It may not be a popular opinion here, but I like Spotify better than Apple Music. Like so many others have said, Spotify has better playlists and I prefer their interface to Apple's.
I don't own a HomePod or anything that ties me to AM, so I choose Spotify.
Is this satire? It’s like Sony complaining that Microsoft are releasing games on their own console.
Dominant market position? How exactly? Spotify have more customers across a wider pool of devices. iOS is the minority operating system.
The entire thing is laughable self-victimisation from a company that has shown that it will pull any lever possible rather than actually compete fairly.
Also offering bundles is not illegal. One needs to have a significant, competition-denying monopoly for leverage to be considered anticompetitive.
One needs to have a significant, competition-denying monopoly for leverage to be considered anticompetitive.
And the US Supreme Court has ruled that entertainment monopolies (like baseball, in particular) are 100% legal. As far as I can tell, music is 100% entertainment. The big US baseball league, I forget their name, used very nasty anti-competitive techniques to put a competing baseball league out of business, and the US Supreme Court actually said, "We don't care, it's only entertainment." Sounds like a joke, but it's not.
It may not be a popular opinion here, but I like Spotify better than Apple Music. Like so many others have said, Spotify has better playlists and I prefer their interface to Apple's.
I don't own a HomePod or anything that ties me to AM, so I choose Spotify.
A HomePod doesn’t tie you to AM whatsoever. It’s functioned as a standard AirPlay speaker from Day 1, and soon will offer voice commands to third-party apps...tho I rarely use voice music commands and actually prefer it as an AirPlay endpoint from my devices and Apple TV, which itself supports third-part apps like Sirius XM.
“....and threaten our collective freedoms to listen, learn, create, and connect.”
What for a nonsense is that?
Collective and freedom are in contradiction. You can never be absolutely free in a collective, because collective means there are more than one person. So you need to compromise and you need ruls. Thus, no freedom. Thus, I see panic in the actions of Spotify.
Whut? Apple reducing the prices of their services by bundling them together "will cause irreparable harm to the developer community"?! How?
If I already have those services, how can saving me $25 a month hurt other developers? If anything, it means Apple are willingly taking $25 less from me each month, and leaves me $25 extra to spend with other developers.
I guess what they're trying to say is that if I don't currently have Apple Music, but I do have 2TB iCloud storage and News+ and Apple Arcade etc., then I might be in the market for a music subscription service, and if Apple Music is only an extra $2/month then I'd be more likely to go for that as part of the Apple One bundle than Spotify at $10/month. Fair enough, but that seems to be an argument to race to the bottom.
If Apple Music is only $2/month why should I, as a consumer, be forced to pay $10/month? Why don't Spotify compete at $2/month? Or $1.49, or $0, and then everyone will use them! Because Spotify would quickly go out of business. Apple is able to charge only $2/month because the total cost of all the services in the bundle still provides them with profit, making it a profitable option. Spotify cannot drop their price because they need it as it is. This just smacks of Spotify's management being d!cks.
Whut? Apple reducing the prices of their services by bundling them together "will cause irreparable harm to the developer community"?! How?
If I already have those services, how can saving me $25 a month hurt other developers? If anything, it means Apple are willingly taking $25 less from me each month, and leaves me $25 extra to spend with other developers.
I guess what they're trying to say is that if I don't currently have Apple Music, but I do have 2TB iCloud storage and News+ and Apple Arcade etc., then I might be in the market for a music subscription service, and if Apple Music is only an extra $2/month then I'd be more likely to go for that as part of the Apple One bundle than Spotify at $10/month. Fair enough, but that seems to be an argument to race to the bottom.
If Apple Music is only $2/month why should I, as a consumer, be forced to pay $10/month? Why don't Spotify compete at $2/month? Or $1.49, or $0, and then everyone will use them! Because Spotify would quickly go out of business. Apple is able to charge only $2/month because the total cost of all the services in the bundle still provides them with profit, making it a profitable option. Spotify cannot drop their price because they need it as it is. This just smacks of Spotify's management being d!cks.
Spotify does do $0 a month which hurts Apple and artists. Except Apple isn't crying about it.
Didn't Spotify complain about in-app-subscriptions and get their way with external payments? Now they don't want Apple to bundle software? How much power over Apple does Spotify want?
Even if I was interested in Spotify, this constant whining is a total turn off. they sound like a three year old that lost a toy. "It's not fair." I can't say I'm typical, but if I'm not alone in feeling like this Spotify's continual whining might be costing them customers.
Apple releases a bundle to attract more customers. Oh my God! It’s the end of Spotify were to greedy to lower or prices in competition!
Given the state of Spotify profits, saying they are greedy would be pushing it... Most of their costs are licensing costs to the music industry (around 75%), so they're not free to lower it either.
Using a dominant position in one market to gain market share in another is usually considered bad - in particular, I guess bundling it with iCloud storage. If they just bundled it with AppleTV+ I don't think Spotify (or customers) would care.
Spotify can suck it! They actively fought against a legal agreement to pay artists more per stream, an agreement Apple supported. To this day, Apple pays artists significantly more per stream than Spotify does. Apple’s new bundles are going to save me a TON of money per year and I couldn’t be more excited. Spotify can take their anti-consumer behavior and shove it!
Spotify's gripes are mostly about having to pay 30%/15% of its subscription income to Apple for new and continuing members.
After opting out of Apple payments for acquiring new members in 2016 Spotify can only sign them up outside the Apple ecosystem (there is only a tiny share of continuing members who signed up before 2016 where Spotify pays the 15% fee to Apple). This probably puts Spotify at a disadvantage compared to Apple Music.
Spotify's complaint is the strongest pending anti-trust issue against the app store: should Apple be allowed to compete with services where they can charge their competitors up to 30%? Spotify has a much stronger case than Epic/Fortnite.
Arguably Apple One amplifies Apple's advantage - you can get storage from Dropbox and music from Spotify but in all those cases Dropbox/Spotify either have to pay a share to Apple or consumers have to figue out how to subscribe outside the app store (while not being given any hints within the iOS apps on how to accomplish this due to Apple's rules).
It will be interesting how Spotify's complaints play out in the EU and US but they do have a fairly good case (as far as anti-trust complaints go).
Apple releases a bundle to attract more customers. Oh my God! It’s the end of Spotify were to greedy to lower or prices in competition!
Given the state of Spotify profits, saying they are greedy would be pushing it... Most of their costs are licensing costs to the music industry (around 75%), so they're not free to lower it either.
Using a dominant position in one market to gain market share in another is usually considered bad - in particular, I guess bundling it with iCloud storage. If they just bundled it with AppleTV+ I don't think Spotify (or customers) would care.
Apple offering a bundle of its services for its appliance. It’s a win for Apple customers. It’s easy to manage. I buy an Apple device. Then I get Apple One. Now I can save on the cloud, listen to music, play games, watch new stuff from Apple. This is the digital service to easily make the iPhone and iPad(and Mac) more enjoyable. I’m in!
It may not be a popular opinion here, but I like Spotify better than Apple Music. Like so many others have said, Spotify has better playlists and I prefer their interface to Apple's.
I don't own a HomePod or anything that ties me to AM, so I choose Spotify.
Exactly! It’s a choice, choice involves competition and Spotify is there competing against all comers including Apple Music. Some will choose and some will stay with what they like. Spotify need to learn how to truly compete rather than cry to regulators “to protect” them and their profits. HEY EU, try making a technology platform so that Spotify can dominate.
Comments
I don't own a HomePod or anything that ties me to AM, so I choose Spotify.
Dominant market position? How exactly? Spotify have more customers across a wider pool of devices. iOS is the minority operating system.
The entire thing is laughable self-victimisation from a company that has shown that it will pull any lever possible rather than actually compete fairly.
Also offering bundles is not illegal. One needs to have a significant, competition-denying monopoly for leverage to be considered anticompetitive.
Collective and freedom are in contradiction. You can never be absolutely free
in a collective, because collective means there are more than one person.
So you need to compromise and you need ruls.
Thus, no freedom.
Thus, I see panic in the actions of Spotify.
And there are all these packages "for a low, low price of ....".
If I already have those services, how can saving me $25 a month hurt other developers? If anything, it means Apple are willingly taking $25 less from me each month, and leaves me $25 extra to spend with other developers.
I guess what they're trying to say is that if I don't currently have Apple Music, but I do have 2TB iCloud storage and News+ and Apple Arcade etc., then I might be in the market for a music subscription service, and if Apple Music is only an extra $2/month then I'd be more likely to go for that as part of the Apple One bundle than Spotify at $10/month. Fair enough, but that seems to be an argument to race to the bottom.
If Apple Music is only $2/month why should I, as a consumer, be forced to pay $10/month? Why don't Spotify compete at $2/month? Or $1.49, or $0, and then everyone will use them! Because Spotify would quickly go out of business. Apple is able to charge only $2/month because the total cost of all the services in the bundle still provides them with profit, making it a profitable option. Spotify cannot drop their price because they need it as it is. This just smacks of Spotify's management being d!cks.
Spotify does do $0 a month which hurts Apple and artists. Except Apple isn't crying about it.
I can't say I'm typical, but if I'm not alone in feeling like this Spotify's continual whining might be costing them customers.
After opting out of Apple payments for acquiring new members in 2016 Spotify can only sign them up outside the Apple ecosystem (there is only a tiny share of continuing members who signed up before 2016 where Spotify pays the 15% fee to Apple). This probably puts Spotify at a disadvantage compared to Apple Music.
Spotify's complaint is the strongest pending anti-trust issue against the app store: should Apple be allowed to compete with services where they can charge their competitors up to 30%? Spotify has a much stronger case than Epic/Fortnite.
Arguably Apple One amplifies Apple's advantage - you can get storage from Dropbox and music from Spotify but in all those cases Dropbox/Spotify either have to pay a share to Apple or consumers have to figue out how to subscribe outside the app store (while not being given any hints within the iOS apps on how to accomplish this due to Apple's rules).
It will be interesting how Spotify's complaints play out in the EU and US but they do have a fairly good case (as far as anti-trust complaints go).