And now, Apple’s rules that dictate everything you can do on your iPhone have forced odd contortions for Spotify, which wants to challenge the audiobook dominance of Amazon’s Audible.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer is a member of Amazon’s board of directors.)
Among those contortions: You can’t actually buy the audiobooks in Spotify’s app that offers audiobooks.
That’s at least twice that Apple, which barely registers as a book seller, has steered the direction of book buying.
Apple’s behind-the-scenes book influence shows how Big Tech companies can have unexpected power over what you buy, the prices you pay and the direction of entire industries.
E-books cost more than they did before
After Amazon released its Kindle device 15 years ago, it charged $9.99 for many popular new e-books.
That low price compared to hardcover books converted many readers to e-books and helped establish Amazon as the biggest digital book seller.
Big book publishers, however, hated it.
Amazon itself set the $9.99 price, which was so low that Amazon sometimes lost money on each sale. Book companies worried that people would never be willing to pay more than $10 for any book.
When Apple came out with the iPad in 2010, the company took a different approach: Book publishers could effectively block discounts on e-books sold in the iPad bookstore and on Amazon, too.
Long story short: The government said that this was an illegal price-fixing conspiracy. Book publishers and Apple essentially lost this fight but they got what they wanted anyway.
Now, prices of e-books (and audiobooks) are often set by book publishers. The $10 e-book best seller is rare. Costs of $15 or $16 are typical.
Those higher prices compared to a decade ago might not be a bad thing for you. The $10 e-book was an artificially low price that helped Amazon establish its dominance.
My point is that this shift in what you pay for e-books might never have happened without Apple.
One giant tech company, Apple, championed a reversal of a price standard established by another giant tech company, Amazon. Book readers were pawns in this power play.
Spotify sells audiobooks, but not in its app
Spotify started to compete with Audible in audiobooks a year ago. Apple hasn’t made it easy for Spotify or you.
Spotify gives you three options to listen to books. Starting this week in Britain and Australia, people who subscribe to Spotify’s music service can listen to 15 hours of audiobooks each month at no added cost.
(This option is coming soon to the United States, where an individual Spotify subscription typically costs $10.99 a month.)
Subscribers who want more can buy an additional 10 hours of audiobooks a month for $11. You can also buy individual audiobook titles from Spotify.
The wrinkle is you can’t buy individual audiobooks from Spotify’s iPhone app. You can’t buy a Spotify subscription in the app, either, or extra hours of audiobooks. (Spotify’s Android app has fewer but still some limitations.)
You need to buy from Spotify.com and then access your subscription or audiobook purchase in the Spotify iPhone app. Spotify says this is too clunky.
These gymnastics are Spotify’s compromises to Apple’s dictatorship over iPhone apps.
For any digital stuff that you buy in an iPhone app — virtual armor for an app video game, a Washington Post online subscription or an audiobook — Apple collects a commission of up 30 percent of each sale.
That would mean, for example, that Spotify might charge you an extra $7.50 to pay Apple’s fees on a $25 audiobook, or eat the cost itself. (Spotify is unprofitable.)
Some other companies, including Audible, already charge you more when you buy some stuff in their apps compared to their websites, to offset the commission they pay Apple.
Or to avoid charging you more, they don’t let you buy digital things in their apps at all. You can’t buy e-books in the Kindle iPhone app, for example.
And again because Apple won’t allow it, apps can’t tell you where you’re supposed to buy stuff from them if purchases aren’t available in the app.
Spotify last year tried multiple times to redesign its app to let you buy audiobooks without getting into trouble with Apple. It didn’t work.
Audible and Amazon’s Kindle app are subject to the same restrictions as Spotify. The difference is that Amazon and Audible have already hooked a bunch of people.
Spotify says that it’s trying to give you a new alternative to Audible — but that some of its audiobook features and marketing are quashed by Apple’s restrictions.
Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment. In the past, the company has said that its app store gives people the best options for quality and privacy in apps, but that people can make purchases on the app company’s website instead.
Spotify has complained for years that Apple’s control over apps hurts Spotify and you. The gripes are self-serving and Spotify is complicit in crippling features in its iPhone app in its fight with Apple.
But Spotify also isn’t wrong. Because of Apple’s absolute control over apps, it is setting the terms of the competition for your dollars in audiobooks.
You could be better off with Apple’s influence in digital books, or worse off. Either way, a company that has almost nothing to do with books has an indelible influence on your book buying options.
If you’re buying audiobooks, it’s not a bad idea to compare prices — even on Audible’s website compared to its app.
As I briefly mentioned above, if you subscribe to Audible’s Premium Plus plan, which gives you “credits” to download at least one top selling or new audiobook each month, you save money if you buy on Audible’s website and not in the app.
Audible Premium Plus costs $14.95 a month if you buy it on Audible.com and $15.99 if you buy in the Audible app for iPhone or Android.
Again, this is Audible’s way of partly making up for what it owes Apple or Google as the app store owners. And because of restrictions imposed by Apple or Google, Audible or other apps cannot tell you directly that there are cheaper purchase options elsewhere.
You might also see price differences for individual audiobook purchases — probably because of corporate price tinkering, not the app store fees.
On Friday, Audible’s website showed me a price of $26.24 for the new Elon Musk biography.
In Audible’s Android app, I saw a price of $26.99 for the same audiobook. (Audible is testing sales of individual audiobooks in its iPhone app. That purchase option isn’t available to everyone yet.)
On Spotify’s website, the Musk audiobook was $26.90. Remember, you can’t buy the audiobook in Spotify’s app. You have to buy it on Spotify’s website and then open your Spotify app to listen.
And if all this is confusing, I listen to lots of audiobooks for free thanks to my local public library and the Libby app. (At the New York Public Library, there’s a “several months” wait to borrow the Musk audiobook.)
Read more in the cheapskate’s guide to digital entertainment.
