Apple will get a fine from the EU Commission over Spotify’s antitrust complaint, the first ever for Apple. According to a report from the Financial Times, the fine will be about 500 million pounds. This fine will be the conclusion of a formal complaint lodged by Spotify in 2019.
Spotify’s complaint was the culmination of Apple’s efforts to keep the app and users inside the App Store payment system. Spotify complained in 2019 that Apple’s policies suppressed competition against Apple Music which resulted in an EU investigation the next year. The EU kicked down Apple’s objection to its refusal to even let developers link their own subscription sign-ups within their apps.
This judgment from the EU will not force Apple to allow in-app payment methods but will insist music streaming apps link out to their websites freely to subscribe online. The prices on websites can be much lower as music app companies don’t have to pay commissions to Apple.
There is not much known about the ruling at this point, apart from what was reported by the Financial Times. But we expect that the EU ruling on music streaming will be officially announced in the coming weeks.
According to the report, Apple may be fined 500 million pounds. It may sound a lot but a fine of $40 billion dollars was on the table when the EU updated its objections last year.
