FTC investigating Apple’s business practices

Apple’s business practices might put other competitors at a disadvantage.

The Federal Trade Commission has failed to remain low profile on their Apple project. Whatever their reasons were for investigating into the company’s upcoming Beats Music service launch have now emerged on the surface. It was previously reported that Apple had been persuading and influencing major music labels and artists to get “limited exclusive” rights and partnerships just in time for the Beats music service.

According to Bloomberg, FTC’s project has only begun and there is still a lot to look into but the major focus is being made on Apple’s business practices such as these which might put other competitors at a disadvantage. Apple’s initiatives are largely going to affect Spotify, for instance, because it is associated with iTunes. Others in the business, such as Tidal, would not be affected so much for the same reason.

Sources involved in the matter have remained silent and so far no details have been pushed further but the WWDC event coming right up next month is going to reveal what we want to know. The main aim of FTC would be to see how Apple’s move would push other labels to change how they deal with Apple’s rivals. Apple has already been persuading them to drop their support for free tiers and having paywalls.