Antitrust law in the US bans monopoly "tying": using a monopoly you have in one market to try to control a separate market.

I believe Spotify is claiming Apple is doing this with Apple Music vs Spotify and I didn't see this issue addressed by Apple's message.

I am not sure I agree with Spotify's claim, and US antitrust is in a parlous state, but this approach may get traction in the EU. However Apple's market share is far far from monopolistic.

>Apple's market share is far far from monopolistic.

"We're a duopoly not a monopoly" is not a particularly compelling argument.

It's all about antitrust law: what it says, how the courts have interpreted it. It's not about what I or you think.

In particular, "monopoly power" is typically not interpreted (in the US or EU) to mean literally a single supplier but rather whether you exert dominance in the market. You're correct that "it's a duopoly" is not a compelling argument but Apple would not bother to try to make that case either. They'll just point to the fact that they have about a quarter of the market world wide and slightly more than that in the EU alone; evening the US it's a little less than half the market.

I suspect they have a strong case legally, whatever the merits of Spotify's claim, and doubt they would prevail in court (though IANAL -- it doesn't matter what I think). However if the lawsuit is part of a strategy to get the EU competition commission to act, then it can be effective, even perhaps more effective if they lose!

It's anticompetitive, but is it illegal? Is it unethical? Does Apple's favoritism of its own products on its platform mean competing products cannot exist on the platform, or that they're less capable/visible?

There are many platforms which rigidly control what's allowed on it. For example, is Netflix comparable? Netflix can control which providers are represented on its platform.

To my understanding this is not illegal, and the ethics are debatable.

I don't think Netflix is comparable. The App Store is a market place, where things are bought and sold. Netflix is not a consumer marketplace.

Netflix is most definitely a marketplace, more akin to the App Store than I think you're giving it credit for.

Netflix shows a wide variety of content to the buyer, the buyer pays and consumes certain (but not all) of the content. The content owners are ultimately paid in a way that reflects the demand for their product relative to the others available in that marketplace. (It's not per-unit pricing with a rev share, but you still get paid more to license big blockbuster content than little-watched niche stuff.)

Also similar to App Store, Netflix has certain "blessed" in-house products that it pays to create itself, and lists along side the externally-created products.

That's a fair point. On the other hand, Microsoft Windows wasn't a marketplace with respect to web browsers.

> Does Apple's favoritism of its own products on its platform mean competing products cannot exist on the platform, or that they're less capable/visible?

That is what Spotify is alleging, yes.

Some markets it might be illegal, like in the EU.

Netflix isn't comparable as you can choose any other content streaming services. And also you can use any ISP to access to Netflix.

Apple is most likely using predatory pricing against Spotify which is illegal [0]. I highly doubt Apple music is profitable at a price point of $10 once the 30% cut is taken into account. But since they also get the 30% cut back, they can subsidize their product while Spotify has to charge $10 at a loss or price it at $14 which is more than Apples price and makes the un-competitive.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

I don't think you've substantiated your first claim just by linking to the Wikipedia article about predatory pricing. Even the Wikipedia article admits that the devil is in the details, as it were; it's hard to distinguish between anticompetitive pricing and competitive pricing.

You're correct that Apple Music may be a loss leader, but even if it is a loss leader, there's significantly more nuance involved before we can declare it to be predatory pricing.

> But since they also get the 30% cut back.

That's not how that works. If you charge $50/hr as a freelance software developer and you work on your own stuff for a day you didn't "get $400 back", you paid $400 in opportunity cost.

That analogy isn’t good because apple doesn’t lose opportunity by charging itself the cut to use the store. There is no indication that apple is limited in how many developers it could take on.

If apple had a limited number of apps and they were declining other apps in lieu of its own, that would be true.

So if every company that sells that product at a loss to gain market share is guilty of predatory pricing, that would include almost every VC funded company b

Oh the irony! Spotify claim in "Apple Won’t Let Us Share Spotify Deals We Know You’d Love" that Apple won’t let us share awesome deals and promotions — like 99c for three months of Spotify Premium...

Since Spotify have ~36% of the global market (Apple have ~19%) that could reasonably be viewed as predatory pricing.

It's also worth noting that Spotify charge as much as Apple and you can subscribe to the service without using IAP.