The lucrative online music business has been in the European Commission’s sights for some time and could be about to make a move. Brussels finalizes a sanction against Apple for abuse of a dominant position in its service after a complaint from Spotify with a fine that could reach 500 million euros.
In 2019, the Swedish platform Spotify sued Apple for considering that it limited users’ options to access music online and “stifled” innovation. Since then, the Community Executive’s Competition services have studied the allegations and, therefore, in 2021, the Executive announced the opening of an investigation.
Five years after the complaint, the long legal battle could come to an end and Brussels is studying its first sanction against the Cupertino company worth 500 million euros, according to information from the Financial Times newspaper. When Brussels announced the opening of the investigation, it asked Apple to clarify its concerns, in particular about the contractual restrictions that, according to the Commission, Apple imposes on developers of online music applications.
At that time, the Vice President in charge of Competition, the Danish Margarethe Vestager, accused Apple of distorting competition in the online music market. “Our preliminary conclusion is that Apple violates community regulations on competition,” she denounced. According to the Community Executive, the multinational of the bitten apple prevents developers from informing iPhone and iPad users about the existence of alternative music subscription services with more advantageous prices than those of Apple Music, the application installed by default on these. devices.
The App Store is the only way that users of Apple devices have to download applications, so developers and platforms like Spotify have to meet the technology giant’s obligations to access these consumers. In addition, the technology giant keeps a 30% commission for each subscription made through its application store, according to the Executive. This meant, in the Commission’s opinion, that companies like Spotify ended up passing this commission on to users, so they then paid a higher price than the subscription plan that exists in Apple Music.
During this time, and aware of Brussels’ concerns, Apple has made changes to its online music policy, although the European Commission believes that they do not address the entire problem. According to the newspaper, the fine could be announced at the beginning of next month, although it is just one of the many disagreements between Spotify, which has more than 500 million users in the world, with Apple Music, which has 95 million subscribers.
It would be the first time that the European Commission has fined Apple for a case of abuse of a dominant position, although it would be one more in the tug-of-war between Brussels and big technology. The main battle that has been waged in recent years has been against Google with fines that exceed 8,000 million euros, and which have been appealed before European justice. Apple, however, was sanctioned in 2020 in France with a fine of 1.1 billion euros, although it was reduced to 372 million, after an appeal.
