Apple App Store Rejections - Metadata and Intellectual Property Permission

Hendies — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 11:30:14 GMT

Plan

Premium

Country

United Kingdom

Device

N/A

Operating System

iOS

My Question or Issue

I am experiencing an issue with the Apple App Store review process where the usage of album artwork and artist images taken from real live in-app screenshots is constituting a violation of Apple's App Store Guidelines - namely Section 5.2.1 Legal - Intellectual Property.

"Your app and its contents should not infringe upon the rights of another party"

The issue is that when provided as supporting documentation and quoting the relevant sections within, the Spotify Developer Policy and Terms do not provide explicit consent that grants the use of these images within the required app store screenshots.

When searching the forums here, similar issues exist:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/iOS-app-integrated-Spotify-SDK-rejected-by-Apple-when-publish/m-p/4977230

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/IOS-Binary-with-Spotify-SDK-rejected-from-App-Store/m-p/5013510

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/App-Rejection-Apple/m-p/5006965

This highlights that the issue is growing, and for iOS developers this is absolutely critical in ensuring our hard work and love for the Spotify brand is able to be released.

UPDATE 03/01/22

For those who are facing this issue, remove any album artworks from your app store screenshots. You should still be able to use artist images, at least from my experience with the App Review team

topic Apple App Store Rejections - Metadata and Intellectual Property Permission in Spotify for Developers

Apple App Store Rejections - Metadata and Intellectual Property Permission