Apple’s music service talks spark antitrust concerns
Apple (AAPL) is raising hackles among competitors in the streaming music sector because of its talks with record labels aimed at ending free streaming tiers at rivals like Spotify. Apple has been pushing major music labels to discontinue their free-music-streaming licenses with Spotify ahead of the launch of Apple’s new paid-streaming-music service, the Verge reported. Apple also has targeted Google’s (GOOGL) YouTube music service for similar action, the report said. Apple’s activity has attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, the Verge said. The regulatory agencies are concerned that Apple’s business practices in the music space might be anticompetitive. In July 2013, Apple was found guilty of violating federal antitrust law for conspiring with top book publishers to raise e-book prices by getting them to change their contract terms with market leader Amazon.com (AMZN). Apple worked with the publishers ahead of the launch of its e-book store and iPad tablet…