Apple/Spotify battle may be resolvedĮpic Games filed a similar US lawsuit against Apple back in 2020, after the iPhone maker removed Fortnite from the App Store when the games company added a direct payment option to the app. It was signed by the CEOs and senior execs of digital organizations representing publishing, audio streaming, web software, communications, and marketplaces – including Basecamp, Deezer, and Proton. In January of this year, Spotify ramped up the pressure with an open letter addressed to the European Commission’s executive vice-president Margrethe Vestager. The commission reached a preliminary conclusion that Spotify was right, and that Apple was likely in breach of European competition law, but no ruling has yet been made. This would be impossible given the tiny margins on which streaming music services operate.Īdditionally, Apple’s App Store rules didn’t even allow the Spotify app to tell users about other ways to subscribe to the service. It said that while Apple Music can offer subscriptions within the app without any penalty, Spotify would have to give Apple 30% (or 15% from year two) of its subscription revenue if it did the same.

Spotify filed a European antitrust complaint about Apple almost exactly four years ago, claiming that Apple was giving its own streaming music service an unfair advantage over Spotify.

Reading between the lines of a brief report today, it appears that the European Commission may be heading toward a compromise ruling, which would mirror that made in the Apple vs. Some four years after the Apple/ Spotify battle began back in 2019, we may have the first indication of how the European Union will resolve the antitrust dispute.