Spotify caves to Apple’s demands for audiobook purchases

Earlier this week, Spotify ran to the press to complain that Apple had rejected the most recent model of its iOS app for skirting in-app buy guidelines because it labored on including audiobooks as a brand new characteristic. As all of us anticipated, Spotify has now given in to Apple’s calls for, nevertheless it couldn’t resist taking another jab alongside the way in which…

Spotify in the present day rolled out an replace to its iOS app that does certainly add up to date assist for audiobooks. Unsurprisingly, Spotify was not capable of break the App Retailer pointers and as a substitute is obstructing customers from buying audiobooks instantly within the app. Fairly, customers are despatched out to the Spotify web site to finish their buy of an audiobook.

When Spotify first added audiobooks final month, customers couldn’t make purchases within the app. As an alternative, the corporate despatched customers a hyperlink through e-mail to buy the ebook through the net. This circulation, as identified by The Verge, wasn’t in full compliance with Apple’s App Retailer pointers. As such, Apple rejected the replace (and two different supposed fixes) in the course of the app evaluation course of.

This new answer, nonetheless, is in compliance with App Retailer pointers and was accepted by Apple in the present day. This marks the primary replace to the Spotify app for iOS in over a month, even supposing the app is often up to date on a weekly foundation. This alerts how the battle over the audiobook buy circulation hindered the corporate from rolling out updates.

The Verge factors out that whereas Apple has loosened a few of its guidelines round in-app purchases, Spotify’s assist for audiobook purchases doesn’t fall into the brand new pointers:

Apple has very gently loosened its guidelines, permitting choose apps to hyperlink to the net in sure circumstances. Spotify, as an example, might use an exterior hyperlink to direct customers to enroll in a premium account subscription. That exception, apparently, doesn’t prolong to purchasing audiobooks. The Verge has reached out to Apple for remark.

Apple’s newest App Retailer pointers enable so-called “reader” apps to hyperlink to exterior sources for in-app purchases. This isn’t the case for Spotify, which apparently will not be allowed so as to add a button that takes customers to its web site to finish the acquisition. As an alternative, customers should manually exit the Spotify app and go to the net to make their purchases.

Spotify teases Apple on a pop-up message: “You may’t purchase audiobooks within the app. We all know, it’s not very best.”

9to5Mac’s Take

This can be a difficult state of affairs. Apple’s pointers round “reader” apps and linking to an exterior web site learn as follows:

App Retailer Evaluate guideline 3.1.3(a): Builders of reader apps can now request entry to the Exterior Hyperlink Account Entitlement. This entitlement lets reader apps hyperlink to an internet site that’s owned or maintained by the developer, in order that customers can create or handle their account exterior of the app. Reader apps are apps that present a number of of the next digital content material sorts — magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, or video — as the first performance of the app.

We’d assume that this consists of Spotify, at the very least in some capability, however that doesn’t look like the case. We’ll see if the corporate gives extra detailed reasoning quickly.

Take a look at 9to5Mac on YouTube for extra Apple information: