Elon Musk and the CEO of Spotify collaborate against Apple’s “absurd” App Store policies

Elon Musk and Spotify have both previously spoken out against Apple’s App Store policies. This past weekend, Musk and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek engaged in a new Twitter debate on Apple’s policies. Ek described them as “absurd” and Musk claimed that they pose a “serious scaling problem.”

The discussion started last week when Twitter made it possible for all users to offer “subscriptions” on the platform. After users questioned him about the announcement, Musk clarified why subscriptions appear more slowly on the iPhone than they do online. Musk said that because all subscriptions now need to be approved by Apple, they take a little longer on the iPhone than on the web to become active.

This is in regard to the requirements set forth by the App Store for in-app subscriptions to digital content. In turn, Twitter is required to follow the requirements. The new subscriptions are accessible through the iPhone app. In addition to this, Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, then quoted Musk’s statement in a tweet while criticizing Apple’s rules once again. Ek tweeted: This is ridiculous. How would this scale with all internet creators across all platforms? What if a platform believed that a 10% or 0% fee would be more appropriate than Apple’s 30%? To these concerns, Musk replied with the words that Scaling up is becoming a significant difficulty.

In the past, Spotify has been a big opponent of the App Store rules. The company has even launched antitrust accusations against Apple in the EU. The company claims that Apple is free to offer Apple Music subscriptions within the app. Where Spotify has to pay 30% of its subscription revenue to Apple. Musk has previously said that Apple’s App Store tariffs are akin to a 30% internet usage tax.