Spotify go head-to-head with Apple, tackling their competition, antitrust and consumer rights policies in the US Senate’s App Store hearing.

The US Senate recently saw Spotify’s head of global affairs & chief legal officer, Horacio Gutierrez, Apple’s chief compliance officer and vice president of corporate law, Kyle Andeer, as well as representatives from Google, Tile, Tinder’s parent company Match Group and the Consumer Federation of America, as they debated Apple’s approach to competitors.

The bottom line is that Apple’s unfettered and unilateral power to impose its web of restrictions effectively prevents head-to-head competition between Spotify and Apple Music based on consumers’ assessments of the quality of the two services. Apple instead has aggressively used its App store policies to handicap Spotify in numerous ways: forcing Spotify to choose between a price increase that would render its offering uncompetitive, and restrictions that make it much more difficult to communicate discount offers and other opportunities and, more generally, anything that would enable customers to purchase its service. One doesn’t need a Ph.D. in economics to recognize that Apple is hurting consumers by forcing competitors either to charge higher prices or preventing competitors from communicating offers of discounts or other promotional offers.

Horacio Gutierrez, Head of Global Affairs & Chief Legal Officer, Spotify

Apple’s statement argued:

We’re proud of the store we’ve built, the experiences it has provided for customers, and the opportunities it has created for developers. Entirely new industries have been born, creating millions of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity across all 50 states.

It’s the sort of thing that is possible when competition is fierce and fair. Apple, after all, was started by tinkerers and dreamers, and we became successful over time because we had an opportunity to compete. We were in a street fight back then, and we still are today. And we like it that way because we know that competition spurs innovation and, with it, more and better choices for customers. We will continue to compete, to innovate, and to create. We will also look for ways to allow everyone, from the tinkerer in her garage to the developer in the coffee shop, to use our technologies to create something amazing.

Kyle Andeer, Chief Compliance Officer and Vice President of Corporate Law, Apple

You can read the full testimonies from Spotify and Apple, or watch the full committee hearing here.