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, but it surely couldn’t resist taking yet one more jab alongside the best way…
Spotify at this time 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 an alternative is obstructing customers from buying audiobooks immediately within the app. Moderately, 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 a substitute, the corporate despatched customers a hyperlink by way of electronic mail to buy the guide by way of the net. This circulate, 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 evaluate course of.
This new resolution, nonetheless, is in compliance with App Retailer pointers and was authorized by Apple at this time. This marks the primary replace to the Spotify app for iOS in over a month, although the app is normally up to date on a weekly foundation. This alerts how the battle over the audiobook buy circulate 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, for example, might use an exterior hyperlink to direct customers to join 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 just isn’t allowed so as to add a button that takes customers to its web site to finish the acquisition. As a substitute, customers must manually exit the Spotify app and go to the net to make their purchases.
Spotify teases Apple on a pop-up message: “You possibly can’t purchase audiobooks within the app. We all know, it’s not perfect.”
9to5Mac’s Take
It is a tough state of affairs. Apple’s pointers round “reader” apps and linking to an exterior web site learn as follows:
App Retailer Assessment 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 a web site that’s owned or maintained by the developer, in order that customers can create or handle their account outdoors of the app. Reader apps are apps that present a number of of the next digital content material varieties — 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 seem like the case. We’ll see if the corporate gives extra detailed reasoning quickly.
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