Spotify CEO reiterates rejection of App Store policies: “It's like playing blindfolded ping pong”

After years of veiled criticism here and there on the subject, the Spotify finally openly declared war Apple and the politics of App store, considered abusive and anticompetitive by the largest service of streaming the world's musical Today, the company's CEO, Daniel Ek, shared more information on the subject and the position of Spotify at a conference on business competition in Berlin. The information is from Variety.

The Swedish executive reiterated the points previously brought by Spotify, stating that Apple cannot act as the platform's owner and competitor within it.

As you know, Apple is both the owner of the iOS platform and the App Store as well as a service competitor like Spotify. In theory, there are no problems with that; In the case of Apple, however, she continues to give herself an unfair advantage at every turn by putting herself as a juza and gambler in the world of Apple. streaming of audio.

The CEO goes on to say that it is impossible for an internet company in 2019 to stay away from iOS and the only way to be on iOS by following the unfair rules of the App Store.

As we all know, the App Store is the only way to offer our services to anyone with an iPhone or iPad. That's over 1 billion people in the world, so not being on their platform is not an option for us or any contemporary digital service. Apple knows that. If we want to use Apple's payment system for our customers to upgrade to our service Premium, we need to pay the 30% fee () Meanwhile, Apple can avoid that fee and offer Apple Music at a much lower and more attractive price. This is particularly bad for a company like ours, which already pays a significant portion of its revenue to record companies and record companies.

Ek explains, then, that he has nothing against the Apple charge, but against the policies imposed by the company on Spotify (and other companies) since the service decided not to submit to it.

I am not here to defend the extinction or reduction of the rate. Based on our decision not to pay it, however, the result our customers need to upgrade to Premium elsewhere, like your computers. The problem here is that we cannot tell our customers how to upgrade. We are basically gagged and prevented from communicating with our own users about our service.

The Swede concluded by metaphorizing the ping pong tables scattered across several Spotify offices around the world, he said, placed to stimulate competitiveness among his employees. According to Ek, Apple's unfair rules are analogous to a ping-pong game where "you play blindfold and your competitor changes the rules throughout the game," in his words.

Who echoed Ek's comments was US Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who, as we have already commented, has a very drastic proposal to “break up” major technology companies so that they do not own distribution centers (like the App Store) and sell / distribute products on them at the same time. The senator told the New York Times Spotify's complaints are "just another example of what can happen when these giant companies abuse their power to undermine competition."

What are your opinions?

via MacRumors