It was in April that European Commission announced its investigation of Apple’s decision to acquire Shazam, which was a decision dating back to the last year. Although the European Commission did not want to take a critical approach towards the deal, it changed the opinion by the end of April. Now, after spending a few months in the investigation, European Commission has approved Apple’s decision to purchase Shazam. It is based on the conclusion that Apple’s acquisition of Shazam would not affect Apple’s competitors in digital music streaming industry such as Spotify. Now that the deal is cleared, Apple can move forward with Shazam purchase.
The concern of the European Commission was whether Apple would be using the Shazam app to restrict the number of referrals made to the competitor apps like Spotify. Shazam is an app that helps users identify the ongoing track by pointing the smartphones towards a speaker or audio output. Once it finds the song, it will also recommend platforms where the users can stream the track. It’s at the point that, European Commission believed, Apple could make a partial decision. However, after the aforesaid investigation, the EC concluded that their acquisition by Apple would not reduce competition in the digital music streaming market.
Coming to the final conclusion regarding the deal, the European Commission says that “the transaction would raise no competition concerns in the EEA or any substantial part of it. A merger decision does not release companies from respecting all relevant data protection laws.” It also comes down to the notion that there would be no issues with the ethics of competition and that Spotify would not have impacts due to this acquisition, at least in the EU region. Shazam music recognition apps are quite popular on Android as well as iOS, and Apple has not revealed much of its plans regarding the future of these apps.
