EU regulators have approved Apple’s December 2017 acquisition of music and image recognition app Shazam. The deal should strengthen Apple Music, which is already the second most popular paid music streaming service in the Europe and the US, after Spotify.
EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said in a statement:
“Data is key in the digital economy. We must therefore carefully review transactions which lead to the acquisition of important sets of data, including potentially commercially sensitive ones, to ensure they do not restrict competition. 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.”
What’s Next?
Shazam is currently agnostic in its connections to music streamers like Spotify and Apple Music. We expect that to change with new Apple Music integrations and a likely app exit by Spotify and others that don’t want their data shared with a top competitor.