Apple fined US$2 billion by EU for ‘illegal’ blocking of music streaming competition, after Spotify complaint
- The European Union fined the US tech giant for breaking the bloc’s competition laws by unfairly favouring its own music streaming service over rivals
- The bloc said that Apple device users in the EU ‘were not able to make a free choice as to where, how and at what prices to buy music streaming subscriptions’
The European Union levelled its first antitrust penalty against Apple on Tuesday, fining the US tech giant nearly US$2 billion for breaking the bloc’s competition laws by unfairly favouring its own music streaming service over rivals.
Apple banned app developers from “fully informing IOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services outside of the app,” said the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm and top antitrust enforcer.
“This is illegal, and it has impacted millions of European consumers,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, said at a news conference.
Apple behaved this way for almost a decade, which meant many users paid “significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions,” the commission said.
The 1.8 billion-euro fine follows a long-running investigation triggered by a complaint from Swedish streaming service Spotify five years ago.