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Apple faces more anti-trust music

by on06 May 2015


Because it is too caring and sharing

Apple's wheeling and dealing with the record labels is under US antitrust scrutiny as it might turn out to be a little bit illegal.

The Tame Apple Press is gearing up to over promote the outfit's Beats Music streaming service, but what you might not know is that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is examining the fruity cargo cult to see if it is using its position as the top seller of music downloads through its iTunes store to put rival music services like Spotify at a disadvantage.

Apple bought Beats last year hoping to win points with the music industry and turn Beats Music into a strong competitor to Spotify and other streaming services.

Jobs' Mob did well with iTunes, but found that music streaming services were more popular. Since buying Beats Apple approached more than a dozen artists in the music industry including for limited exclusive rights to music and partnerships to help bolster Beats.

The idea was to try to get the music labels to force streaming services that offered a free tier to abandon that idea.

These sorts of antics are exactly what Apple did to try and take control of the eBook market from Amazon. Amazon had kept the price of ebooks under $10 which angered the major publishers, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. Apple did a secret deal with them which forced Amazon to raise the price.

Apple lost its court case on that anti-trust action, but the fact that it is trying the same stunt with music streaming means that if it loses its appeal it could find its self on the wrong end of a contempt of court hearing.

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