Apple faces an additional EU antitrust charge in the coming weeks over Apple Music in an investigation triggered by a complaint from Spotify, Reuters reports citing “a person familiar with the matter.”
The European Commission last year accused the iPhone maker of distorting competition in the music streaming market via restrictive rules for its App Store that force developers to use its own in-app payment system and prevent them from informing users of other purchasing options.
Under new EU tech rules called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) agreed last month, such practices are illegal. However Apple and other U.S. tech giants targeted by the rules will have a couple of years before the crackdown starts.
“The DMA is still two years away. The rules will probably apply to Apple at the beginning of 2024. This is why antitrust cases remain important,” said lawyer Damien Geradin at Geradin Partners, who is advising several app developers in other cases against Apple.
In addition to the music streaming investigation, Apple’s practices in e-books and its Apple Pay are also in the EU antitrust crosshairs.
MacDailyNews Take: Spotify, already long since eclipsed by Apple Music in the world’s No.1 market for recorded music, the United States of America, sees the writing on the wall and, so, has been running around the globe whining to authorities like little babies crying for mommy.
“This boils down to the fact that Spotify wants to use the platform that Apple built and maintains at great expense for free” – MacDailyNews, March 13, 2019
Spotify is good at three things: Losing money, whining, and gypping artists.
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Music streaming can be an important way of communicating. Let’s hope that Apple is properly playing to the rules. Meanwhile since many MDN headlines are all geared towards TV shows and academy awards, an inspiring song might be helpful to show certain elements (especially super pooper powers) that the human spirit will struggle and survive under incredible odds.
Way to go Zelensky.
Very moving; I wish it had subtitles so we’d know what the lyrics are. Roger Waters has always been one of the staunchest anti-war musicians (I believe his father died in WW2) but I didn’t see him with the rest of the Floydsters. I had hoped that, despite the spats between him and David Gilmour (guitarist and vocalist), he would join the band for this cause of protesting the invasion and destruction of Ukraine.
It would be great if the band could re-unite and once again produce outstanding thematic prog-rock.
The EU is engaging in protectionism under the guise of antitrust. This crap wouldn’t be happening if Spotify wasn’t a European company…