EU: Spotify files antitrust complaint against Apple

According to a reporte from Reuters, Spotify has filed a complaint with EU antitrust regulators against Apple, saying the iPhone maker unfairly limits rivals to its own Apple Music streaming service.

Spotify, which launched a year after the 2007 launch of the iPhone, said on Wednesday that Apple’s control of its App store deprived consumers of choice and rival providers of audio streaming services to the benefit of Apple Music, which began in 2015.

“Apple operates a platform that, for over a billion people around the world, is the gateway to the internet,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “Apple is both the owner of the iOS platform and the App Store,  and a competitor to services like Spotify. In theory, this is fine. But in Apple’s case, they continue to give themselves an unfair advantage at every turn.”

One of Spotify’s complaints is that it must choose between paying the 30 percent fee that Apple imposes on purchases made through its app store — which Ek says would “artificially inflate” the price of Spotify’s premium service so that it costs more than Apple Music — or accept technical limitations imposed by Apple restricting how it can improve its app or interact with customers.