Are there any regions in which they’re not allowed to enforce notarization? Since that effectively preserves their gatekeeper status. Even a lot of the App Store guidelines still apply to notarization.
I think they prefer to have Apple accountable for everything that happens on Apple devices too.
You can't pressure Apple into removing an app when they have to give up the only option to enforce that.
> I think the European Commission is threading the needle, trying to find a path to uphold the DMA/DSA while not provoking another tariff war.
The EC is also under a lot of internal pressure from member states to calm down on the regulation, as it's considered one reason why Europe is such a bad place to do a tech startup right now.
Another reason is allowing American magacorps to take over the entire market and syphon massive amounts of money from the EU without providing anything in return at all.
China went the opposite route and while far from ideal due to rather obvious reasons at least they have their own tech companies which is that keeping that money in the Chinese economy.
> The EC is also under a lot of internal pressure from member states to calm down on the regulation, as it's considered one reason why Europe is such a bad place to do a tech startup right now.
Turns out then using private data for ads (Google) and acting like a middleman (Apple) are apparently lucrative and worth money?
(This isn't a critique to you OP or your comment, but rather a commentary on the 21st century.)
It was too small at the time the law came into force. It's actually just about big enough now (market cap 110bn). That said, it's not at all clear that it's a gatekeeper in the sense that, say, Apple or Google are; it's mostly just one reseller of many of other peoples' stuff, and most Spotify users aren't forced to use it. It's just hard to see how it poses the same sort of competition problem.
(You could maybe make a _vague_ argument based on podcast exclusives, but it seems like pushing it a bit.)
The really puzzling one to me is TikTok, which is included but feels like it barely meets the criteria.
What artist can get away without being on Spotify? There are really only two music streaming services that are important - Apple Music and Spotify. Just like there are only two app stores that are important - iOS and Android.
Spotify has a much larger market share in streaming music than Apple has in smartphones in Europe.
Can I side load my own music in my Spotify library like I can with Apple Music? (True you either have to either use your computer or the iOS GarageBand hack)
The EU is not concerned with users in this case they are worried about developers having to deal with a monopsony and trying to make the mobile market more open to competition for developers. Spotify is the same gatekeeper for musicians.
If the market is selling music, musicians can sell CDs just fine without Spotify. On performances I went to, nearly everyone has offered buying or ordering CDs, while only a few have told that you can listen to them on Spotify.
And people can communicate without using Facebook, search without using Google etc and they are still considered “Gatekeepers”. And who listens to CDs anymore or even has a CD player in their car or on their computer? How do you get the music on your phone?
I was in Seattle a couple of years ago walking around and someone was selling CDs of their music on the street like it was the early 2000s. WTF am I going to do with a CD?
Do people carry around CD Walkman’s anymore? But you’re not going to be a major artist and get wide appeal or even gain an audience without being on Spotify - more so in Europe than in the US where Apple Music has a larger market share.
Because Facebook and Google insert themself into unrelated websites, their monopoly is not just search.
> And who listens to CDs anymore or even has a CD player in their car or on their computer?
True for computers, but every cheap radio has a CD player and it's very common to have one in the car.
> How do you get the music on your phone?
Ripping them from a CD.
Like I agree CDs are getting less common, but not for sells at a concert. Nobody is going to tell you to use Spotify, because it screams "cheap"! That might fly for hobby musicians, but professionals will ruin their reputation.
And people don’t walk around with boom boxes like in the 80s.
> Ripping them from a CD.
Most new computers don’t come with CD drives and you think that people are syncing music from their computers to their phones in 2025? The last computer I bought with a CD drive was around 2012. Do any of the major PC sellers sell laptops with CD drives? Apple stopped around 2012.
> Because Facebook and Google insert themself into unrelated websites, their monopoly is not just search
> Because Facebook and Google insert themself into unrelated websites, their monopoly is not just search
That has nothing to do with the laws the EU is passing and none of the remedies say anything about it Google Analytics or ads on third party sites.
> Nobody is going to tell you to use Spotify, because it screams "cheap"! That might fly for hobby musicians, but professionals will ruin their reputation.
Well two issues, selling CDs at concerts is a horrible method for mass distribution and CD sales are plummeting.
During the past year I’ve been to a dozen concerts. Most of them classic Hip Hop artist, two classic R and B, and two pop - Maroon 5 and Justin Timberlake. I’ve also gone to a see a punk rock band where my friend is the lead singer. They sell merch but definitely not CDs
> There are only 9 car models as of 2024 that ship with CD players and not even all trims of all of those models come with a CD player
And how many people have a car from 2024? That's only relevant for the music market in 20 years, not for now. Also even car dealers now tell you, that you shouldn't buy a new car, because those are shit.
> That has nothing to do with the laws the EU is passing and none of the remedies say anything about it Google Analytics or ads on third party sites.
Google is considered a gatekeeper, because it is the default in browsers and OS, it controls an OS and also controls the UA and ad-market. Apple is a gatekeeper, because they sell a general-purpose device, for which you can only release programs when you ask Apple to allow it.
Spotify does neither of those. It is entirely possible to use another music player and it doesn't market itself as a general-purpose music player, but for access to a music library. When it would have deals with (popular) music players to only allow access to Spotify, or comes pre-installed with the OS, then it could be considered a gatekeeper, but it does none of these things.
> Well two issues, selling CDs at concerts is a horrible method for mass distribution and CD sales are plummeting.
You will of course only reach people that went to the concert, but that is unrelated to the distribution media. But the set of people who pay for listening to you, and the amount of people who pay you for music, so that they can listen to it, has some overlap. The idea that CDs are unsuitable for a mass market has been disproven in practice.
Selling non-physical music is still an unsolved problem and will always be, in my opinion. You essentially have three options:
- Stop selling music, but instead sell subscriptions to music-as-a-service. That's what Amazon, Netflix, Youtube and Spotify are doing. This seems to only come with user-hostile tracking and also is user-unfriendly since you can't replay the music. The UX is worse, since these players typically have a worse interface for skipping, forwarding, playing the music at different speed, categorizing music, etc. . It also needs changes to the legal system, to make replaying already downloaded assets illegal and comes with a built-in cap in price, since at some point the users resort to pirating the music. It only works for music where the piece itself is somehow novel and not available as music to be bought. Why should I use your MaaS to listen to music, when I can also buy the recording from 50 years ago? This also only seems to be a viable business plan for the rent-seeking middle man. It is neither a favorable option for the musician nor for the listener.
- Release the media in a format that can only be played in a special player (DRM). This counts on the user willing to essentially install malware. Also it comes with the same drawbacks to the user as MaaS, unless he again chooses to download the music from some alternative source or modifies the files to be playable without DRM. It also counts on the user to buy hardware that prevents him from doing things he want. It also clashes with the legal concept of ownership. That approach seems to have went extinct, since MaaS allows for more rent extraction.
- Screw it and distribute physical media. For this option CDs seem to be the best option. Bluerays are to expensive and have two much storage for music, USB sticks have a worse form factor. Nobody uses cartridges anymore. Vinyl is an option, but not really doable at home by the musician and also not as mainstream as CDs. microSD cards might be a competition and are in some places, but they are a bit too tiny, to be comfortable to be passed around and try to print a booklet for a microSD card.
The first two options are unethical and partially illegal, the first comes with serious risks for the musician and doesn't seem to be profitable. Both make the musician subject to vendor lock-in and are not possible to do at home by the musician himself. That only leaves the third option.
If you have another novel approach, you could get rich, but I don't think this exists, since the whole point of digital media is that data is trivially copyable.
From your article:
> In the U.S., a Consumer Reports survey found that 45% of adults still use CDs, while only 21% use vinyl.
45% of adults sounds like a viable market maximum to me.
> It might sound strange, but part of the reason CD sales crashed this year is because Taylor Swift didn’t release anything new.
> In Q2 2024, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department sold 180,236 physical copies in just its first week. That included 109,392 CDs and 66,388 vinyl albums.
> So, her release didn’t just top the charts. It also lifted the entire quarter’s physical sales.
> In fact, that one week of vinyl sales alone was bigger than the entire vinyl sales drop in Q2 2025, which fell by 43,979 units compared to the year before.
So CD sales in the UK without Taylor Swift actually increased since the last year?
> In the UK, streaming growth dropped to 6.4% in the first half of 2025. That’s down from 11% at the same point last year. Vinyl, which has been the bright spot in physical media for years, is slowing too. Its growth rate fell to 6% so far this year, compared to 12.4% in 2024.
So the issue is not the media format?
> During the past year I’ve been to a dozen concerts. Most of them classic Hip Hop artist, two classic R and B, and two pop - Maroon 5 and Justin Timberlake. I’ve also gone to a see a punk rock band where my friend is the lead singer. They sell merch but definitely not CDs
Maybe it is a bias by music genre. I went to things played in a concert hall: old classical music, new classical music, Jazz, film music, etc., to newly composed music on modern medieval-like instruments and to a-capella concerts of music from various centuries from various choirs, some of which I used to or still participate. All of them sell CDs and Spotify would be considered unprofessional and cheap. I also don't see why any of those should give a lot of money to a shady rich company taking only cents, when they could have that money for themself. For me as a buyer it's the same. Why should I give money to some unrelated middle-man, instead of those, whose music I enjoy?
Also I can have listened to music for years and still discover new aspects. I don't see what MaaS gives to me as a user. 30 CDs contain >30 hours of music, spreading a variety of genres and pieces, enough for decades. At an expensive price of 10€/CD, that's 300€. A decade of Spotify is 11€/month[1] * 12month/year * 10years = 1320€. So a very expensive CD per month or more like a reasonable priced CD every week, meaning 12 minutes[2] of never heard music per day when buying music instead. It just sounds expensive, because of a rent-seeking middle-man.
No one has sold digital music with DRM since around 2009 - not even Apple.
The story behind that is the music industry wanted Apple to license its DRM and it refused. Instead Steve Jobs said in his public “Thoughts on Music” letter that was posted on Apple’s website at the time that the music industry should license its music to Apple and everyone else DRM free and Apple would gladly sell music DRM free. Only one organization (EMI) and indie artists took him up on that in 2007. By 2009, everyone did after contract wrangling.
> Maybe it is a bias by music genre. I went to things played in a concert hall: old classical music, new classical music, Jazz, film music, etc., to newly composed music on modern medieval-like instruments and to a-capella concerts of music from various centuries from various choirs, some of which I used to or still participate. All of them sell CDs and Spotify would be considered unprofessional and cheap
And you are far from the mainstream. I went to a Jazz concert this year. He also didn’t sell music and had a QR code where you could find his music online. He sold merch and the chance to take pictures with him. Funny enough, we were in London earlier this year and saw Lionel Ritchie at the O2. He was also selling merch and the chance to take pictures with him and definitely not CDs.
Your start-up also won't get acquired by anyone "with a market cap >75bn EUR, or turnover in the EU >7.5bn EUR/annum." That may be fine with some folks. But it's an obvious downside if you're a start-up or backer thereof.
Nobody of decent character would care about that. Building a business is supposed to be about providing quality goods and services to customers, not trying to get a payout from a big company when they acquire you.
Notarization is an automated process at the very least, and just speculation, but since entitlements are baked into the codesigning step, it seems meant to prevent software from granting itself entitlements Apple doesn't want 3rd parties having access to.
