Spotify Premium subscribers no longer allowed to pay through Apple’s App Store in latest change

Spotify has decided to stop allowing new subscribers to pay for their Premium service through Apple’s App Store, according to Variety. This change is due to Spotify’s disagreement with the fees charged by Apple for in-app purchases.

For a brief period between June 2014 and May 2016, Spotify Premium users had the option to sign up and pay through the Apple App Store. However, Spotify has now informed these customers via email that they can no longer use Apple’s billing service to pay for their subscription.

In the email sent to customers, it said: “We’re contacting you because when you joined Spotify Premium you used Apple’s billing service to subscribe. Unfortunately, we no longer accept that billing method as a form of payment.”

The email also informs Spotify customers that at the end of the final billing period, their account will automatically switch to their “free, ad-supported service”. It adds: “If you wish to keep your Premium subscription, you will need to re-subscribe after your last billing period has ended and your account has been moved on to the Free account.”

They will then need to choose to pay via one of the payment methods Spotify accepts, including credit cards and PayPal, to start the new subscription.

However, Spotify claims that only a small number of users will be affected by this change, and they are working to ensure a smooth transition for those users. They have had a long-standing dispute with Apple over app store policies and have accused Apple of anti-competitive behaviour.

Spotify also had concerns about Google’s Play Store policies, but they reached an agreement last year to provide users with the choice to pay through Spotify’s system or Google Play Billing.

According to the report, this decision by Spotify to end support for Apple’s in-app purchases will not have a significant impact on most of its customers. Apple stated in a regulatory filing that they collected a 15% fee on subscription payments for only a small fraction of Spotify’s total Premium subscribers.