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When Apple announced plans to acquire Beats Music and Beats Electronics for $3 billion, the only real hurdle was whether the world would consider the merger to be a monopoly of sorts. If federal or international regulators found that the Apple-Beats union would create an unfair leg up against market competitors, the acquisition would not have been able to go through.
Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the European Union approved the acquisition with no issues. According to a statement released by the executive body, the two businesses “Did not raise competition concerns because the combined market share of Apple and Beats Electronics is low.”
Although Beats Music, the media-streaming portion of the company, has received additional scrutiny in the music industry, the EU Commission confirmed that the service would not be a problem in Europe.
Apple’s iTunes is available in every state of the EU. However, currently Beats Music is not. That was the basis for the Commission’s decision.
“The Commission concluded that Apple faces several competitors in the EEA such as Spotify and Deezer, making it implausible that the acquisition of a smaller streaming service that is not active in [Europe] would lead to anticompetitive effects,” the statement read.
Apple announced it would purchase Beats for $2.6 billion in cash with $400 million in stock back in May. Co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will take seats as mid-level executives when the deal closes later this year.
The EU Commission noted that, as long as Apple does not shut out competing streaming media services on iOS, the deal is clear to go through.
There has been no official information coming from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the body in charge of investigating competition policy mergers in the U.S.
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