Apple faces €500m fine from EU over Spotify complaint

Apple is facing a first-ever fine, which Brussels is set to announce next month.

The company will reportedly be fined around €500 million ($539m) for allegedly breaking EU law. This follows a European Commission antitrust probe looking into whether or not the tech giant used its platform to favor its music streaming service over others. The investigation was launched in 2019, after Spotify made a formal complaint to regulators that the App Store prevents users from seeing cheaper alternatives to their own Apple Music.

Spotify kicked off their campaign with a website to promote their cause, which is still regularly updated. The music streaming platform outlined five reasons as to why Apple “doesn’t play fair”, like the fact Apple adds a discriminatory tax of 30 percent to only certain apps and how the App Store “routinely reject” Spotify’s app enhancements, bug fixes, and new improvements.

According to the Financial Times, the Commission will accuse of Apple of unfairly abusing its powerful position to implement anti-competitive trading practices, and also ban Apple’s “practice of blocking music services from letting users outside its App Store switch to cheaper alternatives.”

This is a first-ever fine from the EU, but Apple was hit with a €1.1bn fine in France, also for alleged anti-competitive behavior. The fine was lowered to €372mn after an appeal.

The EU has been pushing back against big tech firms that hold a monopoly over the market, aiming to open competition and give space to smaller companies in this space through its Digital Markets Act which will also be imposed next month. These six gatekeepers – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft – will have to comply.