Apple Gets Antitrust Scrutiny Over Music Deals

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday May 6, 2015 @02:22AM from the apple-a-day-keeps-the-competition-at-bay dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is probing Apple after its acquisition of Beats Electronics, and its various deals with record labels to sell music through the iTunes store. As part of the acquisition, Apple now owns the music streaming service created by Beats, and they're planning to release a new version sometime soon. This makes their ties to the record labels, already deep because of iTunes, even stronger — and could affect the labels' relationships with other streaming services, like Spotify. Investigators want to know if Apple is using these business deals as leverage for "curtailing ad-supported music and pushing more songs into paid tiers of service at higher rates."

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Re:Apple also attempting to strip music from YouTu by Anonymous Coward · 2015-05-06 06:12 · Score: 0, Troll

So are indy artists. Got a problem with that? Big Data (Google) makes profits from artists that they never compensate. Normally that's a stoning offense around here but I guess since you can take a cheap shot at Apple it's just ok now?