Spotify Apple Watch App 2019

Spotify Apple App Store
Apple Watch Spotify App Frozen
Spotify Apple.watch App
Spotify Apple Watch App 2019 Reviews

To get Spotify on Apple Watch, you’ll need: iPhone running iOS 12 or above. Apple Watch on watchOS 5.2 or above. Note: Make sure you’ve paired your Apple Watch to your iPhone with Bluetooth. All you need for Spotify to show on your Apple Watch is the Spotify app installed on your iPhone and an account with us. Just open it on your watch and log in to start playing!
In recent months we’ve seen a number of big-name music services return to the Apple Watch, so for example Spotify is now a fully-featured Watch app and Pandora is Watch-friendly too.

We believe that technology achieves its true potential when we infuse it with human creativity and ingenuity. From our earliest days, we’ve built our devices, software and services to help artists, musicians, creators and visionaries do what they do best.

Apple finally allows enhanced functionality for the Spotify app on the Apple Watch. With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionality. 2020): Spotify has rolled out streaming capabilities on the Apple Watch.

Sixteen years ago, we launched the iTunes Store with the idea that there should be a trusted place where users discover and purchase great music and every creator is treated fairly. The result revolutionized the music industry, and our love of music and the people who make it are deeply engrained in Apple.

Eleven years ago, the App Store brought that same passion for creativity to mobile apps. In the decade since, the App Store has helped create many millions of jobs, generated more than $120 billion for developers and created new industries through businesses started and grown entirely in the App Store ecosystem.

At its core, the App Store is a safe, secure platform where users can have faith in the apps they discover and the transactions they make. And developers, from first-time engineers to larger companies, can rest assured that everyone is playing by the same set of rules.

That’s how it should be. We want more app businesses to thrive — including the ones that compete with some aspect of our business, because they drive us to be better.

What Spotify is demanding is something very different. After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace. At the same time, they distribute the music you love while making ever-smaller contributions to the artists, musicians and songwriters who create it — even going so far as to take these creators to court.

Spotify has every right to determine their own business model, but we feel an obligation to respond when Spotify wraps its financial motivations in misleading rhetoric about who we are, what we’ve built and what we do to support independent developers, musicians, songwriters and creators of all stripes.

Spotify claims we’re blocking their access to products and updates to their app.

Let’s clear this one up right away. We’ve approved and distributed nearly 200 app updates on Spotify’s behalf, resulting in over 300 million downloaded copies of the Spotify app. The only time we have requested adjustments is when Spotify has tried to sidestep the same rules that every other app follows.

We’ve worked with Spotify frequently to help them bring their service to more devices and platforms:

When we reached out to Spotify about Siri and AirPlay 2 support on several occasions, they’ve told us they’re working on it, and we stand ready to help them where we can.
Spotify is deeply integrated into platforms like CarPlay, and they have access to the same app development tools and resources that any other developer has.
We found Spotify’s claims about Apple Watch especially surprising. When Spotify submitted their Apple Watch app in September 2018, we reviewed and approved it with the same process and speed with which we would any other app. In fact, the Spotify Watch app is currently the No. 1 app in the Watch Music category.

Spotify is free to build apps for — and compete on — our products and platforms, and we hope they do.

Spotify wants all the benefits of a free app without being free.

A full 84 percent of the apps in the App Store pay nothing to Apple when you download or use the app. That’s not discrimination, as Spotify claims; it’s by design:

Apps that are free to you aren’t charged by Apple.
Apps that earn revenue exclusively through advertising — like some of your favorite free games — aren’t charged by Apple.
App business transactions where users sign up or purchase digital goods outside the app aren’t charged by Apple.
Apps that sell physical goods — including ride-hailing and food delivery services, to name a few — aren’t charged by Apple.

The only contribution that Apple requires is for digital goods and services that are purchased inside the app using our secure in-app purchase system. As Spotify points out, that revenue share is 30 percent for the first year of an annual subscription — but they left out that it drops to 15 percent in the years after.

That’s not the only information Spotify left out about how their business works:

The majority of customers use their free, ad-supported product, which makes no contribution to the App Store.
A significant portion of Spotify’s customers come through partnerships with mobile carriers. This generates no App Store contribution, but requires Spotify to pay a similar distribution fee to retailers and carriers.
Even now, only a tiny fraction of their subscriptions fall under Apple’s revenue-sharing model. Spotify is asking for that number to be zero.

Let’s be clear about what that means. Apple connects Spotify to our users. We provide the platform by which users download and update their app. We share critical software development tools to support Spotify’s app building. And we built a secure payment system — no small undertaking — which allows users to have faith in in-app transactions. Spotify is asking to keep all those benefits while also retaining 100 percent of the revenue.

Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.

What does that have to do with music? A lot.

We share Spotify’s love of music and their vision of sharing it with the world. Where we differ is how you achieve that goal.Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to makemore money off others’ work. And it’s not just the App Store that they’re trying to squeeze — it’s also artists, musicians and songwriters.

Just this week, Spotify sued music creators after a decision by the US Copyright Royalty Board required Spotify to increase its royalty payments. This isn’t just wrong, it represents a real, meaningful and damaging step backwards for the music industry.

Apple’s approach has always been to grow the pie. By creating new marketplaces, we can create more opportunities not just for our business, but for artists, creators, entrepreneurs and every “crazy one” with a big idea. That’s in our DNA, it’s the right model to grow the next big app ideas and, ultimately, it’s better for customers.

We’re proud of the work we’ve done to help Spotify build a successful business reaching hundreds of millions of music lovers, and we wish them continued success — after all, that was the whole point of creating the App Store in the first place.

Press Contacts

Josh Rosenstock

Apple

(408) 862-1142

Apple Media Helpline

(408) 974-2042

2007

The iPhone launches

And there’s no question it was a game changer. At first, Apple does not allow outside apps. But they soon realize that this approach is a non-starter if they want to sell more and more phones and really excite users.

2008

And then comes the App Store

Apple decides to open up the App Store to outside app developers and lures them in by the hundreds. They ask users – want to order a pizza, find your nearest florist, or look up how to do the Soulja Boy dance? “There’s an app for that.”

2008

Hello world! Spotify launches

Spotify launches on desktop at the end of 2008, bringing music streaming to the masses.

2008

Spotify is available on the App Store

It wasn’t long before we launched the Spotify iPhone app, giving our fans all the world’s music — wherever and whenever they wanted.

2010-2011

Apple starts changing its App Store Guidelines

When Apple introduced the Guidelines we thought, “Yep. Makes total sense to have rules for security, safety, privacy, and quality.” But Apple not only has unilaterally changed the rules themselves time and again, but also frequently decides to interpret (and re-interpret) them in ways to disadvantage rivals like us. So those totally legit things we did which were fully in compliance just a few months ago? Now apparently not so much.

2011 (Feb)

Apple eliminates payment system choice and imposes a 30% fee on content-based apps like Spotify...But at the same time, Apple prohibits us from showing customers how to upgrade any other way

For Spotify to use Apple’s billing system (IAP) — giving our fans the opportunity to upgrade to Premium — Spotify and others now have to pay 30% of any subscription fees. Apple now prohibits buttons or links to any other external ways to pay. This is the first of many moves from Apple that would make it harder and harder for our fans to upgrade to Premium.

2011

We deem the 30% charge as too expensive for our fans and our business

We elect not to use IAP for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that giving up 30% was too much for us to keep our prices low for our fans. Unfortunately, the end result is that you can no longer upgrade to Premium through the app.

2011 (Oct)

Siri launches on the iPhone, but won’t play Spotify

“Siri can you play that awesome Spotify playlist?” Siri says no.

2011-2014

For the next three years, we continue to face intense pressure from Apple to adopt their payment system

From 2011 to 2014, Apple puts us under constant pressure to adopt IAP.

2014 (June)

So, we give IAP a try. That means we are now charged Apple's 30% tax and sadly have to increase our price for our fans

Our users will finally be able to buy a Premium subscription directly through our iOS app. But it also means we have to raise our prices to €12.99 a month. And you guys were rightly not very happy about this.

2015 (Apr)

Us: 'Hey Apple, we love your watch; can we make an app for that?' Them: 'nah'

When Apple launches their new Apple Watch, they dismiss our proposals and won’t work with us to develop an app for it. However, they allow other apps to be on it.

2015 (June)

Apple Music launches at a price all too familiar to Spotify

Late to the streaming party, Apple buys Beats, rebrands it, and then launches Apple Music. Because Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge, they are able to hugely undercut us and charge €9.99. To our fans, this just looked like we were ripping you off.

2016 (May)

We opt out of Apple's payment system and the artificially uncompetitive price we had to charge for using it

Because we turn off IAP, it means you can no longer upgrade to Premium through the App Store *sigh*.

2016 (May)

Apple starts an intensified pattern of Spotify app rejections - and threatens to remove us from the App Store

Now that Apple has Apple Music, rejections of the Spotify app start becoming more and more common, and they even go as far as threatening to remove us from the App Store. Those rejections seem to coincide with our promotional campaign seasons.

2016 (June)

Apple tightens the App Store Guidelines...again

While we haven’t been able to include any buttons or external links to pages containing product info, discounts, promotions, etc. (even if they don’t link directly to a payment system!) since Feb. 2011, this time a “call to action” restriction is added.

2016 (Sep)

Apple rejects Spotify's proposal for an Apple Watch app yet again

We submit a new proposal for a streaming app directly on the Apple Watch. Apple declines.

2016-2017

Apple continues to make more frequent, unexpected and unjustified rejections of our app updates

Now just having a “Learn More” button is enough to upset the Apple cart even though this is the first time we’ve heard of such a rule. All we can do is focus on ensuring compliance, but that’s not easy when the definitions of what we can and can’t do change from one day to the next.

2017 (June)

App Store Guidelines are tightened once again

This app update means that rival apps have to agree not to “directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than IAP or discourage the use of IAP.”

2017 (Sep)

Apple continues to create obstacles around the Apple Watch

With WatchOS 4, Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch.

2017 (Nov)

Apple rejects Spotify's app again

This time, we are rejected because of a campaign that makes reference to a Spotify Premium promotion (“get 3 months now for €0.99”), despite only directing users to a landing page with no info on where or how to purchase Premium (which Apple had allowed only a few months prior). In fact, Apple’s chief lawyer told us a year earlier that such a landing page was OK, but that didn’t stop the App Store from blocking our app for this reason.

2018 (Feb)

Apple HomePod launches without Spotify support

Apple launches HomePod – the smart speaker that, like Siri, will do loads of cool stuff in response to voice commands. Well, lots of cool stuff except playing music through Spotify. Apple welcomes other apps to play on it, but until recently shut the door on competitive music streaming apps like Spotify.

2018 (May)

Apple rejects Spotify's app yet again

Rejected this time because we showed the word “Free” in Spotify’s app screenshots on the App Store. And apparently that’s prohibited…?!

2018 (July)

And the rejections keep on coming!

At this point, it’s hard to know how Apple will interpret anything that we do. This time, the phrase “Get in, Get Premium” is prohibited.

2018 (Sep)

Apple finally allows enhanced functionality for the Spotify app on the Apple Watch

With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionality.

Update (Oct. 2020): Spotify has rolled out streaming capabilities on the Apple Watch.

2019 (Feb)

Apple Music disregards its own rules

Apple Music sends the very type of promotional push notifications that it forbids its rivals to send.

2019 (Feb)

Spotify Apple App Store

Next up on Apple's restriction list -- podcast recommendations

So we announce two podcast acquisitions we are super excited about, and all of a sudden Apple arbitrarily decides to prohibit use of its API to recommend podcasts to users.

2019 (March)

Spotify asks the European Commission to ensure a level playing field

When competition is fair, consumers and companies win.

2019 (OCT) / 2020 (APR)

Apple FINALLY announces that it will allow Siri integration on certain devices

Apple Watch Spotify App Frozen

Apple, for the first time (and after years of unavailability), will allow Siri integration with Spotify, letting users on certain devices with iOS 13 control Spotify using their voice. However, you still can’t choose Spotify as the default music player. And unless you mention our name (“I want to play [X] on Spotify”), every time you give a command to play audio, Siri will default to Apple Music and so will your Apple device.

2020 June

Spotify Apple.watch App

The European Commission launches a formal investigation into Apple

Spotify Apple Watch App 2019 Reviews

A key development not only for Spotify, but also for consumers and the many other companies around the world that are being disadvantaged by Apple’s anti-competitive behavior.