According to a new report Apple’s business practices are coming under scrutiny at the Department of Justice as the company has been found to be pushing record labels to force music streaming services like Spotify to clamp down on free streaming. Apparently the company is doing this ahead of the much awaited relaunch of Beats Music, a streaming service that it acquired and now hopes to make a major player in the music streaming arena.
Multiple sources tell The Verge that Apple has been pushing labels to stop services like Spotify from streaming tracks to their users for free, provided that they agree to an ad-supported experience. If these services give up the free tier this would automatically reduce competition for Apple’s new service.
The report goes on to say that for this matter officials from the Department of Justice have interviewed “high-ranking” executives from the music industry about Apple’s business practices.
Some sources even claimed that Apple went so far as to pay YouTube’s music licensing fee to Universal Music Group if it stopped the video streaming service from hosting the label’s songs.
Eliminating free tiers will free up millions of users and Apple will certainly try to capture them with its new service which reportedly will not have a free tier, but many believe it will be priced considerably lower than the competition.
Apple is expected to unveil its new music streaming service at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2015 next month.
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