Spotify wants you to stop paying Apple’s extra fees

SWEDEN-MUSIC-COMPANY-SPOTIFY
This photo illustration shows a woman as she uses the iPhone application of Swedish music streaming service Spotify on March 7, 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Photograph by Jonathan Nackstrand — AFP/Getty Images

Spotify wants to save you from paying extra charges to Apple.

Music streaming service Spotify’s ad-free paid tier costs $9.99 per month, but because Apple charges a 30% fee for purchases made through its App Store, customers end up paying $12.99 if they set the Spotify iOS app to auto-renew their monthly subscription.

Spotify is planning to email its customers to tell them how to fix this, The Verge reports.

To avoid that extra fee, Spotify customers first need to cancel their subscription through iTunes. Then, once their current subscription has lapsed (they may have to wait until the end of the month), they can sign up again, this time through Spotify’s web service.

While on first glance Spotify’s move seems like just a helpful gesture, it’s also a shot at Apple, which just launched its own music streaming service that competes with Spotify. Apple Music costs $9.99 a month after the free three-month trial period, without users having to worry about any extra fees.