Spotify has today come out saying that Apple is making it harder to sell audiobooks, the company’s latest offering that launched last month. The company called Apple practices “anti-competitive” and said it was “choking competition” in a blog post published just before the company revealed its earnings report on Tuesday.
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The music streaming company says that Apple’s rules make the process of buying an audiobook on Spotify “far too complicated and confusing,” adding that Apple changes its “rules arbitrarily, making them impossible to interpret.” Apple charges up to a 30 percent commission on purchases made in apps listed on the App Store and bars certain developers from using or directing users to an external payment processor.
As outlined in a webpage Spotify specifically made to support its cause, the company says Apple rejected its proposed audiobook purchasing process three times because it went against the App Store’s policies.
Apple says that Spotify’s app was “rejected for not following the guidelines regarding including explicit in-app communications to direct users outside the app to make digital purchases,” but that Apple has “no issue with reader apps adding audiobook content to their apps, linking users out to websites to sign up for services, or communicating with customers externally about alternative purchase options.”
To comply with Apple’s rules, Spotify hides the price of its audiobooks and doesn’t let users buy content in the app. Instead, you select the book you want to buy and Spotify then emails you a link to check out on the web. This makes it harder to compare prices, which you only find out about through email. Spotify says this process “harms not only consumers but, this time, also authors and publishers who now find themselves under Apple’s thumb.”
In 2019, the music streaming company filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in Europe, claiming the company is harming consumer choice by imposing its 30 percent “Apple tax.”
