Apple Music, the new subscription service streaming Cupertino firm, was the highlight of the recent Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco (WWDC in English).
However, it seems that as the own Jimmy Iovine, Beats and today former strongman Apple Music recognizes, this service is a mess of applications, services and websites.
So, about the same time that the new service Apple announced, it emerged the existence of an investigation by the Attorney General of New York, Eric Schneiderman, in the business market music streaming, because it is assumed that under all that mess that describes Iovine could hide limitations or restrictions on competition.
The research came to light following the online publication of a letter from the lawyers of Universal Music, the largest home of record labels, which apparently responds to a communication of preliminary investigation of the prosecution , indicating that no agreement with Sony Music, Warner Music and Apple to prevent the availability of free streaming music or to restrict its licensing agreements with other streaming services.
The official response New York Attorney General, through his spokesman, said Matt Mittenthal, was that there is indeed an ongoing investigation on the market for streaming music, an industry in which competition has recently led to new and different ways to listen to music consumers. The research objective is to preserve the benefits of this model of exploitation. This requires ensuring that development takes place within the framework of free and fair competition.
Why conduct an ex ante Apple investigation by its new service? Antitrust experts in law lawyers say this is due to Apple’s reputation in the field of alleged anticompetitive practices, referring to a decision of the Court of Appeals of the United States in 2014, which upheld a decision in favor of the Department of Justice the United States on a consultation with five publishers to raise prices of electronic books through its iBooks store (online books) in order to compete with Amazon Kindle (paying lower prices to publishers).
As you know, Apple has appealed that decision, but agreed to pay up to US $ 450 million to consumers as part of their agreement, depending on the outcome of his appeal.
In the case of subscription service streaming which would be at stake it is a similar pattern: prices paid by free services to famous musicians. Apparently, some of them would have been deterred from continuing to work with some of these services under the offer of higher prices, which could be anti-competitive. However, that is only a suspicion and investigation just might be the result of a complaint from someone in the industry, as it would be unusual for Apple make the same mistake.
In any case, it is important capacity Justice response in the US to follow up on the various markets and new business proposals emerging in the economy, in order to protect the right of consumers to benefit from competition.
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