A few days ago, the guys from Spotify sent a letter to the European Union, in addition to create a specific web page, in which it was stated that Apple Music had a clear advantage over Spotify within the iOS ecosystem, since for example, you don't have to pay 30% to Apple for allowing users to contract their services from Apple's mobile platform.
The commission of 30%, 15% from one year on subscriptions, which is left by Apple in the last year has been a ongoing cause of controversy among many developers / services. Some of them, like Netflix or Spotify, have decided not to offer in-app purchases to avoid giving Apple a 30% commission.
A couple of days after the official complaint that Spotify has filed in the European Union, Apple has responded, through a press release in which it states that Spotify wants to take advantage of all the advantages offered by the App Store without contributing financially at any time, claiming that he has wrapped "his financial motivations in deceptive rhetoric."
Here is the full statement:
We believe that technology reaches its true potential when we infuse it with creativity and human ingenuity. From our earliest days, we've built our devices, software, and services to help artists, musicians, creators, and visionaries do what they do best.
Sixteen years ago, we launched the iTunes Store with the idea that there should be a trusted place where users discover and buy great music and every creator gets a fair deal. The result revolutionized the music industry, and our love for music and the people who make it are deeply ingrained at Apple.
Eleven years ago, the App Store brought that same passion for creativity to mobile applications. In the decade that followed, the App Store has helped create many millions of jobs, generated more than $ 120.000 billion for developers, and created new industries through businesses started and developed entirely in the App Store ecosystem.
At its core, the App Store is a safe and secure platform where users can trust the applications they discover and the transactions they carry out. And developers, from beginning engineers to large companies, can be sure that everyone follows the same rules.
This is how it should be. We want more application businesses to flourish, including those that compete with some aspect of our business, because they drive us to be better.
What Spotify is demanding is something very different. After years of using the App Store to grow your business dramatically, Spotify seeks to maintain all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem - including the significant revenue they earn from App Store customers - without making any contribution to that market.. At the same time, they distribute the music you love and make smaller and smaller contributions to the artists, musicians and composers who create it, even going so far as to take these creators to court.
Spotify has every right to determine its own business model, but we feel obligated to respond when Spotify wraps its financial motivations in deceptive rhetoric about who we are, what we have built and what we do to support independent developers, musicians, songwriters and creators of all kinds.
It must be borne in mind that Spotify is now on the stock market, so it must respond to its shareholders, they will probably have pressured it for the European Union to investigate the matter, although it seems to me that it is not the correct way and that in the end it won't get anything.
Another thing is that the European Union begins to consider whether the limitation that iOS developers have when installing applications violates free competition, by being forced all to go through the Apple ring and pay 30% of all the money generated by the application.
