Department of Justice sets its sights on iTunes in new anti-trust investigation

And it has happened once again. The New York Times published an interesting article this evening which alleges that the U.S. Department of Justice has kicked off another anti-trust investigation that focuses in on Apple. Unlike the other two ongoing investigations which deal with Apple’s lockout of Flash in the iPhone OS and its upcoming iAd service, this time around its Apple’s strangle-hold grip on the digital music marketplace that’s getting all of the attention. Here specifically is what the NYT said triggered the investigation.

In March, Billboard magazine reported that Amazon.com was asking music labels to give it the exclusive right to sell certain soon-to-be-released songs for one day before the songs go on sale more widely. In exchange, Amazon promised to include those songs in a promotion on Amazon’s Web site called “MP3 Daily Deal.”

Representatives from Apple’s music service, iTunes, were asking the labels not to take part in Amazon’s promotion, and Apple punished those that did by later withdrawing marketing support for those songs on iTunes, the magazine reported.

So far the Department of Justice has not proceeded past the inquiry stage, but it doesn’t exactly reflect well upon Apple that this is the third time this month the agency has poked its nose in Apple’s affairs.

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