The European Commission will fine Apple €500 million in the case against Spotify – Kommersant

The European Commission intends to fine Apple €500 million for violating EU antitrust laws, reports Financial Times (FT) citing own sources. This will be the first fine for an American corporation in Europe imposed for abuses in the music streaming market. It should be officially announced in early March, writes FT.

The regulator intends to impose a fine on Apple based on the results investigations, started back in 2019 after a complaint from Spotify. As noted in the Swedish music service’s complaint, Apple abuses the fact that it is the exclusive owner of the app store for iOS devices and can impose its own terms on third-party developers. Thus, the complaint noted, Apple requires music services that compete with Apple Music, including Spotify, to pay a 30 percent commission on payments made through the Apple payment system. However, this requirement does not apply to services such as Uber and Deliveroo, which are not direct competitors to Apple services.

In mid-2021, Apple, trying to fight off numerous lawsuits in the US, for the first time in its history allowed app developers to tell customers about other payment methods – in addition to Apple’s own payment system. True, in practice this changed little: Apple Pay remained the only possible option for making purchases in the App Store. The corporation then made it possible to inform users about purchases through third-party payment systems of goods and services that do not apply to the App Store and iOS. It was also possible to report this outside the ecosystem, for example in an email newsletter.

In early 2022, Apple allowed Spotify and other music services to charge subscriptions outside of iOS. But in June of that year, Spotify said the proposed changes were “just for show.” According to the FT, the European Commission concluded that Apple’s rules when working with music services resulted in users having to pay more for subscriptions. The European Commission declined to comment on the FT report about the fine.

Kirill Sarkhanyants