Apple’s 30% Fee, an Industry Standard, Is Showing Cracks

Hey y’all, it’s Austin. Last year, my wife made a frustrating discovery: Since late 2015, she had been paying $13 a month for Spotify, instead of the typical $10 subscription cost for access to the music-streaming service.

The reason for the price hike? She’d originally signed up through Apple Inc., which takes a 30% slice of App Store sales, a revenue cut Spotify Technology SA has said is unfair and that forced it to raise subscription costs for those customers. For my wife, that essentially meant paying Apple a premium each month, for 55 months, simply because she didn’t subscribe directly through Spotify’s website.