Spotify Criticises Apple One Subscription Plans, Calls It Anti-Competitive

Spotify openly criticized its rival firm Apple on its new platform that enables its subscribers to manage their services prudently, the subscription bundle as all in one rather than splitting into bits as usual. Spotify, a Swedish firm strictly for streaming music claims that the Apple abused its prominent position as the leader in the tech industry. Spotify also claims that the new apple all in one platform called Apple One was established in order to give Apple Music an unfair advantage.

Spotify seems to be speaking for other music streaming rivals such as Tidal, Deezer, Amazon, SoundCloud, Sony, Pandora, and many others, saying that the new Apple One platform is unhealthy for its rivals. Spotify and Apple usually charge $10 per month as  subscription for their music streaming services, but the new apple all in one subscription platform costs $15 per month which enables access to enjoy its other services such as video games, television, and streaming music for just $15 a month.

Spotify, aiming at creating awareness to the public seeking the attention of the authorities in charge of keeping competition amongst the firm in check. The music streaming firm said, “we call on competition authorities to act urgently to restrict Apple’s anticompetitive behavior, which, if left unchecked, will cause irreparable harm to the developer community and threaten our collective freedoms to listen, learn, create and connect.”

In reply to the complaint made by Spotify, Apple said that the new all in one subscription platform has terms and conditions applied to it. The objective of the new subscription platform is strictly for the existing subscribers of its services. Apple explained further saying that their new customers can also benefit from their services in the discovery of its alternative Apple services.

Spotify has over 138 million paying subscribers compared to Apple Music’s 56 million and was the first in the industry to hit the number but it looks like the new Apple One may be brining the competition to the Swedish music streaming giant. But Apple One makes sense as Apple increases its push into the services area considering a slight slump in the number of iPhones it ships each year. Apple isn’t the only one looking to consolidate its services. Take Google for example, YouTube Premium gives you access to YouTube Music premium as well. Amazon offers about the same bundle on some of its services too so now it’s left to the authorities to decide whether Apple’s actions are anti-competitive or not.

But just like what social media companies have been doing for year where each takes a new feature if the rival and tries to perfect it to take on the other is well pronounced, Music streaming can’t be an exception. The primary objective of every business is to crush its competitors.

Apple One is basically set up to further make Apple’s vast number of services accessible to many. But Spotify has another hidden problem and this is accessibility. While you can only access Spotify in about 92 countries, Apple Music can be accessed in over 160 nations with Apple One looking to launch in over 100 countries and regions over the next one year