Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

Note to the people asking why this matters:<p>Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it&#x27;s okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors&#x27; app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you <i>and your lawyers</i> for wasting the court&#x27;s time proclaiming X...and then legally bar you from asserting X in those proceedings, or related proceedings.<p>Courts are generally okay with some form of alternative arguments, (i.e., I didn&#x27;t do Y, but if I did Y it was legal for me to do so), but they absolutely will not accept <i>contradictory</i> arguments by the same party (It&#x27;s okay for me to do Z but I won&#x27;t allow others to do Z in the same situation).

It&#x27;s very relevant to note that Google Play&#x27;s terms around in-app billing[1] are <i>far</i> more liberal than Apple&#x27;s.<p>&gt; Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment. Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases:<p>&gt; Payment is solely for physical products<p>&gt; Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players).<p>That second note is critical here and the example quite literally describes the exact situation here as an exemption.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;monetization-ads&#x2F;payments&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;monetization-ads&#x2F;payments&#x2F;</a>

I really don&#x27;t understand why people are defending Apple on this. It seems shameful of a $1.5 trillion company to do this to developers. Even more so when they themselves don&#x27;t abide by their philosophy. They are extracting out a competitive advantage from this on other services like Spotify or Netflix( even without this they have a big one at app discovery and pre installs on iOS). Kudos to Google for allowing the developer to choose the app store&#x2F;payment method.<p>Are you guys really fine with living in a world where one&#x2F;two companies own everything you consume? This sounds like an antithesis to the hacker culture I would associate at least HN crowd with.

People keep writing about businesses like they are surprised they aren&#x27;t moral entities with consistent moral logic. Businesses take whatever action or position they can to maximize their results. The more power the business has, the more they can leverage that power to get what they want. This should just be the default assumption at this point and we should talk about if that is ok for society, not keep feigning surprise at the offense of the day.

Boycott WWDC everyone. Trillion Dollar companies don&#x27;t play by the fair rules.<p>Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google Play&#x27;s 30% cut. Apple has accused Match, Epic, and Spotify of wanting a &#x27;free ride&#x27; while taking one themselves.

Slight thread hijack. I believe Apple deserves all the developer backlash it&#x27;s currently receiving, I hope it helps them turn themselves around. I say that as someone who actually enjoys using and developing for the platform(s). What would it take to get them to take notice of these issues? Mass app store strike? Can a sizable group of developers push app store updates with a blank screen and some demands laid out? It doesn&#x27;t (and won&#x27;t) even need to get past app store review for someone to take notice, get some high profile players on board who have a beef with Apple already (Basecamp, Spotify)... Or pull their apps altogether?

Given the strong emotions around the topic, I&#x27;ve been a bit afraid to ask this question - is what Apple does really that different than traditional retail? In FMCG there are difficult hurdles to jump over to get on the store shelves. The stores don&#x27;t have an obligation to put anyone&#x27;s product on the shelf. They can also module what the cut of the revenue is. I&#x27;m not sure I have an opinion on what Apple is doing, but isn&#x27;t it worth asking if it&#x27;s really that unique in the economy? I welcome feedback on if I have a major blind spot here.

Is there a better source for this?<p>A screenshot and an indignation comment (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23564731" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23564731</a>) are poor initial conditions for a thread, but this thread seems to be doing well despite that, so I don&#x27;t think we need to demote this submission, but it would be better to find an article to change the URL to.

Something that they don’t allow Spotify to do on their own platform - how convenient!

Honestly this seems like an irrelevant counterargument.<p>Google sets its own policies for its own app store. If Google approved this, all it means is Google approved it.<p>Apple similarly sets its own policies for <i>its</i> own app store. It&#x27;s totally free to set <i>totally different</i> policies, and disapprove of things that Google approves.<p>I still think Apple&#x27;s policies have <i>huge</i> problems, but this particular example is apples and oranges, unfortunately.

The rich irony of this being that Apple has been cracking down on this behavior in the App Store. There was just a segment on it this morning on CNBC from the BaseCamp founder.

I&#x27;m really having a hard time wrapping my head around why this is such a huge deal to people. Opinions are fine, everyone can have one but I always see Apple&#x27;s payment options as a massive win as a consumer.<p>1. Subscriptions are easily monitored from a single page.<p>2. Before subscriptions renew I get emailed, not all services do this, shame on those that do not and a magic renewal transaction goes through without notifying you first<p>3. Trusting a single entity (Apple) with payment is easier for me to stomach than giving my credit card info to a dozen or more different sites&#x2F;services manually<p>4. The user experience is vastly better using Apple&#x27;s solution than having to enter all of my billing info by hand each time or with Bitwarden even which can get things wrong often enough I always have to double check.<p>As a developer you gain the advantage of users being able to easily purchase, and users have a credit card assigned to their Apple ID making purchases incredibly easy. I&#x27;d argue, without proof anyway, that this probably results in purchases you&#x27;d never get otherwise due to how easy and seamless it is.<p>The 30% cut is a lot, but I think in general there are big benefits for users, maybe the developers don&#x27;t see it that way, but as a user I would NEVER use something other than Apple&#x27;s payment solution in the App Store. So if you&#x27;re asking for that option and I seen you were charging more for it through Apple&#x27;s solution and less through some other service I&#x27;d immediately not pay for your app. Simple as that. You&#x27;d basically lose me as a potential customer.<p>Edit: because apparently line breaks are fun

This looks like the free market at work to me.<p>Google policy explicitly permits apps like Apple Music to charge for subscriptions <i>outside</i> the App Store and for them to not allow taking subscription payment through the App Store.<p>Apple has a similar policy for “Reader” apps on their own App Store for apps which are used to access content that you subscribe to, which Apple reasons that “Hey” does not qualify for. That’s why Spotify and Netflix don’t pay 30% to Apple for their subscribers.<p>So I find this “gotcha” wrong on two levels. First, it isn’t inconsistent because Apple and Google are perfectly free to set policies on their own stores, and secondly, in fact they have similar policies for music subscription apps on both stores.<p>If app makers find the Android policy preferable, more app makers will choose to develop for Android and their ecosystem could be better of for it. In fact it doesn’t work that way because due to a combination of demographics and possibly software usability factors, users spend about 50% more money on the Apple’s store than on Google’s.

Could someone give more context? The screenshot isn&#x27;t telling that much...

In these discussions, the focus seems to be on the cost to Apple for providing App Store as a service (billing, fraud prevention, tax compliance, etc.). However, presumably there is a reasonable argument to make that developers should compensate Apple for creating iOS itself as a platform. There are many platform capabilities developers argue for as a fundamental right. Spotify has said Apple must make Siri extensible for voice control, others have wanted SPI to be API. All this work is meaningful investment, both financial and technical.<p>Are there proposals for a more incentive aligned business model for Apple as a platform provider? Would it make sense for Apple to, e.g., charge a percentage of all of Tile&#x27;s hardware sales? After all, Apple dedicates resources to maintain the location and bluetooth APIs Tile depends on. Is it sufficient to say all these benefits must be capitalized into the cost of an iPhone purchase? But what about the customer who&#x27;s overpaying for Tile&#x27;s theoretical support who never uses the product itself? Maybe a better business model would lead to a world where there is less speculation ahead of WWDC: the developer&#x27;s needs and Apple&#x27;s finances are so aligned that we can guarantee the new support they&#x27;re ready to announce!

We need to stop using android and iOS and move to pinephone and librem

I don&#x27;t understand what the screenshot is trying to convey.

What&#x27;s the corresponding deal for Google Music on iOS?

If there’s one thing missing from digital music services like Apple Music, it’s the ability to quickly learn more about a song or album without leaving the Music app. With physical media, these sorts of details were relatively easy to find via liner notes and cover booklets, but the information has never been integrated well into the &lt;a href=&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joshdriod.com&#x2F;waptrick&#x2F;&quot;&gt;Apple" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joshdriod.com&#x2F;waptrick&#x2F;&quot;&gt;Apple</a> Music service&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;.

Why are people still defending Apple even after all these obvious examples surfaced?<p>Spotify definitely explained it the best. timetoplayfair.com<p>The current status quo needs to change, Apple and Google are duopols, and they need to be reeled in.<p>Imagine if you were a mobile developer and overnight Google accidentally banned you without reason. Your entire life is thrown upside down, and you don&#x27;t have a way to fix it except accepting it like you aren&#x27;t worth anything.

Cant everyone do the Netflix &quot;trick&quot;? Or will small players get banned for it?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcmag.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;netflix-doesnt-pay-apples-ios-tax-anymore" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcmag.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;netflix-doesnt-pay-apples-ios-tax...</a>

For context: This seems directly related to the discussion that went on with the Hey iOS app yesterday: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23552760" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23552760</a>

And the funny thing is that this very thing would not be allowed in Apple&#x27;s App Store.

I would love to see the help article that references this image. Hot-linking the image is interesting but without the context of the help page I don&#x27;t know what to think. Anyone have a link, screenshot or wayback machine?

Google allows sideloading apps, I can go to a website, download an app without going near the play store. Apple does not allow apps to be installed without going to The official app store

Good. The fact that all of these marketplaces take a 30% draw is egregious. The hypocrisy is almost inconceivable when Apple demands 30% of my revenue, but they&#x27;re intolerant when Google wants exactly the same thing from them. Apple would kick my app out of their store if I did that.<p>I say &quot;good&quot; because hopefully this is the first major crack in this racket. As Apple has now admitted, a marketplace is not worth a 30% cut. I hope this helps build an Antitrust case against Apple, Google, Amazon, etc for the outrageous rake they&#x27;re taking in their marketplaces.

So developers need to follow Apple&#x27;s rules in the App Store but they can&#x27;t be bothered to follow Google&#x27;s rules in their store. Crazy

hypocrite much?

I want to see Basecamp&#x27;s team faces right now

@dang Other submissions related to Apple and Hey are not sticking to the front page (or within the top 50 submissions) even though they are highly trafficked in terms of upvotes and comments. Could you please explain why this is happening? I want to believe I&#x27;m mistaken here but it seems like they&#x27;re being nuked to prevent discussion on the topic (perhaps because it veers towards being critical of Apple).

Isn&#x27;t taking payment this way against the terms of one or both of the app stores?

So Google takes a 30% cut? Meaning, Apple’s cut is the market rate?

The roles of arrogance and loophole finding has changed recently. Apple (2020) has become Microsoft (1998) and Microsoft (2020) has become Apple (1998).

Apple&#x27;s attorneys were the first parties queried before this strategy was attempted or implemented.<p>Apple implemented the strategy. QED They&#x27;re not worried.

My house, my rules, your house my rules

Wait, doesn&#x27;t this demonstrate collusion? The two predominant mobile platforms have conspired to exclusively reduced pricing.

Who cares.

In the kindle app on iPad, it is not possible to buy kindle books. Apple only allows shopping via it&#x27;s own payment schemes, presumably so that they can take the cut.<p>In that light, it seems rather funny that they do that on Android. Maybe it is their way of saying &quot;see, you should be more restrictive&quot;.

Biggest oof

Unless google has a similar rule, which states DIY in app purchase solutions aren&#x27;t allowed, I dont see what&#x27;s the fault of Apple here? What kind of a business wants to give away free money? I don&#x27;t see hypocrisy unless they&#x27;re breaking TOS.

Agree with comments. Apple is about shareholder value, like it or not. They are not a non-profit agency.

I don&#x27;t understand why people are putting moral dimensions on this business conflict. If you don&#x27;t like Apple&#x27;s platform or business practices, don&#x27;t use it. All the users and developers are there by choice. Their alternatives were worse.<p>And Apple didn&#x27;t <i>make</i> them worse. I was active in the mobile development world starting in 1999. It was awful.<p>Would I like it if Apple took a lower cut? Sure. I would prefer a 5% cut.<p>Do I want world&#x27;s governments coming in and imposing more terms on these markets? No. Businesses respond to the expressed preferences of consumers and other businesses, whereas world governments have, in practice, far weaker accountability mechanisms.