European Regulators Concerned Apple's Proposed Shazam Acquisition Could Hurt Competitors Like Spotify

[mazz0]

Guys, bare in mind they haven't made any ruling yet, all they've said is they're looking in to it, unless I've misunderstood?

 

[kemal]

It's NOT expensive for the tech it has.
[doublepost=1524501088][/doublepost]

It is expensive for the tech it doesn't have.

Yeah not gonna happen.

 

[69650]

I can’t see any logical reason for this aquisition other than to hurt the competition in which case it’s bad for us all.

 

[now i see it]

Just another key technology acquisition by Apple in its endless quest to dominate the consumer electronics world.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

It almost sounds as though they don't actually understand what Shazam is. Like they're assuming it's another music streaming service.

Actually, no, it sounds like they understand exactly what Shazam is. Shazam is a music search engine that relies on audio input instead of typed text. It identifies the song, then tells you where you can listen to it.

If Apple acquired it, Apple could change it to only ever list Apple Music as a place you can listen to songs, and never mention that competitors can also stream the same song.

Or Apple could be more subtle about it, and just prioritize Apple Music results above other results.

 

[Kaibelf]

The EU rightly does this all the time, and it is about protecting their citizens from US companies

Uh huh. Because Apple is just wild about abusing the privacy of others and assisting in government overreach, right?

 

[weckart]

Shazam is a musical search engine. This sounds like the browser wars, where the EU made Microsoft allow competing browsers and the removal of Explorer possible to prevent lock in. Considering what an unholy mess IE6 turned out to be, this was a good thing.

Shazam and Soundhound dominate the audio search market.

 

[69650]

I don't understand how this is a problem. Shazam isn't a streaming service; it simply identifies songs. I guess Apple could engineer it so that it displayed songs only on Apple Music and tried to steer users to buy it if they don't already have Apple Music. But I'm sure in that case another app would come along to fill in the gaps.

You have more faith in Apple and the app market than I do. Apple will do anything to kill off the competition.

 

[Kaibelf]

We can say the same about your biased opinion

Biased against dopey free market interference with no clear point? Guilty.

 

[centauratlas]

The EU rightly does this all the time, and it is about protecting their citizens from US companies

I didn't realize that EU citizens really that stupid that they need to be protected from US companies. Or that the founders of Shazam were that stupid and selfish to not offering to protect EU citizens from US companies. What is wrong with the people who founded Shazam that they don't care about the citizens of the EU?



/ s

The true abusers of power are the people in government. The people who have murdered hundreds of millions over the past 100 years were in governments: primarily communist, socialist, fascist, totalitarian and any other form of authoritarian governments. The people with a monopoly on the use of force, a monopoly on taxes, and a monopoly on regulation. The true monopolies to fear if you value freedom.

The people of the EU need more protection from their power-hungry leaders than from Apple who has been pretty good about standing up to governments (not perfect, see China, but pretty good).

 

[69Mustang]

I can’t see any logical reason for this aquisition other than to hurt the competition in which case it’s bad for us all.

Liquid Metal 2.0

 

[tomi03]

Biased against dopey free market interference with no clear point? Guilty.

Yes, It's your biased point of view, nothing else

 

[Glideslope]

Bag the EU. Brussels is a power mongering Oligarchy. They piss and moan about others, yet make no effort toward self reflection.
28 Nation States all fighting continuously for the same pot of Euros. Just wait until the simmering Nationalism in Europe really starts moving. The EU is a failed experiment only being held together be the greed and dependency of each Nation State.
Once finial hardship hits the EU and Brussels can no longer buy cooperation, it's over baby.

 

[DeeGee48]

My question is simply this. If the EU rejects Apple’s acquisition of Shazam, does that effect what happens in the rest of the world, including the USA? Does Europe’s rejection mean that we can’t have this new combined service on OUR devices? I’m so sick of this “new world order” crap!

 

[Will.O.Bie]

The EU sure seems to have a problem with companies trying not to waste their customers' time. I'm sure all of this has NOTHING to do with Spotify being an EU based company.

My thoughts exactly, protect the interests of the members of state.

 

[RickInHouston]

Sounds more like governments are taking note to how big apple is and how much influence they yield.

Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Stella]

The EU rightly does this all the time, and it is about protecting their citizens from US companies

They also have concerns with EU companies too.

 

[Rafterman]

"European Regulators Concerned Apple's Proposed Shazam Acquisition Could Hurt Competitors Like Spotify"

Uh, yeah. That's the point of acquisitions.

 

[chucker23n1]

ITT: lots of people who don't understand why anti-trust exists.

 

[weckart]

Screw the EU. Brussels is a power mongering Oligarchy. They piss and moan about others, yet make no effort toward self reflection.
28 Nation States all fighting continuously for the same pot of Euros. Just wait until the simmering Nationalism in Europe really starts moving. The EU is a failed experiment only being held together be the greed and dependency of each Nation State.
Once finial hardship hits the EU and Brussels can no longer buy cooperation, it's over baby.

Really? Counting down to the implosion of the US any day now. Nah. That isn't going to happen, either.

 

[oneMadRssn]

The horror! A company trying to convince users of a competing product to switch to its own! We cannot allow that!

Just like that time Microsoft "tried to convince" users of Netscape to switch to Internet Explorer by bundling Internet Explorer with a Windows update and making it the automatic default browser for everyone.

 

[Teammm]

Isn't that the point? I'm for Apple + Shazam

 

[weckart]

Isn't that the point? I'm for Apple + Shazam

I'm not. Apple's bloated enough as it is. I'd rather it concentrated on fixing what it has rather than swallowing everything else up.

 

[itsmilo]

Not sure why they're even looking into this. They're not forcing Spotify users to switch to Apple Music. But they might have data on what Spotify users like to listen to—data users freely gave to Shazam by using the service and Apple would have access to. This is literally Google and Facebook's entire business model—they spy on users and use that information to target ads at them to get them to buy goods and services from companies that pay Google and Facebook and yet they allow them to operate as if nothing is wrong? And I'm sure that Google and Facebook's data troves are much more detailed and aren't anonymous. Not sure if Shazam is currently anonymously collecting data but you can be sure that based on the extensive lengths Apple goes to keep user information private that they will do the same when they take ownership.

This is exactly the point. They may not be allowed to use the user data from Shazam to improve their Apple Music service just like Facebook is not allowed to use its WhatsApp data in the EU

 

[ersan191]

Taking away the “add to Spotify” button after identifying a song does not constitute and international antitrust crisis. This is just stupid.

Shazam is not ubiquitous and it has perfectly viable competitors.