Last week the news broke that Spotify, who are pretty much the leaders in music streaming is mad at Apple because of Apple’s control of the App Store. As in Spotify must bend to Apple’s will, use Apple’s payment system, and pay Apple a cut of whatever they sell. They think that’s not fair and they want it to stop. Of course the fact that Apple has it’s own competing streaming service likely doesn’t help to make things better. That’s likely why they filed a formal complaint with European regulators about Apple’s app rules. And then went on a press tour to say how bad Apple is. And created this video to sway your opinion:
Apple in turn shot back in typical Apple fashion. They put out a press release which basically turned this business dispute into some sort of moral crusade that Apple was leading on behalf of its valued users. Which to be clear this is not a moral crusade in any way shape or form despite what Apple may tell you.
But let’s be clear, this is a business dispute that has broken out into the public domain. Spotify wants to pay Apple less money and is also ticked that Apple has a competing service. Apple wants its share of the app store pie because it’s selling less iPhones and they’re shifting to “services” to make up the difference. Their respective business objectives clash with each other and here we are talking about it. Neither one of them have the moral high ground or can call themselves the Archangel Gabriel. What they really need to do is to either sue each other and get it over with, or get in a room and hash out their differences and get it over with. The world has better things to than to watch these two companies fight it out in public as the public really has nothing to gain from this.