Apple to pressure Labels to Drop Spotify

Allegedly, Apple has started a campaign against Spotify's free music-streaming service. In fact, reports indicate that the whole case is quite serious, as federal regulators are actually investigating Apple's conversations with the biggest music labels in the United States.

It seems that the famous iPhone maker is doing its best to determine Spotify to end its free services. Apparently, Apple is willing to determine all similar services to adopt an only subscriptions policy on their services. Currently, Spotify has both free and paid subscriptions. The service actually has over 60 million users. However, only about 15 million are paid subscribers.

So, reports indicated that Apple has been pushing music labels to interfere and try to determine these services to change their policies. And that is not all. According to the Verge, the famous company has offered to pay YouTube's music licensing fee to Universal Music Group, in exchange for the label to stop putting its songs on YouTube.

YouTube and Spotify are without a doubt the biggest competitors that Apple has on this market. If Apple's intentions of discontinuing free-music-streaming licenses would turn out being successful, this would actually be a huge hit to both YouTube and Spotify.

Sources indicated that the main reason Apple is making these moves is actually linked to the famous company's intention to clear its way on the market, before the launch of its new streaming service. The famous tech giant is set to launch its music streaming service in June and it is said to be powered by Beats' music-streaming service.

According to some reports, this new streaming service by Apple could cost as much as $7.99. However, users who enjoy paid subscriptions might find this quite a good idea, having under consideration that a premium subscription to Spotify costs $9.99. Without a doubt, Apple hopes that limiting the selection of free music offered to Spotify's users will make people be more interested to buy Apple's cheaper paid service.

Well, it is yet to see if the report turns out being accurate, but in case it does, Apple may be facing more antitrust charges. The famous company has an antitrust monitor on its campus since it was found guilty of violations linked to its iBooks. However, the monitor's oversight does not extend beyond this product.

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