“Apple Music may be preparing for a major price drop, according to a pair of sources working closely with the streaming service,” Paul Resnikoff reports for Digital Music News.
“If implemented, the drop could be as much as 20%, which would put the final monthly price below $8,” Resnikoff reports. “The change, if implemented, would allow Apple to minimize any damage from a seriously undercutting Amazon Music.”
“The move could come as soon as this Christmas, and possibly start with a holiday promotional discount. Currently, Apple offers a three-month trial window for users, which automatically rolls into the $9.99 monthly tier. That formula would be altered, with those subscribing before Christmas enjoying the slashed rate by March or April,” Resnikoff reports. “Specifically, the three-month trial window would roll into a $7.99 rate, or a $12.99 family rate.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Behold, the beauty of unfettered competition. Thanks, capitalism!
Remember this: Apple’s pockets are deeper than everybody’s combined and in a race of the wallets, Spotify can’t even muster the entry fee.
SEE ALSO:
Amazon challenges Apple, Spotify with new music streaming service starting at $3.99 a month – October 12, 2016
I hope Apple does drop the price on the service. I think $4.99-$6.99) is the “magic” price point for audio and ($7.99-$9.99) for video (Netflix).
At these prices most people would sign up and stay signed up.
Even if great value at the current price, most consumers are already paying into a number of subscription services each month and $2 can make a difference between gaining or losing customers.
Agreed, as is with Netflix I subscribe for a month, wage a load of stuff then stop for a couple of months until they launch a load of other stuff I want to watch. I can afford to subscribe to them all but I don’t need due to the wealth of content available to me across the board. A 20% reduction might make me stick with it.
That would be hard. Taking a 20% hit to existing revenues in order to capture an unknown amount of market share would be a gutsy move and clearly KILL Spotify and all other competitors other than Amazon and maybe WalMart.
Most welcome. In and of itself the current price is not unreasonable, but the thing is once you start paying for Netflix, and whatever other services you may want (all of which have exclusive content) it does all add up and there are only so many hours in the day to consume media. Personally I get an hour or two a day to listen to music on my commute and my existing media library is large enough that I could listen 24/7 for weeks and not repeat a song so it’s hard to spend a tenner a month on it along with everything else.
Data mining your listening or advertising, either way there is no free lunch. BTW enjoy your DRM laden, low quality, streaming Rap/Hip-Hop/EDM.
Apple Music- Beats redux- is a failure. over 800 million iTunes accounts, aggressive promotion and still about 17 million suckers want to rent their music.
Maybe the geniuses in the music business might reconsider their business model. Maybe people are not buying their shit because it is shit. Some clown jumping up and down on stage running their mouth over a rhythm track is not exactly compelling art. Same for the Eagles wannabe clowns in Cowboy hats in Nashville singing ” She thinks my tractors sexy”
There are a lot of great musicians out there and the Music execs seems to be happy to ignore them as they push lowbrow bullshit.
Bob Dylan is getting the Nobel Prize, but I doubt Taylor Swift or Beyonce will ever get the call. Yo, It’s hard out there for a Pimp.
I guess I’m one of the suckers renting the music. I personally own well over 12,000 songs, but find Apple Music a great way to explore many artists. you make it sound like all you can find is crap. With over 40 million songs to choose from, you can ignore most of the chaff and still find those hidden gems. Maybe the quality is not good enough for you superman hearing audiophiles, but Apple Music sounds just fine to me.
Once you drop the price you can never go back.
for the regular person who works 8 hours, sleep 8 hours and walks dogs after putting kids to sleep.. there’s 2 hrs a day of discretionary time. music should be 3.99 all you can listen or 6.99 for a family.
And whoever said it above.. most of 40 million songs is junk and doesn’t deserve to be ever paid for.
Welcome the Family Plan price drop. Set it and forget it. Now if there was such a video plan, I could say good bye to other content providers.
Like iPhotos, I’ve lost too much to be willing to give Apple another go at cloud-based services. Until they know how to properly do cloud, I’m sticking with Spotify thank you. Not going to go through having to re-load 30% of my 5000 songs again.
“Unfettered competition” ??
What is the MDN editor smoking??
They are dropping the price because it’s not selling and too few people subscribe after the trial period.
I don’t even bother with the trial, and actually deleted the Music app from my iPhone and iPad. I’m now using Amazon Music.