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Addressing Spotify’s Claims

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Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#601

Post by teddyfrozevelt »

Benjammer wrote: post #596
teddyfrozevelt wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Spotify can’t even tell users how to upgrade to premium according to Apple’s rules. The best they can say is “You can’t upgrade to Premium in the app. We know, it’s not ideal.”

Right, because Apple does not want them using the App Store platform to promote, sell, and execute payment on a premium service without paying a cut of the premium price to Apple, as per their explicit platform rules.

That’s what I said in my comment, and what Spotify is arguing. They have to follow rules set by Apple that Apple doesn’t apply to Apple Music.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#602

Post by kelnos »

mediocrejoker wrote: post #476
kelnos wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Visa or MasterCard tried to charge 30% transaction fees, they'd be laughed out of the market. The problem is that you can't laugh Apple out of the market for payments on iOS devices, because they don't allow other entrants into that market.

Visa and Mastercard do actually charge 30% if you don't pay within 30 days or so. Why is that not equally laughable? Is it because they provide a service in exchange for that 30%, a service that many people are willing to pay 30% for?

I'm talking about the merchant fees, not the interest rate for cardholders. The cardholder interest rate is not at all analogous to Apple's revenue share.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#603

Post by Benjammer »

vinceguidry wrote: post #546
graeme wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did apple music price below spotify/ not familiar with the pricing history.

They used shady tactics to force them to bill through the Apple's marketplace so they could get the 30% cut, forcing Spotify to raise prices by 30% so they could maintain their revenue position. Then they released Apple Music at the $9.99 price point that Spotify was at previously. The shady tactics resumed when Spotify stopped using the App Store to bill and reduced the price to compete with Apple Music. Apple isn't…

Why does the value of Apple's App Store infrastructure and network effects always get zeroed out in the equation here? Spotify is welcome to build their own app distribution infrastructure on their own mobile hardware and charge whoever whatever they want for it and keep all the profits themselves.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#604

Post by ahmedalsudani »

lowtolerance wrote: post #365
spiderfarmer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that Apple is actively trying to prevent that. They have no right to do that and are abusing the power they have in other areas to do it.

Apple is not "actively trying to prevent" people from managing their Spotify, Netflix et al subscriptions outside of their respective iOS apps, what are you talking about?

The app literally can't send you to the Web page so you can sign up there. It has to say something vague for Apple to approve it for publishing. Here's an example from Kobo [1]. They apparently can't even tell you the domain name.

[1] http://imgs.fyi/img/7hut.png

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#605

Post by AlotOfReading »

coryfklein wrote: post #537
hellisothers wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a disingenuous argument, you have to buy a PC to develop Windows. And you have to pay $100-300 for windows, AND you have to play $600-$2500 _per year_ for Visual Studio

Your personal accusation of disingenuousness distracts from what would otherwise have been a good point. Let's see what a barebones setup costs for developing with a solid IDE on each platform: macOS: $800 Mac Mini (Apple's most affordable offering that runs macOS) $90 Acer SB220Q Monitor $FREE Xcode Total: $890 Windows: $200 Dell Inspiron 11 3000 (Most affordable Dell PC I could find being sold new) $1200 One time p…

Visual Studio Community is free. It doesn't have the fancy cloud/devops enterprise-y stuff, but it's not like Xcode does either.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#606

Post by Benjammer »

teddyfrozevelt wrote: post #601
Benjammer wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because Apple does not want them using the App Store platform to promote, sell, and execute payment on a premium service without paying a cut of the premium price to Apple, as per their explicit platform rules.

That’s what I said in my comment, and what Spotify is arguing. They have to follow rules set by Apple that Apple doesn’t apply to Apple Music.

Honest question. Internally, do you know if the Apple Music division of the business still tracks a 30% payment to the App Store division of the business? If this was the case, does that change your opinion here?

I honestly cannot see the legal footing in this whole thing to claim that Apple has any sort of obligation to be "fair" here.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#607

Post by Benjammer »

teddyfrozevelt wrote: post #561
sbuk wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is their argument, then it's pretty weak IMO.

They’ve listed all their arguments on their site www.timetoplayfair.com, although I wish some where more technically in-depth.

>I wish some where more technically in-depth

Or even just any legal depth. It's all just PR fluff speak.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#608

Post by jeremydeanlakey »

s3r3nity wrote: post #562
supernova87a wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that is a separate and good point, and very much a political one. And you can never tell with the EU. As I said in a comment far below here, it's a funny thing, how to define anticompetitive and monopoly practices, depending on how you frame the scope of the market. See Peter Thiel's book for a chapter on this. You could say that Apple has a monopoly over developers building apps and providing their services to…

I am very hard-pressed to believe iOS has a monopoly by most arguments. Market share argument: Android has 71% market share in the EU, as of February 2019 - compared to iOS's 21%. [1] Ease of customer switching argument: If Apple pressed too much in a way that harmed consumers, there are many other cheaper alternative Android phones vs. iOS to which they can easily port their number over (say what you want about ISPs…

Your argument relies on combining the markets for iOS and Android apps into a single market. These are separate markets because you can't put an Android app on iPhone or an iOS app on Android.

If iOS had 100% share, you probably wouldn't say it doesn't have a monopoly on apps because you can just use desktop apps instead.

I also wouldn't say Comcast doesn't have a monopoly because they only have xx% share and you can move to a different state or country and get another provider. Or use your phone for internet instead.

> Ease of customer switching argument

This is confusing the consumer market for smartphones and the markets for distribution of smartphone app.

> Supply-Side Price elasticity argument

Yeah, if any monopoly's cut is too high, you can exit the market. This is not an argument that the monopoly is not a monopoly. This only means there is a limit to the monopoly's power.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#609

Post by Benjammer »

detaro wrote: post #527
FireBeyond wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about how much dominance it has. It treats its own music platform differently (not subject to Apple Store fees) than any other music platform. Like Microsoft bundling/treating IE differently to any other browser on its platform.

Lots of regulations in that area are tied to market influence. The Microsoft case was about Microsoft pushing IE through their dominance in PC sales .

It feels like 99% of people are skipping over this necessary condition of Apple being a "dominant undertaking," as defined by EU law, which seems very tenuous at best, no matter how you try to frame the relevant market.

Re: Addressing Spotify’s Claims

#610

Post by teddyfrozevelt »

Benjammer wrote: post #606
teddyfrozevelt wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I said in my comment, and what Spotify is arguing. They have to follow rules set by Apple that Apple doesn’t apply to Apple Music.

Honest question. Internally, do you know if the Apple Music division of the business still tracks a 30% payment to the App Store division of the business? If this was the case, does that change your opinion here? I honestly cannot see the legal footing in this whole thing to claim that Apple has any sort of obligation to be "fair" here.

I don’t know if Apple Music has to pay 30% to Apple, but either way It wouldn’t change my opinion and I don’t think it would make a difference to the EU. It’s illegal in most places to use your dominance in one market to your advantage in another. Google got fined by the EU for doing that with Android and Chrome/other GApps. I personally think Apple should allow developers to link to an external payment system for subscriptions/iAPs if they would rather set all that up themselves, but we’ll have to wait and see what the EU decides.
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