The European Union has chosen to put its foot down according to sources Bloomberg spoke to: Apple will soon no longer have a monopoly on payment platforms for music streaming services like Spotify.
It will happen early next year
The sources who spoke to the newspaper say that Apple will have to open its doors early next year, or risk fines of up to… 10% of the total trading volume in the European Union region. This change comes after many years of controversy between Apple and the Swedish music streaming service.
Four years ago, they sued Apple for having to raise the price of the service to cover fees charged by the App Store:
“Daniel EK, CEO of Spotify, speaks for the first time about… Apple’s complaint submitted by the company to the European Union. He did so during a speech at the International Competition Congress in Berlin. The Swedish streaming giant accuses Apple of unfair competition when they demand 30 percent of all sales made in the App Store,” we reported on March 14, 2019.
In 2024, the network will change
Apple will have to open up more in 2024
It has long been easy to read into the fact that it would go this way, because the EU already believed in February that it was unnecessary for Apple to have such an arrangement, and that customers would end up paying more. In other words, Spotify customers might be able to pay for a subscription to the streaming service in the app (at most, conceivably, they would be allowed to inform users of alternatives and perhaps send them to the browser), without having to go through Apple’s own payment platform.
It has also been decided that Apple will have to open its NFC chip to alternative payment platforms as well as the company has decided to support the RCS messaging protocol from the first half of 2024. The company will likely have to allow iPhone and iPad apps to be installed outside the App Store.
This will be the new Spotify
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