Spotify boss warns of price rises in Apple antitrust dispute
Daniel Ek says music-streaming service could have ‘no other choice’ in face of App Store’s 30% fee
Spotify will raise prices if Apple continues to charge it a 30 per cent fee for using the App Store, the music-streaming service’s chief executive has said.
Daniel Ek said in an interview with the Financial Times on Thursday: “You can see us having no other choice than to accept the 30 per cent fee put in place, which essentially would mean we would have to raise our prices for consumers all over the world.
“Apple [would get] an unfair benefit of being able to compete at much lower prices,” he added. “I obviously think our service is superior to theirs, but a 30 per cent price difference is a lot.”
This week, the music-streaming service filed an EU antitrust complaint, alleging that the iPhone maker had behaved unlawfully and abused its App Store dominance to favour its own Apple Music service.
In its complaint, Spotify said that since 2011, Apple had required that all iPhone app makers exclusively used the tech giant’s payment system. Apple has also introduced a 30 per cent fee, applying to Spotify and all other digital content providers, for using the Apple payment system, while other apps, such as Uber and Deliveroo, are not subject to the fee.
Mr Ek’s latest comments are the culmination of a long-running battle between the two companies, which the chief executive said became “untenable” a year ago.
“At that time we said, what are our true options here? We have no other options but to raise our prices, because Apple’s not giving us a choice when we can’t compete fairly.”
He added that leaving the App Store was not a realistic choice for Spotify, or “any competing internet service in this day and age”.
Mr Ek’s rebuke of his chief rival comes less than two weeks before Apple is set to make its biggest push into media in years, with a lavish event expected to kick off a video streaming service to rival Netflix.
Spotify, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange last year, has previously rejected calls from investors to raise prices as it sought to add subscribers quickly. Apart from a test in Norway last year, Spotify has kept to a standard $10 a month, or €10, for a premium subscription in the US and Europe, its two largest markets.
Last year, Barry McCarthy, Spotify’s chief financial officer, said the idea of raising prices was “one of the really dumb questions I get”.
On Thursday, Mr Ek declined to estimate the financial damages suffered by Spotify as a result of Apple’s alleged anti-competitive behaviour, but said the company “would have been way better off” without Apple’s restrictive policies.
While Spotify remains the global leader in music streaming by a wide margin, Apple recently overtook Spotify’s subscriber count in the US, where the iPhone dominates.
Earlier on Thursday, the Spotify chief had launched a blistering attack on Apple’s business practices in a speech to a conference of antitrust experts in Berlin.
“We worked hard to meet their rules and guidelines, even though, over time, they became more and more extreme — to the point of being ridiculous. What initially felt like a mutually beneficial partnership increasingly felt very one-sided.”
Apple, he said, “shouldn’t be permitted to impose restrictions that break the law and cause consumers harm in the process, for the sole purpose of disadvantaging competitors”.
Mr Ek added: “It’s like inviting you to a match on our ping pong table and then forcing you to play blindfolded while we change the rules throughout the game. No one here would think that’s fair.”