Sources: FTC looking into claims Apple treats rival music streaming services in its app store illegally under antitrust law
FTC exploring Apple rules for streaming music rivals in App Store — U.S. government antitrust regulators are looking into claims about whether Apple's treatment …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2015 Reuters report is the earliest data point in what became a six-year antitrust arc around Apple's App Store rules for music streaming. Spotify's complaint about App Store fees eventually pushed the EU to open its own probe in 2019, keeping pressure on the same conduct the FTC was reportedly examining here.
The through-line is one specific rule: streaming rivals being required to route payments through Apple's system rather than their own. By 2021 that theory of harm had matured enough for Brussels to act, when the EU formally charged Apple with squeezing rival music streaming apps via its mandatory in-app payments requirement.
First-order effects
- Apple faces a U.S. regulatory examination of App Store terms that force rival music streaming services to play by Apple's payment rules, putting the commission it extracts from competitors under antitrust scrutiny.
Second-order effects
- Spotify and other streaming services gain a regulator-backed channel to contest App Store fees, and the EU's later decision to take up Spotify's complaint shows the U.S. inquiry emboldened parallel action abroad.
Third-order effects
- If regulators on either side of the Atlantic conclude that platform owners cannot tax competing services through mandatory payment systems, app store economics shift from gatekeeper-set commissions toward negotiated or regulated terms — a precedent that would extend well beyond music.
The trend: Platform gatekeeping is moving from private contract terms to contested antitrust terrain, with music streaming as the test case regulators use to define how much control app store owners may exert over rivals.