The European Commission has cleared Apple's acquisition of Shazam, after an extended investigation found no major threat to competition from the deal.
Apple and Shazam mainly offer complementary services and do not compete with each other. However, the Commission was concerned that Apple's access to Shazam's user data could give Apple an unfair advantage in the music streaming market compared to competitors like Spotify.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said in a statement: "Data is key in the digital economy. We must therefore carefully review transactions which lead to the acquisition of important sets of data, including potentially commercially sensitive ones, to ensure they do not restrict competition."
Apple Music is already the second-largest music streaming service in Europe, after Spotify. The fear was that Shazam's music recognition app could give Apple access to information on Spotify's customers, which it could then use to directly target the rival's subscribers with its own offers. Furthermore, Shazam is a source of referrals for music streaming services, which Apple could restrict to its own service after the takeover.
After consulting the market, the Commission found that the merged entity would not be able to shut out competing providers of music streaming services by accessing commercially sensitive information about their customers. In particular, access to Shazam's data would not materially increase Apple's ability to target music enthusiasts and any conduct aimed at making customers switch would only have a negligible impact, the investigation concluded.
Furthermore, Shazam has only "a limited importance" as an entry point to the music streaming services of Apple Music's competitors, meaning Apple's ownership would not greatly impact their services. The company would be unlikely to restrict access to Shazam to Apple Music customers.
Apple first announced the takeover of Shazam at the end of 2017. In April, the EU started an in-depth investigation of the takeover to assess the impact on competition in the music streaming market.
