Time To Ship
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Nuclear option

Nuclear option

Spotify crushes its flow, Musk brings his firing squad, Google Cloud likes web3

Amol Avasare
October 28, 2022

The bird is free! After carrying a porcelain sink into Twitter HQ just so he could drop a "Let that sink in" pun, Elon Musk now officially owns Twitter. He's wasted no time, already firing Twitter's CEO, CFO, and several other senior leaders. Time to grab the popcorn and see what comes next 🍿

Wait... They shipped what!?

Spotify nuked their iOS audiobook purchase flow to comply with App Store rules.

Backstory: Spotify had shipped a novel flow to avoid Apple's 30% tax - hiding audiobook prices, and emailing users a purchase link when they wanted to buy a book.

Apple initially approved the flow but when Spotify submitted optimizations, Apple went rogue and rejected the entire flow.

Details: Spotify's new purchase screen is tragic - it just says "You can't buy audiobooks in the app. We know, it's not ideal".

Spotify also launched an entertainingly snarky landing page throwing shade at Apple.

Why it matters: It's high stakes for Spotify as they've bet big on audiobooks. Spoken word content has higher margins than music, but not if Tim Cook takes a giant bite.

This situation shows how Apple kills competition. As Spotify, you either avoid in-app purchases (but most users are on mobile), or you pay the 30% tax (but Apple Books sells audiobooks in-app without paying the tax). Not fun.

Having said that, Spotify should have expected this outcome. The same treatment applies to the likes of Audible, and Apple's rules are clear - "reader" apps can facilitate external payments for subscriptions, but not for in-app purchases.