EU regulators probe Apple’s Shazam buy

European regulators said Monday that they’re deepening their probe into Apple’s acquisition of the music recognition app Shazam over concerns that the deal could limit people’s streaming music choices and unfairly weaken companies such as Spotify.

Shazam, which is based Great Britain, lets people use their smartphone microphones to identify songs play- ing over loudspeakers, tele- vision or the radio within seconds. Currently, the app

will identify a song and then refer people to a streaming music service such as Spo- tify, Deezer or Apple Music to purchase it.

Regulators in Europe say they worry the acquisition could give Apple an unfair advantage if it used Shazam “to directly target its compet- itors’ customers and encour- age them to switch to Apple Music.” An in-depth investigation, they say, will also exam- ine how much of an advantage Apple would receive if it became the only music ser- vice to receive referrals from Shazam.

“The way people listen to music has changed sig- nificantly in recent years, with more and more Europeans using music stream- ing services,” according to a statement by Margrethe Vestager, commissioner in charge of competition policy. “Our investigation aims to ensure that music fans will continue to enjoy attrac- tive music streaming offers and won’t face less choice as a result of this proposed merger.”

Apple filed for approval of the deal in Europe on March 15. Ahead of that filing, seven countries asked the European Commission to review the deal for possible repercus- sions for the music industry including Sweden — home to Spotify Paris-based — and Deezer France, is where headquartered. Apple announced it would buy Shazam in December, with various news outlets pegging the price at $400 million. Analysts say the acquisition is part of Apple’s renewed push into the music world, giving the company the technology to find what songs people are looking up the most and to create a close relationship with the 1 billion people who have downloaded Shazam’s app. The European Commission said that it will publish its conclusion about the acquisition by Sept. 4. Apple did not respond to a request for comment. Apple revolutionized the digital music with iTunes in the early 2000s, but fell behind as people opted to buy access to music through streaming services rather than purchasing their own tracks and albums on iTunes.