Sophie Blake
Popular music and podcast app Spotify announced that iOS users who previously signed up for its music streaming service through the App Store will no longer be able to continue to make their payments via Apple’s billing service.
As reported by Variety, the company is sending emails to customers informing them that it would soon end its support for the payment method.
“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,” Spotify’s email reads.
In fact, the company only allowed customers to subscribe to its service through the App Store between 2014 and 2016, and that hasn’t been available for 7 years now. However, the email proves that some customers who signed up during that period still continue to use the method, but that’s going to change with Spotify’s latest move.
After the end of their final billing period, the company will automatically transition these customers’ accounts into its free, ad-supported plan. Then, they will need to subscribe to the service again by heading to Spotify’s website.
The company’s iOS app doesn’t have a mechanism that lets users sign up to its premium service, and the main reason behind it is Apple’s controversial in-app purchase cut, something that Spotify has long opposed.
For its Android app, on the other hand, the company became one of the early testers of Google’s ‘’User Choice Billing” program, which was launched in March 2022 and lets developers offer third-payment methods in their apps in addition to that of Google, although it doesn’t remove the in-app purchase cut entirely. Earlier this year, the audio streaming giant said that the third-party payment option is now available in more than 140 markets.
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