Spotify has gone on the attack again against Apple, returning to its now-familiar accusations of anticompetitive practices.
A blog post from Spotify’s chief public affairs officer Dustee Jenkins criticised regulators and policymakers for what her company sees as a slow response to complaints from Spotify and others.
“While we are finally seeing some momentum in Europe, there has not been enough progress worldwide,” wrote Jenkins.
“Apple has continued to enjoy—and profit from—the status quo while everything else in the world has seemingly advanced forward. In the absence of meaningful government action, Apple gets a free pass to do whatever it pleases and consumers are paying the price.”
The post also focuses on Spotify’s audiobooks feature, which launched in 2022 with a fiddly system that involved buying audiobooks a la carte from Spotify’s website, before being able to listen to them within its app.
“Apple stood in the way and our engineers were forced to create a complicated, multi-step process for audiobooks that users don’t want or deserve,” wrote Jenkins. “It was a subpar experience, that honestly, we were embarrassed to deliver but felt bullied into.”
The post summarises some of the legislation and regulation that Spotify is hoping will crack down on Apple, including Europe’s Digital Markets Act, the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers bill, and the US’s Open App Markets Act.
However, not everything has gone Spotify’s way. Earlier this year, the European Commission narrowed the scope of its investigation into Apple – a probe originally launched in response to Spotify’s complaints.
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