EU To Impose Its First Ever Fine on Apple Inc, of About €500 Mn

A recent report by the Financial Times (FT) said that European Union (EU) is to impose its first ever fine on Apple Inc. for allegedly breaking EU law over access to its music streaming services. EU started investigating Apple Inc in 2020, after Swedish streaming platform Spotify complained, in 2019, that Apple’s policies muted competition against Apple Music.

Citing five people with direct knowledge of this long-running investigation, the FT report said that the fine is in the region of €500 million ( ~ US$ 539 million) and is expected to be announced early next month. The fine, which is yet to be announced officially, is the culmination of a European Commission antitrust probe into whether Apple has used its own platform to favour its services over those of competitors.

The probe is investigating whether Apple blocked apps from informing iPhone users of cheaper alternatives to access music subscriptions outside the App Store. It was launched after music-streaming app Spotify made a formal complaint to EU regulators in 2019.

The FT report further said that the EU commission will ban Apple's practice of blocking music services from letting users outside its App Store switch to cheaper alternatives. Brussels will accuse Apple of abusing its powerful position and imposing anti-competitive trading practices on rivals.

Apple has never been fined for antitrust infringements by Brussels, the administrative centre of the EU. Though in March 2020, France’s competition authority, the Autorité de la Concurrence, has fined Apple €1.1 billion (around $1.2 billion) for illegally restricting how wholesalers sell Apple products. However later in 2022, French authorities dropped that to about $366 million after Apple made an appeal.

In 2021, Brussels formally charged Apple in the anti-competitive probe but last year the commission narrowed the scope of the investigation and abandoned the charge wherein Apple was allegedly pushing developers to use its own in-app payment system.

The tiff between Apple and Spotify isn't new as earlier in July 2015, Spotify launched an email campaign to urge its App Store subscribers to cancel their subscriptions and start new ones through its website, bypassing the 30% transaction fee for in-app purchases required for iOS applications by Apple Inc. Later, Apple responded to this by rejecting Spotify app update on iOS. In the following months, Spotify joined several other companies in filing a letter with the EU's antitrust body indirectly accusing Apple and Google of "abusing their 'privileged position' at the top of the market".

Moreover, Spotify was one of the first companies to support Epic Games in their lawsuit against Apple, which was filed after Epic also tried to bypass Apple's 30% fee for microtransactions in Fortnite. In September 2020, Spotify, Epic, and other companies founded The Coalition for App Fairness, which aims for better conditions for the inclusion of apps in app stores

Spotify Launches in South Korea

Today Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) launches its service in South Korea, giving Korean listeners access to over 60 million tracks and over 4 billion playlists from around the world. As the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service, Spotify offers an effortlessly simple interface, an innovative technology framework, everyday new music discovery and algorithmic recommendations personalized to each listener’s music taste. This launch brings Spotify’s total number of markets to 93.

As the sixth-largest music market in the world*, South Korea is a critical next step in Spotify’s global expansion journey. Not only is South Korea among the most digitally inclusive markets in the world, but it is also widely recognized as a cultural and music epicenter, in part due to the global phenomena K-Pop. Since Spotify debuted its first K-Pop playlist in 2014, the share of K-Pop listening on the platform has increased by more than 2,000%. With this launch, Spotify plans to accelerate the growth of Korea’s entire music streaming ecosystem, benefitting creators, labels, distributors and fans. 

“We always want to be where the listeners and artists are, and Korea is rich in both,” said Alex Norström, Chief Freemium Business Officer of Spotify. “This launch presents a massive opportunity for us to not only further our mission of bringing new and quality content to more audiences, but also help local Korean artists tap into Spotify’s 320 million listeners worldwide. We hope to create more opportunities for Korean artists across all genres to be discovered by listeners around the world.”

Spotify has uniquely tailored the music experience for each market. As a part of today’s launch, Spotify is introducing a range of new playlists made exclusively for South Korea. These playlists offer curated and the latest music from our team of Korean music experts, across some of the most popular genres. These include:  

• TOP Playlists: Korean Music Hot Now, FRESH! New Music Korea, Hot Hits Korea, Korean Music Rising, Today's Drama OST Hot Now, K-Pop Daebak and more
• Genre Playlists: TrenChill K-R&B, TrenChill K-Hip Hop, K-HIP-HOP +82, K-Are & Be, In The K-Indie, Korean City Pop, K-Rock Spirit, Folk & Acoustic Hot Now, Orchestra Korean Ballad and more
• Thematic Playlists: You Did Well, The End of the Day, So Cool Driving, Brain Rest 432Hz, Lullaby zZZ, Transcendental Game Play, Running K-Pop, GAYO Instrumentals, Spring Music, Into the Rain, Next Page of the Break-up, Kitchen Melodies and more
• ‘Starring’ playlists: This Is BTS, This Is BLACKPINK, This Is Stray Kids, This Is NCT, This Is TWICE, This is Taeyeon, This Is JAY Park, This Is CHUNG HA, This Is Loco and more

These new playlists will join Spotify’s K-Pop genre hub that encompasses a wide range of Korean music, including K-pop, Hip Hop, Indie, OST, R&B and more, as well as ‘RADAR Korea’, a playlist uncovering fresh K-music finds and a part of Spotify’s global emerging artist program. The hub is localized in over 72 countries, including Russia, India, Brazil and the UAE.

 

In Korea, new listeners can try out Spotify Premium 7 days-free on their mobile phone with no credit card information and a total of 3 months-free with credit card information, if subscribed before the end of June 2021. Listeners can engage with Spotify across a wide range of devices and app integrations including Instagram, Facebook, Samsung mobile and TV, LG TV, Microsoft Xbox, Bose and more.

 

The Spotify app is available to download for both Premium Individual and Duo plans. To enjoy music the way you want it, download the Spotify app today via the Android or iOS app store or by heading to www.spotify.com/kr-ko/.

 

Click here for further imagery.

 

* According to IFPI (https://www.ifpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Global_Music_Report-the_Industry_in_2019-en.pdf)

 

About Spotify Technology S.A.

 

Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by these creators.

 

Today, with over 60 million tracks and over 4 billion playlists, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with a community of more than 320 million listeners across 93 markets.

 

We use our Investors and For the Record websites as well as other social media listed in the “Resources – Social Media” tab of our Investors website to disclose material company information. For more information, images, or to contact the press team, head over to https://newsroom.spotify.com/.

 

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210201005846/en/

Google failed to buy streaming service Spotify

According to Wall Street Journal, Internet giant Google had tried to buy Spotify, the streaming music service, last year but had to back off last minute due to its jaw dropping price tag.

As of May 2014, Spotify had around 40 million users in 56 countries which made it the number one service for streaming music on the internet.

According to the report in the Journal, Spotify was reportedly asking for a whopping $10 billion despite it being valued at $4 billion in its latest round of equity funding.

Majority of the Spotify users go for advertising support versions of the service while only 10 million choose the ad-free option.

The Internet giant had planned on spending around $20 billion to $30 billion on acquiring technology and companies abroad according to a letter it had filed with the regulators of US Securities and Exchange Commission last year.  The company has also revealed that in the recent past it had tried to buy a foreign company for $4 to $5 billion but in the end the deal fell through.

Google has also recently purchased a startup called Songza in order to boost its own music service at its Play online shop. Songza is a free online streaming music service which recommends tunes based on people’s mood. The service recommends playlists based on where people are and what are they doing, such as exercising, working hard in the office or starting a day at home. The service has applications tailor-made for iOS and Android Smartphones.

The financial terms of the deal disclosed were not released officially but if some rumours doing the rounds of the internet are to be believed, the deal was locked in at around $15 million.

According to Google’s post on its social network Google+, the company will try to incorporate the Songza features like by the users into its Google Play Music and YouTube wherever possible.

Songza has been to likened to Spotify rival Pandora, which is considered of having the leading advertising supported streaming music model in the world. The top established companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have music services that have to compete in a market where Pandora and Spotify currently are the top players.

Google failed to buy streaming service Spotify

According to Wall Street Journal, Internet giant Google had tried to buy Spotify, the streaming music service, last year but had to back off last minute due to its jaw dropping price tag.

As of May 2014, Spotify had around 40 million users in 56 countries which made it the number one service for streaming music on the internet.

According to the report in the Journal, Spotify was reportedly asking for a whopping $10 billion despite it being valued at $4 billion in its latest round of equity funding.

Majority of the Spotify users go for advertising support versions of the service while only 10 million choose the ad-free option.

The Internet giant had planned on spending around $20 billion to $30 billion on acquiring technology and companies abroad according to a letter it had filed with the regulators of US Securities and Exchange Commission last year.  The company has also revealed that in the recent past it had tried to buy a foreign company for $4 to $5 billion but in the end the deal fell through.

Google has also recently purchased a startup called Songza in order to boost its own music service at its Play online shop. Songza is a free online streaming music service which recommends tunes based on people’s mood. The service recommends playlists based on where people are and what are they doing, such as exercising, working hard in the office or starting a day at home. The service has applications tailor-made for iOS and Android Smartphones.

The financial terms of the deal disclosed were not released officially but if some rumours doing the rounds of the internet are to be believed, the deal was locked in at around $15 million.

According to Google’s post on its social network Google+, the company will try to incorporate the Songza features like by the users into its Google Play Music and YouTube wherever possible.

Songza has been to likened to Spotify rival Pandora, which is considered of having the leading advertising supported streaming music model in the world. The top established companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have music services that have to compete in a market where Pandora and Spotify currently are the top players.