Apple faces yet another hurdle this year.
Spotify has filed a complaint with the European Commission against the tech giant, pointing to the latter’s strict rules in its Apple App Store.
According to Spotify’s complaint, Apple’s App Store guidelines “purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience.” Apple is also said to “act as both a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers.”
One of the biggest gripes that Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, has against Apple is the 30% tax that they impose on all the apps on their app store. Since Spotify normally charges $9.99 per month, it’s forced to charge a much higher $12.99 to their customers to cover the cost of the additional tax.
Ek says in the complaint that this gives Apple an ‘unfair advantage’ since Apple Music can afford to charge only $9.99 per month. In addition to this, Apple might also apparently begin “locking Spotify and other competitors out of Apple services such as Siri, HomePod, and Apple Watch,” as time goes by.
To combat this problem, Spotify has launched the website, “Time To Play Fair,” stating that it only wants “the same fair rules for companies young and old, large and small.”
