Affected Spotify Premium subscribers can re-subscribe after their account has been moved to the free membership tier. | Nick Barclay / The Verge It’s been over seven years since Spotify stopped allowing new customers to subscribe to its Premium tier membership through Apple’s in-app purchase system, and now the streaming giant is dropping support for the payment method entirely. As reported by Variety, Spotify has recently emailed legacy Premium subscribers who are still paying through the Apple App Store to notify them that they will need to resubscribe to the service using an alternative payment system, like PayPal or a credit card, at the end of their final billing period. “We’re contacting you because when you joined Spotify Premium you…

Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Google is set to appoint manufacturing and policy veteran Sreenivasa Reddy as its top government affairs executive in India to tackle legal challenges and expand hardware assembly to the country. Sankalp Phartiyal for Bloomberg News: Reddy, currently a senior engineering executive at Microsoft Corp., is likely to join Google toward the end of this year, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. He previously worked in senior positions at Apple Inc.’s India regulatory team and headed government relations at the local unit of Swedish telecom-gear maker Ericsson AB, helping to drive domestic manufacturing at both companies. Reddy’s experience will come in handy at Google, which is scouting for…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge An important deadline just passed for the biggest tech platform companies in the world to notify the European Union (EU) that they are gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Seven companies have officially acknowledged they meet the criteria: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), Microsoft, and Samsung. Companies on the list have a market capitalization of over €75 billion ($82 billion) and own a social platform or app that has at least 45 million monthly users or 10,000 active business users. The statement published by EU commissioner Thierry Breton says it “will now check their submissions and designate the gatekeepers for specific platform services by 6 September,” and after…

Apple will have until March 5 next year to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act, which in theory means that it will have to permit either third-party app stores, or sideloading of apps, by that date. The deadline has been revealed after Apple confirmed that it qualified as having ‘gatekeeper’ status, meaning that it is one of the companies that will be subject to the upcoming law. However, don’t expect much to change on this date … more… The post Apple faces March 5 deadline for third-party app stores – but don’t hold your breath appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Apple is taking its battle with Epic Games to the U.S. Supreme Court with the intention to reverse a ruling from the Court of Appeals that affects the App Store policies.The long-running lawsuit between the Fortnite game maker and the App Store owner is close to reaching the highest court in the United States. In this case, it is because Apple wants to revisit an antitrust appeal that didn't go entirely the company's way.In a filing to the Supreme Court on Monday, Apple's legal team motions for a reconsideration of an April ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the matter. While in April the court upheld most of a previous decision in the case, it rejected…

The European Union’s parliament has passed the Digital Markets Act, which is antitrust legislation that will force every platform to allow the distribution of apps through other digital stores – which will have a huge impact on Apple. And one of the companies most interested in this change is Meta, which has confirmed its plans to turn Facebook into a replacement for the App Store. more… The post Meta wants to turn Facebook into an App Store replacement, at least in the EU appeared first on 9to5Mac.