Apple Gets Antitrust Scrutiny Over Music Deals

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."

Comments

About Time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did no one ever consider this when the number of isles of MP3 players went from 5 to 0 in most electronic stores as the ipod ruled them all because that is the only hardware that itunes would work with? Seems like they should have perhaps looked into this years ago.. but I guess they did get caught trying to do the same thing with ebooks..

Re:About Time...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no real Apple monopoly. When Apple came out with the first iPod, its competition was the CD player sized Nomad Jukebox, Compaq's hard disk player (yes... Compaq was the first company to make a hard disk based MP3 player), and Sony with their "MP3" players (which either transcoded to ATRAC3, or added a DRM wrapper to files.)

Apple's first iPod used MusicMatch and then in their next rev, bought out Casady & Greene's player.

In reality, at this time, Sony had the music player industry by the short hairs. They had minidisk players, Walkmans, CD players, as well as the above mentioned "MP3" players. Apple just started with one device. Another potential monopoly would have been MS's PlaysForSure, which everyone but Apple and Archos signed up for.

As for DRM, Apple's was the least onerous. Worst case, burn a playlist to a CD-RW, rip it back in, and call it done. This was a lot better than Sony's OpenMG player which didn't allow copying of music, period. It allowed checkins and checkouts, and would only allow each song to be checked out three times.

Now, the use of a MP3 player is limited. Maybe for jogging where having a phone is awkward. Even now, there are still non-Apple MP3 players on the shelf which are usable for exercising when one doesn't want to destroy their phone by sweat running down the phone jack into the device, frying it.

Re:People still "buy" music - really?

[alex67500]

It depends. MP3s, probably not. But flac, why not? I know Amazon was looking at it.
Led Zep remasters coming out these days are available in 24-bit flac, which is good enough for me (and way better than CDs with a proper DAC!)

"affect the labels relationships with other servic

[ikoleverhate]

es" Yeah, I'd been wondering why since last week around half my hundred or so albums on 7digital were suddenly unavailable for download.

Re:People still "buy" music - really?

[pr0fessor]

If you really want to support a band that you like especially if they are on an indie label, just go to one of their concerts, buy a t-shirt, have fun, and maybe meet the band.

Re:Beats music another app I can't delete

[ArcadeMan]

Get yourself an iPhone 3GS, Apple will leave you alone.

Re:People still "buy" music - really?

[mlts]

Some of the bands I support have been doing boxed sets, as well as LPs.

Yes, CDs as a distribution medium solely are long since dead, replaced by the 99 cent track [1]. However, bands are selling boxed sets which seem to be making them a decent amount of money, where the box contains a CD, a T-shirt, an amulet, and other items. LPs also sell because they are less for the music value, as opposed to the large surface for album art, which isn't nearly as relevant when on a postage-stamp sized screen on a MP3 player.

[1]: This can be argued to be one of the major reasons why the music industry collapsed, and why the big labels make (not sign) their bands now.

Apple also attempting to strip music from YouTube

[cahuenga]

"Sources also indicated that Apple offered to pay YouTube’s music licensing fee to Universal Music Group if the label stopped allowing its songs on YouTube. Apple is seemingly trying to clear a path before its streaming service launches, which is expected to debut at WWDC in June. If Apple convinces the labels to stop licensing freemium services from Spotify and YouTube, it could take out a significant portion of business from its two largest music competitors."

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5...

Re:"affect the labels relationships with other ser

[danomac]

The future of music sure sucks, doesn't it?

Internet down = no music
Music streaming site down = no music
Music library site down/out of business = no music