This week, Apple slammed Spotify in a rare public rebuke following public claims from Spotify leadership that Apple’s treatment of them through their App Store was unfair and anticompetitive, as The Inquisitr reported previously. Spotify has now hit back, issuing a statement through a company representative to Variety .
“Every monopolist will suggest they have done nothing wrong and will argue that they have the best interests of competitors and consumers at heart. In that way, Apple’s response to our complaint before the European Commission is not new and is entirely in line with our expectations,” the company said.
The war of words has heated up recently as Spotify has continued to characterize Apple as anti-competitive and Apple has continued to criticize Spotify for continually pressuring musicians to accept less and less money in exchange for streaming rights of their work.
Spotify’s complaints have generally focused on the claim that Apple, in pursuit of promoting and growing marketshare for their own streaming service, have set out to make it substantially and deliberately difficult for other streaming platforms to do business within their “walled garden” ecosystem.
The increasing tension of the relationship poses challenges for both companies, as each benefit from the more than 300 million downloads of the Spotify app on Apple devices. Comparatively, the App Store is likely more critical to Spotify than Spotify is to Apple, but with Apple claiming a portion of every digital Spotify purchase, there is substantial revenue at stake for both companies.
Spotify calls Apple a “monopolist” slamming response to app store complaint https://t.co/e2goiniwVz pic.twitter.com/udWxp8tBxd
— billboard (@billboard) March 16, 2019
Jabs back and forth between the companies aside, there are meaningful legal proceedings underway as well. Spotify has filed a complaint with the European Commission in hopes of applying regulatory pressure on Apple through a formal review.
A Spotify representative indicated to Variety that Apple’s management of their App Store hurts competition as well as individual consumers, in some cases in violation of European law.
“This is evident in Apple’s belief that Spotify’s users on iOS are Apple customers and not Spotify customers, which goes to the very heart of the issue with Apple,” the representative said. Spotify continued on to indicate that they respect the legal process in place through the European Commission and will now await the results of their review.
They suggested that users visit Spotify’s website for more information, where there is now posted a detailed point of view on their position about competition and partnerships between companies including, but not limited to, Apple.