Then people will use Apple Music which is exactly the leverage Apple has. Apple let Spotify test the market of music streaming. Entered the market at basically the same price. Then charges Spotify 27% to compete with them directly.
They certainly haven't leveraged that supposed leverage, since Apple Music doesn't even come close to Spotify from a usability standpoint. I'd wager most people would stick to Spotify in that case, were I a betting man.
No, the ruling is that they have to pay the commission within 7 days of a subscription/payment occurring via a link in an app distributed on the app store.
There's no way around it. The only way around it is if the user naturally finds/discovers the link to subscribe to a service via another method outside of the app itself. If the act of subscribing happened via clicking a link in the app, the commission must be paid.
If they go to the browser themself - without clicking a link in the app - to subscribe, then no commission has to be paid. However, if they clicked a link from within the app itself to subscribe then they must pay the commission, even if the payment eventually happened from within a browser.
In other words, no matter how the subscription/payment happened, if it originated from within the app (whether via a link to an external site or via apples payment system) you must pay a commision.
It's not a store, though. It's a phone. People generally don't shop at establishments they already paid for. Even if they did, it wouldn't be an apt analogy because other stores can't sell that same item anyways.
So with that in mind, it's more like paying for an apartment where you have to order your groceries and furniture over Apple's room service. When other businesses want dial-out functionality, Apple taxes them 27% of the transaction to enter the building. When you offer to walk outside and help accept the delivery, Apple locks the doors on you and tells you to buy a second apartment. Enough people have bought these apartments (and like them) that they want to change the bad door policy but keep the posh interior. Now Apple wants to play the victim despite claiming an ample 40% profit margin every time someone buys a room.
I don't think that's a good analogy because in this scenario only one store can even exist in the first place.
Would you be okay with Apple taking 30% from food ordering app companies when making orders through an Iphone? Because it's basically the exact same thing they're doing here.
Right, if a user subscribes via app it uses Apple’s payment system and Apple is paying merchant processing fees, vs if they subscribe directly with Spotify they handle processing fees, chargebacks, support etc.
The ~30% was relatively reasonable when the App Store launched with most transactions being $0.99 one-time purchases, but isn’t very equitable for things like $15/mo subscriptions.
The playlist moat is deep at Spotify. Between ease of building playlists, sharing playlists, following playlists, and the "fresh finds" playlists that Spotify creates, it's tough to compete. I don't think very many people are going to go through that transition for a couple of bucks.
A playlist moat doesn't sound like a real thing. I don't know how the average user uses Spotify but aside from the playlist that Spotify generates, all the music I like goes in one massive playlist. I've never used Apple Music but if another service generated playlist for me I would just as easily listen to those.
It 100% is a real thing, I dont even really understand the opposite. Users curate lists, and even share those. I am a YT Music user and that severely cuts down on my ability to find playlists that others have created compared to spotify. When I switched to YT Music, my partner was pissseed. I had to locate and run some python scripts to run to transfer over the playlists or we were gonna be switching back. There are people who have Youtube Premium & Spotify because of their playlist/social lockin. Spotify Wrapped alone keeps people from jumping ship.
We are on opposite sides of this because playlist as as social feature is not something I can understand. However, every streaming platform has copied Spotify Wrapped. Hell, Steam sends me a Spotify Wrapped type email about the games I played at the end of the year now.
