• Spotify is ending its support for payments via the Apple App Store.
• While this option was only available for two years, there are still a few hundred thousand users paying this way.
• Those paying through the App Store will be switched to a free account at the end of their billing cycle until they select a new payment method

For a brief moment in time – read: two years – Spotify allowed Apple device owners to pay for a subscription via the App Store. Now, any users who used that option will see it come to an end.

Those subscribers have recently started to receive emails to that effect according to Variety.

“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,” reads the email.

After a subscriber has reached the end of their current billing period, they will be switched to the free tier of Spotify until they pay with an alternative payment method including a card or PayPal.

Truth be told this will likely only affect a small number of users – approximately 680 000 Spotify subscribers used this payment method in 2019 and that number has likely dipped further since then.

“These actions will help ensure that we can continue to provide a consistent best-in-class subscription experience for all our users,” a spokesperson for the audio streaming platform told Variety.

Spotify has long held the view that Apple’s fees for fielding subscriptions through its storefront were unfair and it’s not alone. Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk bemoaned the 30 percent fee he’d have to pay Apple for fielding Twitter Blue subscriptions through the storefront, a fee he ultimately passed on to users, as most developers do.

Epic Games also took issue with this fee and blatantly told Fortnite players to skip the App Store and pay it directly for V-Bucks. This change wasn’t approved by Apple’s team and so Fortnite was removed from the App Store entirely. While lawsuits have come and gone Fortnite still isn’t natively available on iOS.

While Apple often gets the brunt of criticism, Google also charges a fee of up to 30 percent on sales made through the Play Store.