Apple cites irrelevant Spotify subscription stats in new antitrust defense
Apple has filed its response to Spotify’s antitrust complaint in Europe, and its answer is essentially that Spotify has greatly exaggerated how much money is being taken by the App Store. Apple says that it’s currently taking a 15 percent cut of subscription fees for around 680,000 Spotify subscribers, representing 0.5 percent of Spotify’s total subscribers, and that Spotify is not paying a 30 percent cut on anything. The details were first reported by Der Spiegel.
The takeaway message is supposed to be that Spotify is blowing its complaint way out of proportion, but those small numbers don’t tell the full story — they basically don’t matter, because Spotify gave up on App Store subscriptions years ago.