“Amid news that Apple Music is getting a makeover come this summer, Apple today launched a new plan to boost subscribers to its streaming music service and competitor to Spotify, SoundCloud, Tidal and others,” Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch. “It’s introducing an Apple Music student plan which will discount the service by 50 percent for those who are enrolled in an eligible college or university.”
“That means in the U.S., where an individual membership to Apple Music costs $9.99 per month, the student membership will be $4.99 per month instead,” Perez reports. “The option isn’t just arriving in the U.S., though. Students in other countries, including the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, will also be able to take advantage of the new membership option.”
“However, because Apple Music is priced slightly differently in other markets, the cost of the student membership will vary. But in all markets, it will be 50 percent off the standard subscription price. The cost reduction will be available for up to four years following sign-up, and those years don’t have to be continuous,” Perez reports. “The company is also working with a leading student verification technology provider, UNiDAYS, to ensure that those who are signing up as students are actually enrolled at a supported school.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Have a nice day, future Apple Music roadkill!
Nice! That will save a student about $300 from the total $275,000 spent on their Gender Studies degree that it took 5 years to finish. They can save that extra money for a donation to Bernie Sanders.
What media sources are you consuming that have made you so angry?
I do my own investigative journalism and report it on my TV show.
I signed up my whole family for $14.99.
That turns out to be $3.75 per person.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this requires all other family member AppleIDs to be subordinate to yours, and their movie, app store and in-app purchases have to be approved by you, and come off of your credit card?
I mean, that’s fine if you’re a family with kids, but not if the family is just two adults.
Yes. – I think you can declare everyone as adults. I really don’t know, because I have two kids. Still it’s cheaper than the student plan, which I think is a good deal. I don’t think my kids or I have a problem if they continue with the family plan, while going to collage. As it is, if you redeem iTunes gift cards on your account, you don’t use the master CC. I guess you could say convenience costs something.
mossman is correct in that all purchases by family members get automatically paid by the ‘family organizer’. And yes, the only way to avoid that is to buy an iTunes gift card and put it on the account. In the end, this actually might be a good thing, since you can often get iTunes cards on eBay / Craigslist at discount.
The benefit of the family plan are certainly worth the hassle with gift cards and payments. I have six people on my family plan, which make annual cost per person absurdly inexpensive ($30, which makes it $2.50 per month — less than a single ride on the NYC subway!).
I was in college in the ’90s, during the heyday of Columbia House and Tower Records. If you had told me back then that by 2016, for just $5/month, you could have every CD in the Columbia House catalog, and every CD in Tower Records, plus far more than that, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Shocking the number of people who put up with repetitive playlists and crappy ads on their “free” music services. That’s really what Apple has to compete against.
There are also kids who have hard drives chock full of music ripped from their parents, their own CD’s, and copied from their siblings & friends. They aren’t interested in subscribing to yet another service and they have no shortage of free or near-free music available to them. Not everything is streaming.
Question is, if Apple ever wants to sell another iPod, how about updating iTunes and reducing costs to $0.25 per song? Then the people who want to own music will go back to iTunes and will keep buying music players that operate without a cell phone contract.
Read this before you get that Apple Music subscription:
Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.
https://blog.vellumatlanta.com/2016/05/04/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously/
Is this Apple’s attempt to follow Amazon in half-pricing their normal subscription price to pull in students? https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201133670
The only Issue I have is the number of songs you can’t get with Apple Music, and the hold over tracks that are only available with the purchase on the hole album.