The biggest trick they ever pulled was changing Music.app into Apple Music, and on first app start showing you a "hey, want to try Apple Music? Tap here" fullscreen.
That single-handedly unlocked a huge cohort of boomers and other tech laypeople that had never tried Spotify or any other music streaming platform before.
It was smart and also a huge abuse of market power. Apple Music would have bombed without it. The only reason they didn't get in deep shit for it was that Apple doesn't have nearly the market capture in the EU that they have in the US, and in that time period the US didn't do antitrust against tech companies.
The worse abuse of market power there is that Apple Music doesn't have to pay the 30% to the app store for subscriptions made on the device, but but spotify etc do, so Spotify can't charge a comparable price on iOS, and also wasn't allowed to tell the user in the app that they can subscribe for $x online.
That single-handedly unlocked a huge cohort of boomers and other tech laypeople that had never tried Spotify or any other music streaming platform before.
It was smart and also a huge abuse of market power. Apple Music would have bombed without it. The only reason they didn't get in deep shit for it was that Apple doesn't have nearly the market capture in the EU that they have in the US, and in that time period the US didn't do antitrust against tech companies.