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Even the FTC is looking into Apple’s upcoming music streaming service

By Marcus Wong - on 7 May 2015, 5:07pm

Even the FTC is looking into Apple’s upcoming music streaming service

We recently reported on how sources claimed Apple might be trying to force music service rivals like Spotify into a disadvantage. Well, according to a Bloomberg report, that news hasn’t gone past U.S. antitrust officials, who are now scrutinizing every part of Apple’s foray into the music streaming business.

Bloomberg reports that FTC officials have discussed Apple’s business practices with more than one record label, but are still in the early stages of their enquiry. Amongst other things, the FTC is trying to find out if Apple is trying to curtail ad-supported music and push more songs into the paid tier of services.

Consolidation has narrowed the music industry to just three players, and representatives of all three major record companies -Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, declined to comment, as did Justin Cole, an FTC spokesman. Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, has yet to respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment either.

Spotify and other music-streaming services are very much pushing the growth of the music industry at the moment, but Apple’s upcoming revamp of Beats Music is expected to compete by offering more exclusive content. Of course, if Apple manages to convince sites like YouTube and Spotify to lose their freemium tiers, then they certainly would seem to have more of an advantage given their relationships with the various labels in the music industry and the growing population of users on the iTunes platform either on their computers or through their iPhones.

Apple is no stranger to antitrust enforcement from the U.S. government, having faced a similar suit in 2012 when the U.S. government sued Apple for pushing publishers to sign agreements that let it sell digital copies of their book under a pricing model that made e-books more expensive. It seems there is a similar probe from the European Union ongoing too, so it will be interesting to see how this ends up.

Source: BloombergBusiness, Macrumors.com

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