Spotify has reached an agreement with Google that will allow users and developers the choice to pay for their subscriptions or purchases from either Spotify’s payment system or Google’s Google Play Billing system if they downloaded the app from the Google Play app store. The news, which was announced Wednesday (March 23), marks the first time that the streaming service has offered options in payment methods within the app.
The decision is borne from a longstanding Spotify position that fees and taxes that app stores levy on developers has led to an unfair playing field, particularly targeting Apple’s App Store, which takes a 30% cut of every subscription that developers who make more than $1 million in the App Store glean from users who sign up using Apple’s payment system, which is the only one allowed within its App Store. That led Spotify to charge iOS users $13 per month instead of $10 per month, to make up for the fee, before Spotify (as well as Netflix) removed iOS users’ ability to subscribe through iOS in 2018.
Spotify is on a years-long journey to ensure app developers have the freedom to innovate and compete on a level playing field,” Spotify’s chief freemium business officer Alex Norström said in a statement. “We’re excited to be partnering with Google to explore this approach to payment choice and opportunities for developers, users, and the entire internet ecosystem. We hope the work we’ll do together blazes a path that will benefit the rest of the industry.”
This new change, which Spotify says will be built and rolled out in the coming months on Android platforms, is part of a multiyear agreement between the two companies. Google recently began offering an additional billing system to users in South Korea; Spotify will be the first developer to be able to take advantage of User Choice Billing for users who downloaded the app through the Google Play store.
“Android has always been about openness and user choice,” Google’s vp of product management Sameer Samat said in a statement. “This step is an important milestone for mobile app stores and I can’t imagine a better first partner than Spotify. They value choice as much as we do and understand the importance and continued investment in Android and Play to the health of the entire ecosystem. This is an exciting first step and we look forward to adding new partners and learning how this model could be expanded across the platform.”
