In December 2017 We talked on the possible purchase of Shazam by Apple. Apple's acquisition of such a company requires the prior approval of the European Union.
Shazam is the well-known British song recognition platform. Without being Apple yet, it is already integrated with Apple services, such as Apple Music and Siri.
We do not know what Apple's intentions are with this purchase. It could keep Shazam as such, but use all its power to improve Apple Music. You could also purchase it and transform it into an Apple product, as you already did with Beats Music. Or, perhaps, simply prevent the competition like Spotify, Google or Deezer from using it, since Shazam allows you to play or buy songs detected on different platforms, such as Spotify or Apple Music.
And this last point is the one that most worries the European Commission and the Directorate-General for Competition, which You must approve the purchase as long as it does not harm European citizens. In other words, Apple's commercial advantage cannot be by taking away options and advantages that we already have. It is also true that the same commission allowed the purchase of WhatsApp from Facebook, so everything can be.
Now Reuters tells us that the purchase agreement is almost complete and with the full approval of the European Commission, according to sources close to the matter. And, as soon as September 18, the deal could be closed.
The estimated price that Apple will pay is 400 million dollars according to TechCrunch, although there was talk of a trillion dollars (1000 million).
Apple buys a lot of shadow companies, but The acquisition of Shazam is giving something to talk about and surely the competition, no matter how much the European Commission considers that everything is correct, it does not seem right.