Spotify Wants Users to Circumvent The iTunes App Store

In case you didn’t know this, but Apple charges developers a 30% cut for in-app purchases. This has resulted in services and apps such as ComiXology to remove its in-app purchase system in favor of purchasing via the web instead to avoid giving Apple the cut. It is also why Spotify has recently started to tell its users to circumvent the iTunes App Store.

Subscribing to Spotify Premium only costs $9.99, but the price is listed at $12.99 on the iTunes App Store because Spotify had to raise the price just to cover the 30% cut. We’re sure that some users probably weren’t aware of this which is why the company has recently sent out an email to its users, telling them if they were to subscribe via Spotify’s website, they could save themselves $3 a month on a Premium subscription.

We doubt that this is a coincidence given that Apple Music was launched recently and if the reports are accurate, it seems that many Spotify users have decided to jump ship to Apple Music, which is why the company is sending this email out now instead of previously where it had plenty of time to inform users about the difference in price.

In any case we suppose this doesn’t really change anything since it will probably just end up affecting those who didn’t already know about the “cheaper” non-iTunes subscription, but in case you are one of the people who are spending $12.99 a month, you might want to cancel your subscription on iTunes and start subscribing directly via Spotify’s website.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Audio, Cellphones, Tablets
Tags: Apple Music, Apps, itunes app store, Music, Spotify