Re:Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
by caseyy on Thursday April 24, 2025 @03:57AM
(#43780244)
With regard to Spotify, the case is surprisingly clear.
The criteria for gatekeepers are the following:
1. The company must have a core platform service in online advertising, browsers, intermediation (distribution), communication, OS, search engines, social networks, or video sharing. These are the areas of concern for the legislature.
2. They must have either a €7.5B turnover in the EEA for three consecutive years or a market capitalization of at least €75B.
3. For three consecutive years, it must have either over 45 million active EU users or over 10,000 active business EU users.
Initially, in 2020, the EC suggested that the market sectors concerned would also include travel, audio streaming, film/TV on-demand streaming, and e-commerce, as it identified significant market concentration in these areas. Spotify eats up 55% of the EU streaming market, and Booking.com - 35% of EU hotel bookings. Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, Sky, and DAZN collectively account for 90% of the EU TV/film streaming. Along with current market gatekeepers, these companies were the reason for the new EU DMA laws.
Today, Spotify arguably still meets the criteria. It is an intermediation platform that distributes music and podcasts, similar to YouTube, an identified gatekeeper, distributing videos and podcasts. It has nearly 200 million active users in the EEA and a market capitalization of over €120 billion. By all criteria, it should be included, and it was included at a point in time.
The only reason it's not included is procedural. The core platform services (area of concern) in final DMA didn't include audio streaming. Therefore, Spotify was never asked to self-assess for gatekeeper status, its assessment was never processed, and so on and so forth. The same applies to Booking.com.
It's relatively clear and transparent that these EU gatekeepers conveniently fell through the legislative loopholes. Then again, there are other unaccounted-for areas of concern/core platform services provided by other companies like Uber. Arguably, Uber's price-dumping strategy to monopolize markets poses a greater threat to EU consumers and local competing companies than Spotify. So why wasn't ride-sharing a core platform service in DMA? Who knows. Just one more suspicious omission, like Spotify.
The only justification I can think of for this that doesn't show EEA bias towards its own companies is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". Maybe DMA regulation is coming for Spotify next, the EC just didn't do a thorough enough job this round.
The criteria for gatekeepers are the following:
1. The company must have a core platform service in online advertising, browsers, intermediation (distribution), communication, OS, search engines, social networks, or video sharing. These are the areas of concern for the legislature.
2. They must have either a €7.5B turnover in the EEA for three consecutive years or a market capitalization of at least €75B.
3. For three consecutive years, it must have either over 45 million active EU users or over 10,000 active business EU users.
Initially, in 2020, the EC suggested that the market sectors concerned would also include travel, audio streaming, film/TV on-demand streaming, and e-commerce, as it identified significant market concentration in these areas. Spotify eats up 55% of the EU streaming market, and Booking.com - 35% of EU hotel bookings. Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, Sky, and DAZN collectively account for 90% of the EU TV/film streaming. Along with current market gatekeepers, these companies were the reason for the new EU DMA laws.
Today, Spotify arguably still meets the criteria. It is an intermediation platform that distributes music and podcasts, similar to YouTube, an identified gatekeeper, distributing videos and podcasts. It has nearly 200 million active users in the EEA and a market capitalization of over €120 billion. By all criteria, it should be included, and it was included at a point in time.
The only reason it's not included is procedural. The core platform services (area of concern) in final DMA didn't include audio streaming. Therefore, Spotify was never asked to self-assess for gatekeeper status, its assessment was never processed, and so on and so forth. The same applies to Booking.com.
It's relatively clear and transparent that these EU gatekeepers conveniently fell through the legislative loopholes. Then again, there are other unaccounted-for areas of concern/core platform services provided by other companies like Uber. Arguably, Uber's price-dumping strategy to monopolize markets poses a greater threat to EU consumers and local competing companies than Spotify. So why wasn't ride-sharing a core platform service in DMA? Who knows. Just one more suspicious omission, like Spotify.
The only justification I can think of for this that doesn't show EEA bias towards its own companies is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". Maybe DMA regulation is coming for Spotify next, the EC just didn't do a thorough enough job this round.