Sen. Franken Calls For Feds To Investigate Apple Music

“I really wanted it to work and become my default music streaming service, but after the problems I’ve experienced over the last couple of weeks, I’m disabling it altogether”, he said on his website, The Loop.

“These types of restrictions seem to offer no competitive benefit and may actually undermine the competitive process, to the detriment of consumers, who may end up paying substantially more than the current market price point”, Franken said in his letter.

The FTC is already looking into Apple Music, but has not opened a formal investigation.

In a letter to the U.S. Attorney General and the FTC chairman, Franken warned that Apple Music may be hurting consumers by limiting competition and driving up prices.

“Apple’s position as a dominant platform operator may actually undermine numerous potential consumer benefits of its entry into the market”, Franken wrote in his letter to the FTC.

Apple officials could not immediately be reached for comment. He tried manually adding the missing tracks, but Apple Music deleted them from his playlist. Spotify, by comparison, has 20 million paid subscribers and over 75 million active users.

Meanwhile, Maestri shed some light on Apple’s partnership with IBM through which IBM released 13 new MobileFirst for iOS apps in the June quarter, including new apps in retail banking and healthcare, as well as new horizontal apps for HR and sales.

It added that its App Store revenue increased 24 per cent, with the number of transacting customers up by 19 per cent. It says apps that “link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions … will be rejected”. “To protect consumer choice and promote greater transparency of pricing, I ask that you review Apple’s business practices with respect to its competitors in the music streaming market”. Like Franken, the watchdog group is anxious that Apple’s policies will drive up prices for consumers.

Apple Music is the company’s attempt to carve out a part of the streaming music industry for itself and puts it in competition with the likes of Spotify and Pandora. The FTC has issued subpoenas to such services to gather more information about the matter, according to The Verge.