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#143

Post by canuckintime »

tdkl wrote: post #25
dirkdk wrote: post #6

Regardless of pricing, this is Windows/Internet explorer vs. Netscape all over. Easy to see Apple introduce features tied to Apple Music that Spotify can't because it doesn't have the same control over iOS

Except Apple/iOS doesn't have the majority market share as MS did. (not that I don't despise this, just stating).

Apple/iTunes has(had?) the dominant marketshare for digital music retail in the USA

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#144

Post by markbao »

MBCook wrote: post #81
mackey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you subscribe through the iOS app, Apple gets 30% of the subscription. That 30% drops to 15% after a year. You also can't advertise signing up for the subscription outside of the app.

> You also can't advertise signing up for the subscription outside of the app. IN THE APP. This is why you can't buy kindle books in the Amazon app, because then they would have to pay the 30% tax. This is also why Amazon doesn't have links in that app to take you to a web browser where you can buy the books. But if you don't want to pay the 30% tax and you have a subscription service, you are free to charge whatever…

> I imagine if you open the Spotify app and it said that it's a subscription service and you must have a Spotify account to login and listen to music, and nothing else, the vast majority of people would figure out to check their website to sign up.

I'm not so optimistic. I'd presume a nontrivial number of people would be confused and leave a 1-star review. I can't imagine how many people are confused about how the Kindle iOS experience works.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#145

Post by canuckintime »

MBCook wrote: post #103
WayneBro wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sibling comment covers this perfectly. Which one? The one that asked if it was wrong for carriers to block updates in the first place? Right vs wrong isn't my concern here. Here is the sum of my comment: Apple used their market pressure to make carriers (and others) change. Now they're whining about somebody trying to make them change. That's all. I didn't say that I have evidence that they force carriers to do any…

I'm not a believer in the idea that breaking up an illegal monopoly by selling books under a reasonable contract the publishers came up with before Apple was involved is a criminal act on Apple's part. That case never made sense except as a way to generate headlines by attacking Apple. Amazon had a TRUE monopoly in eBooks and WAS abusing it.

Amazon had no more of a monopoly with the Kindle and eBooks than Apple did with the iPod and AAC.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#146

Post by metachor »

dr1337 wrote: post #129

If the claims made by Spotify that Apple was threatening to kick Spotify out of the AppStore for not taking down its $0.99 offsite signup promo then this is certainly more anti-competitive than MSIE vs Netscape. At least back in the day, if you didn't get Netscape installed but still wanted it, all you had to do was download the EXE file and install it. Now if Spotify were to be banned from the AppStore, how else wou…

"Now if Spotify were to be banned from the AppStore, how else would you receive its service?"

The Spotify Web Player works perfectly fine on iPhone's mobile Safari. No, it's not a native app, but it exists as an alternative delivery method for the service.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#147

Post by dandelany »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #63
dandelany wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - and it's 30%. Previously, Spotify would charge $9.99/month for a subscription through their website, or $12.99 for a subscription purchased through the iOS app, to cover this cost. In the most recent version of the iOS app, they decided to disallow in-app subscriptions entirely and push all subscriptions to the web app. IIUC this is the app update that has been blocked by Apple... (disclaimer: I work for Spotif…

>> "In the most recent version of the iOS app, they decided to disallow in-app subscriptions entirely and push all subscriptions to the web app." We should be clear about this though as doing that is not against the rules. Take the Kindle app for example. You can buy books through the Amazon website and use them in the app. Apple doesn't get a cut. Spotify can do the same thing. The issue is that there are very speci…

Thanks, this is an important point. I'm not sure exactly what Apple allows/disallows in terms of informing users about other payment options, or what Spotify is doing that would be in violation of these rules, but this is the crux of the disagreement.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#148

Post by cloudjacker »

coldtea wrote: post #27
cloudjacker wrote: post #19

Apple's App Store has always been an antitrust violation waiting to happen. and by happen, I mean filed in a court. There is nothing "applied equally" to other developers. Onlookers will say developers agreed to the contract, so no sympathy, a Federal Judge on the other hand will rip that contract to shreds and take a dim view on Apple's practices. And no, Google Play's robo rejector isn't exempt.

> Apple's App Store has always been an antitrust violation waiting to happen. There's nothing "antitrust" about the App Store operation, since Apple isn't a monopoly -- it's in fact a minority player in the mobile market. (And no, you can't be a "monopoly on your own platform" -- it has to be the overall market). In fact game console manufactures (among many other fields) have historically had much more draconian res…

anti-trust for anti-competitive practices. Nothing about a monopoly.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#149

Post by teacup50 »

coldtea wrote: post #116
teacup50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really need to revisit the purely geographic definition of a "market" when it comes to antitrust law in a digital age.

No, we really don't. The same things hold true for the non-digital age. If you open a store you can do everything you want in it (within the law of course, can't e.g. refuse to serve blacks), specify how you want it to be run, and sell or not sell whatever you like. Doesn't matter if it serves millions or billions (e.g. McDonalds), as long as there are other vendors with a large aggregated share selling the same good…

No, we really do. You simply punted on addressing what "multiple vendors" means given platform lock-in, and how that relates to traditional geographic definitions of a market.

The geographic model is based on the obvious notion that it's unreasonable to expect people to simply pack up and move to a different city to get access to a different vendor.

Given the amount of lock-in inherent in these platforms, it seems pretty clear that people can't simply drop their current platform and switch to another one just to access to a different vendor.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#150

Post by teacup50 »

scarface74 wrote: post #126
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it isn't. There is Google Play, Microsoft, Amazon, and a whole host of other app stores out there. Apple has banned all of those from iOS. It allows no third party app stores. > Remember, the market is mobile devices altogether, not just iOS devices. You cannot just tack on the word "remember" to make something an established fact. We don't know what the scope of future legal decisions will be until they're in…

Anything stopping people from buying non-Apple smart phones?

Yes. It's quite similar to what stops people from simply moving to a new city to escape a local monopoly.
Post reply on HN