Apple pushing music labels to kill free Spotify streaming ahead of Beats relaunch

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Apple pushing music labels to kill free Spotify streaming ahead of Beats relaunch

Aggressive tactics from the music giant have garnered scrutiny from the Department of Justice

 

The Department of Justice is looking closely into Apple

[Zodiarck]

Those bastards ... Why do better if you can dumb down the competetion .. the nerve

[neufuse Veteran]

Apple Marketing: Now how to do we also kill free radio? Their free broadcasting of songs is detrimental to our profits!

[Torolol]

Apple has long known to loathe free non-apple music offering be it legal or not.

Simple because of their existence making it more difficult for Apple to raise their music pricing while expanding the profits.

[techbeck]

Not surprising.   Apple never really wants to compete.

[Zodiarck]

Apple has long known to loathe free non-apple music offering be it legal or not.

Simple because of their existence making it more difficult for Apple to raise their music pricing while expanding the profits.

 

Yeah their music is better so it should be pricy /s 

[123456789A]

That's pretty lame of them if it's true.

[greenwizard88]

Given Apple's history, it doesn't surprise me though.

[T3X4S]

Just dont touch my premium paid-for Spotify - its great.

[neufuse Veteran]

Yeah their music is better so it should be pricy /s 

Hey it's a scientific fact that apple music has 32% more bass and 27% more treble......

[br0adband]

$230 billion in cash (and more by the second) just sitting there doing nothing (and creating a small dent in the economy as well), and now this... I mean really, Apple, how much is enough?

 

It never ceases to amaze me that the primary founders of Apple - Jobs and Wozniak - supposedly decided to create Apple because they were sick of how "Big Blue" aka IBM did business, how they monopolized the burgeoning computer industry (the "PC" still didn't exist at the time), how they stifled competition in some pretty dramatic manners, and now if you look at things from their original point of view, Apple has become far far worse than whatever IBM did on its best day in terms of maintaining a stranglehold on their position.

 

I mean really... Apple has become the very thing it was created to not be.

 

This compares favorably to the irony of the Titanic itself - the "unsinkable ship" that sinks on its maiden voyage...

[Prosidius]

If you can't beat them, eliminate them with lawyers.

 

Dick move by Apple and a great way to promote music piracy.  

[grik]

This is not a confirmed story, and of course its not truth. You even think that Apple would do this, to stay in the hands of Spotify and a big bad PR story.

 

Nevermind my opinion, this would be huge Front News if would be close to truth. Its not truth, if it is, you will be big debates on Front Pages, not this kind of news.

[astropheed Veteran]

This is not a confirmed story, and of course its not truth. You even think that Apple would do this, to stay in the hands of Spotify and a big bad PR story.

 

Nevermind my opinion, this would be huge Front News if would be close to truth. Its not truth, if it is, you will be big debates on Front Pages, not this kind of news.

 

It's front page news on The Verge, with (as of now) 483 comments which is more than the 6 other articles surrounding it combined.

[techbeck]

This is not a confirmed story, and of course its not truth. You even think that Apple would do this, to stay in the hands of Spotify and a big bad PR story.

 

Nevermind my opinion, this would be huge Front News if would be close to truth. Its not truth, if it is, you will be big debates on Front Pages, not this kind of news.

 

MacRumors...Appleinsider...and a lot of other sites are reporting this as well.  And Apple was found guilty of price fixing ebooks so these days, anything is possible.  While maybe not 100 percent now, Apple has been caught doing shady things like this before. 

[Noir Angel]

My only surprise, really, is that things like this still shock people in the tech industry. Being jackbooted thugs is just how Apple do business.

[Dot Matrix]

Not surprising tbh. Apple has been pushing to control the music industry for years.

[NeoWind]

This is another sign of Apple lacking faith in its own strategy of competing. Lately, many of their product is simply crap especially the iPhone 6 which quite utterly the most disgusting design in the planet. I have no idea who managed to approved it and many people either don't have choice due to limited variety but to purchased it in order to enjoy latest hardware. The 3 billion beats acquisition is even nuisance and it should have consider AMD to help provide a better CPU and stop intel from monopoly like for over a decade already.

 

480p isight camera on the 12 inch Macbook? Crap UI optimization for the iPad after so many freaking years. You need a Phone to fully make the Apple watch usable? It's the ultimate injection tool to bolster the iPhone sales rather than making the best product like it used to be but not anymore. The iOS icon is so inconsistent and washout, it also feel a little bit of less synergy but overall UI is fine. 

[T3X4S]

you're hurting grik's feelings

[Eric Veteran]

This is not a confirmed story, and of course its not truth. You even think that Apple would do this, to stay in the hands of Spotify and a big bad PR story.

 

Nevermind my opinion, this would be huge Front News if would be close to truth. Its not truth, if it is, you will be big debates on Front Pages, not this kind of news.

 

This is true, because Apple always issues press releases about what they're doing. Wait, that's totally backwards.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

I wonder if this is illegal...

 

The DOJ should definitely look into this, but it is hard to say how illegal it is. Is this any different than ESPN requiring that it be included in all cable packages similar to the fight they are having with Verizon? Or the exclusivity deal that Apple struck with HBO to stream their shows blocking Netflix from carrying them?

 

Not surprising.   Apple never really wants to compete.

No company ever wants to compete...

[Anibal P]

$230 billion in cash (and more by the second) just sitting there doing nothing (and creating a small dent in the economy as well), and now this... I mean really, Apple, how much is enough?

 

It never ceases to amaze me that the primary founders of Apple - Jobs and Wozniak - supposedly decided to create Apple because they were sick of how "Big Blue" aka IBM did business, how they monopolized the burgeoning computer industry (the "PC" still didn't exist at the time), how they stifled competition in some pretty dramatic manners, and now if you look at things from their original point of view, Apple has become far far worse than whatever IBM did on its best day in terms of maintaining a stranglehold on their position.

 

I mean really... Apple has become the very thing it was created to not be.

 

This compares favorably to the irony of the Titanic itself - the "unsinkable ship" that sinks on its maiden voyage...

 

 

Maybe Woz, but Jobs like Gates were always about money and keeping it, should be no surprise he ran Woz off and his hand picked successor is following his anticompetitive policies, just that now some of the sheep are catching on to it 

I wonder if this is illegal...

 

The DOJ should definitely look into this, but it is hard to say how illegal it is. Is this any different than ESPN requiring that it be included in all cable packages similar to the fight they are having with Verizon? Or the exclusivity deal that Apple struck with HBO to stream their shows blocking Netflix from carrying them?

 

No company ever wants to compete...

 

 

They'll just do what they always do and pay off someone and make it go away, it's teh only way they've made it this far and not been slapped worse than MS for doing worse than MS ever really did 

[hagjohn]

You would think they would have learned their lesson from ebooks.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

They'll just do what they always do and pay off someone and make it go away, it's teh only way they've made it this far and not been slapped worse than MS for doing worse than MS ever really did 

I'm not sure Apple is worse than Microsoft in its run up to its Antitrust rulings...

 

IE killing off Netscape hampered Internet innovation for decades. We didn't get serious innovation to return to the web until Firefox started clawing back some of IE's market-share and we now have a web that is innovating like crazy due to competition from MS, Mozilla, Google, and Apple.

 

The desktop also has suffered heavily. Microsoft was so strong in its forcing OEMs to not even consider alternatives that the Desktop has largely gone unchanged since the 90s. Without question the rise of smartphones, wearables, and the IoT is only possible because MS has lost its dominance on computing that it once has. Microsoft had no interest in innovating in the computing space and is only now getting dragged back toward innovation.

 

Apple is doing some ugly stuff, but they haven't yet slowed or prevented innovation in the computing space. Even as Apple pushes a closed ecosystem model on iOS Google is comfortably growing an ecosystem built on the opposite approach.

 

I don't like monopolies or bullying, but it is incorrect to say Apple today is worse than MS in the early 90s.