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Spotify, the digital-music service, has notified long-time customers it will no longer support payments from Apple Inc.’s App Store for premium subscriptions.
Those customers who use the Apple service will be moved to Spotify’s free service and must transition to an alternative, such as PayPal or a credit card, for the premium service, Spotify said. Spotify stopped accepting payments through the Apple platform from new subscribers in 2016 in reaction to the tech company’s payments fee, which can range up to 30% of the transaction.
Apple’s payments platform reportedly accounts for a small percentage of the music platform’s more than 200 million paid subscribers, with just 680,000 of Spotify’s more than 100 million premium subscribers paying that way, according to a Variety.com report.
Spotify also has had issues with Google’s Play Store policy, but according to Variety.com, the two corporations reached a multiyear agreement in 2022.
Meanwhile, Apple Inc., which has also had conflicts with Epic Games over its App Store payment policies, has said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a 2021 ruling that invalidated Apple’s requirement that App Store businesses accept payments only through Apple’s platform.
The 2021 ruling meant Apple had to permit developers of applications for its App Store to tell customers that they can pay for their products and services by means other than Apple’s own payment platform.
—John Stewart contributed to this item.
