Elizabeth Warren Hits at Apple Music in Anti-Monopoly Speech

Elizabeth Warren has weighed in on the streaming music business. In a speech the Massachusetts senator gave today in Washington, she criticized Apple Music as an example of concentrated corporate power that can reduce competition, The Hill reports. Two days after appearing alongside Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop in Ohio, the Democratic lawmaker targeted Apple’s “treatment of rival music-streaming companies,” saying, “While Apple Music is easily accessible on the iPhone, Apple has placed conditions on its rivals that make it difficult for them to offer competitive streaming services.” Warren noted that the Federal Trade Commission has reportedly been investigating Apple’s treatment of competitors’ music streaming services for potential violations of antitrust law. At issue is a 30% cut Apple takes from in-app purchases of digital goods through its platform, including subscriptions to other music streaming services.

Pitchfork has reached out to Apple for comment. Warren named the company alongside Google and Amazon as examples of how platforms “can become a tool to snuff out competition.” She said: “Google, Apple and Amazon have created disruptive technologies that changed the world, and every day they deliver enormously valuable products. They deserve to be highly profitable and successful. But the opportunity to compete must remain open for new entrants and smaller competitors that want their chance to change the world again.”

Jonathan Prince, global head of communications and public policy at Spotify, commented to Recode about Warren’s remarks. “Apple has long used its control of iOS to squash competition in music, driving up the prices of its competitors, inappropriately forbidding us from telling our customers about lower prices, and giving itself unfair advantages across its platform through everything from the lock screen to Siri,” Prince said. “You know there’s something wrong when Apple makes more off a Spotify subscription than it does off an Apple Music subscription and doesn’t share any of that with the music industry. They want to have their cake and eat everyone else’s too.”

via Marc Hogan