[gigatexal]

Try telling the IRS you think their tax rates are too high. Apple owns the sandbox with the most valuable customers and if you want to play in it you gotta pay. Personally I love letting Apple handle my subscriptions and subscribing through iTunes is one of the things it does well.

[hxegon]

Do you think apple's subscription feature is worth paying 30% more for spotify?

Do you think spotify should just suck it up and take the hit to keep prices the same because apple is providing a service (access and subscription handling) worth 30% of the price? Not even Amazon charges that much.

I don't know if the anti-competitive practices mentioned are illegal, but they're certainly scummy. The company that owns the walled garden shouldn't be bullying spotify to try and prop apple music up.

[p2t2p]

What if Apple Music is for free? Should be Apple be punished then, like MS for IE being free?

[vkou]

Then Apple is using its success in one market (Selling phones) to price-dump in another market (music).

It would be the poster child of an anti-trust case.

[thirdsun]

Does this view still apply if Apple considers the music subscription as part of the product/device?

Consider the countless users that, perhaps rightfully, argue that Apple should include more than 5 GB of iCloud storage for backups, user data, etc. That could be considered part of the product while it still competes in a different market with Dropbox and similar services.

[gigatexal]

Yes. Or do what everyone else does and negotiate a lower rate. The simplicity of in app transactions is great and offering that to customers makes a lot of sense. I’m More likely to keep a subscription if it’s through iTunes; it also makes moving to new devices super easy as all I have to do is login with my iTunes account and all my subscriptions are there or that and hit restore purchases and boom I’m done.