EU Approves Apple’s Purchase of Shazam

The European Union has given Apple’s Shazam acquisition its approval after launching an investigation into the deal earlier this year over concerns that the purchase could be anticompetitive. After months of investigations, the committee has concluded that will not be the case. “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,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement, the Verge reported. The EU commission’s original concerns were about if Apple could choose to only allow Shazam to link out to Apple Music post-purchase, depriving services like Spotify of valuable clicks, or use Shazam’s data on people’s listening habits to better “encourage them to switch to Apple Music.” Apple first announced that it was purchasing Shazam in a $400 million deal back in December 2017. With this final hurdle out of the way, it is likely only a matter of time before Apple is able to finalize the deal.