Apple May Face EU Antitrust Investigation Over Spotify Complaint

The European Union has recently announced that it would probe the Spotify antitrust complaints against the tech company Apple Inc. over treating its rivals unfairly, as well as giving more favor for its product, Apple Music by leveraging the terms in the App Store policies.

According to the report from Engadget on May 05, both of these companies have refused to give any comment when being asked for the exact situation of this subject.

At the beginning of March, the CEO of Spotify Daniel Ek posted an announcement saying that the music streaming company from Sweden had made a complaint to the European Commission (EU for short) to protest Apple’s unfair treatment. Accordingly, Spotify has been one of the subjects of the discriminatory practices of the iPhone manufacturer on the App Store.

The report revealed that Apple denied Spotify’s accusations and said the music streaming company with its “financial motivations” was conspiring to gain the benefits from infrastructure of App Store while it didn’t contribute to the digital distribution platform.

The guidelines of App Store points out that developers must offer a 30% cut from their subscription revenue of the first year, and the next year, they just have to offer a half.

In addition, the report also showed that providers would have to charge extra for the subscriptions on App Store (Spotify is an example) or lose a large amount in their costs.

Apple also claimed that it wasn’t partial to its music and video streaming service Apple Music as software. More specifically, the company revealed that it was discussing the combination between Siri and AirPlay with Spotify.

However, no one can ensure that Spotify will gain victory in this lawsuit against Apple’s monopoly.

In case the Swedish company wins, Apple may have to eliminate or reduce its subscription cut. Another situation is that the US company will let its devices work with media services from third parties, similar to what it does with its services.

Until now, the amount of active users per month of Spotify reaches 217 million, while Apple Music just gains 50 million ones.