When Apple announced their plans to acquire Shazam, one of the obstacles that they faced was over in Europe where there were several countries in the region that raised some objections to the acquisition. This was over concerns that Apple’s acquisition of Shazam could result in them cutting out the competition.
Following a report from last month that the EU could clear the acquisition, it turns out that they have.
In a report from Reuters, the EU has officially cleared and approved Apple’s acquisition of Shazam. This followed an antitrust investigation in which the EU found that Apple’s acquisition of the service would not harm competition in the bloc.
According to EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, “After thoroughly analyzing Shazam’s user and music data, we found that their acquisition by Apple would not reduce competition in the digital music streaming market. 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.”
For those unfamiliar with the issues that were raised, basically Shazam at the moment lets users identify music and add that music to various music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. The concern was that if Apple acquires Shazam, the competition could be removed and only Apple Music would be supported. That being said, the deal has not been officially concluded yet but the clearing by EU regulators will no doubt help its progress.
