US Officials Investigate Apple Music For Antitrust Violations

Apple Music was launched earlier this week and it looks like the new music streaming platform from Apple could already be facing antitrust violations. According to a report from The New York Times, attorney generals from New York and Connecticut are apparently in the process of investigating Apple for potential antitrust violations with its new music service.

Apparently attorney generals Eric T. Schneiderman and George Jepsen are suspicious that Apple might have somehow convinced the record labels to do away with free, ad-supported music services. As it stands Apple Music has no free listening tier. Instead listeners get a 3 month free subscription, after which they have to pay $10 a month to keep listening.

This is versus services offered by Spotify in which there is a free listening tier supported by ads. The investigation will see if Apple and the labels have conspired with each other to remove their support for such services offered by the likes of Spotify. Right now it does not seem to be that case but who knows if that might change further down the line.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of such potential charges. Even before the launch and confirmation of the service, officials in the EU were already suspicious along with their US counterparts who were said to be keeping an eye on Apple, but we guess with the launch officials will now attempt to determine if Apple is in violation.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Audio
Tags: Apple Music, Legal