On Thursday 6 September, the European Commission authorised the planned acquisition of the app Shazam by Apple under the European competition rules (see EUROPE 12008).
“After thoroughly analysing Shazam's user and music data, we found that their acquisition by Apple would not reduce competition in the digital music streaming market”, said the Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, in a press release.
Apple operates Apple Music, the second-largest music streaming service in Europe after Spotify. Shazam operates the most widely-used music recognition app in the European Economic Area (EEA) and globally.
According to the Commission, working on the basis of data from important market players, the merged entity will not create a competition distortion in the digital music streaming market. In particular, access to Shazam's data will not significantly increase Apple's ability to target music lovers and any practice aiming to encourage customers to change provider would have only a negligible effect.
The European institution notes that the Shazam app is a starting point of limited significance for the music streaming services that compete with Apple Music.
Furthermore, combining Shazam and Apple's user data sets would not give the merged entity a unique advantage. Shazam's data are not unique and Apple's competitors will retain the possibility of accessing and using similar databases, the Commission stresses. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)