European Commission clears Apple's purchase of Shazam

The European Union approved Apple’s planned acquisition of British music discovery app Shazam, saying an EU antitrust investigation showed it would not harm competition in the bloc. The deal, announced in December 2017, would help the iPhone maker better compete with Spotify, the industry leader in music streaming services. Shazam identifies songs when a smartphone is pointed at an audio source.  “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. “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,” she added.