Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek is no stranger to criticizing Apple and the App Store to anyone who will listen. This time around, Ek has published a new op-ed in the Daily Mail with some of his most poignant criticism of Apple yet.
The argument? Ek says that he wouldn’t be able to launch Spotify in 2023 because “Apple is a barrier to innovation.”
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The op-ed in the Daily Mail comes as Ek continues to do a press tour across the United Kingdom lobbying for the passage of the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Bill. This bill, which is currently in consideration by parliament, would force Apple to make significant changes to the App Store.
Ek opens his piece this month by recounting the first days of launching Spotify 15 years ago in the UK:
I distinctly remember sitting in our makeshift London office when we first launched and the early data coming in showed that listeners couldn’t get enough of the UK artist Coldplay.
Just months later, the band were the first UK artists to reach over 1 million monthly streams. Today the love for British exports has only grown.
Fast forward to modern times, however, Ek says that the landscape has changed significantly. The “power” has become “concentrated in the hands of a select few.,” a change that “undermines the internet’s original promise of being an open, democratic platform.”
Apple and Google are not just players, they are the rule-makers and gatekeepers of the mobile internet, controlling how more than five billion global consumers interact online,” Ek writes. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a solution making its way through Westminster that could alter the trajectory of a country I have long admired.”
As you’d expect, Ek portrays Apple has one of those ultra-powerful players, and outlines three ways Apple can address the problems. “This is not a complicated issue and our asks of Apple are simple,” he says.
1) Eliminate the tax and play fair. Spotify has to pay 30 per cent for every new subscriber who wants to sign up via the App Store, which Apple’s music service doesn’t have to pay, making it impossible for us to be price-competitive against it. And at every turn, Apple biases its own service.
2) Alternatively, allow other app stores or alternative download methods, which already exist on Apple computers where we’re not held hostage to that 30 per cent fee. Offering other payment methods would make the marketplace genuinely competitive.
3) Allow Spotify to communicate to our customers about cheaper alternatives, key updates or new deals they could benefit from inside of our app.
The overarching argument is nothing we haven’t heard from Ek before. Apple, of course, has voiced its opposition to the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Bill in the UK, and similar pieces of legislation such as the Digital Markets Act in the EU. Apple accuses these bills of being “anti-innovation” and subjecting users to privacy and security concerns.
“I launched Spotify in the UK 15 years ago,” Ek’s headline for the op-ed says. “But I fear I couldn’t do that today because Apple is a barrier to innovation.”
You can read the full article from Ek on the Daily Mail website.
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