Apple Music hits the right note on international availability and pricing

“It’s still early days for Apple Music, the newly launched streaming service, as the world chews over its user interface, initial service issues, that Beats 1 radio station and other unexpected factors,” Jon Russell reports for TechCrunch. “But two areas where the U.S. company has hit the right notes are international availability and pricing.

“Beats 1 is available in 100 countries. That might sound obvious, but it is completely in contrast to Apple’s iTunes Radio service, which rolled out very slowly to North America, parts of Europe and Oceania but no further,” Russell reports. “It isn’t just about global availability though, Apple has done right on price, too.”

“Apple Music costs from $10 for a single account in the U.S., but the company has priced its service competitively across the world,” Russell reports. “In Thailand — where I live – it is $5 per month, as is the case in Indonesia and elsewhere, but it is even lower in other parts of the world.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s a bit too high in the U.S., but maybe that’ll change with time.

SEE ALSO:
Neil Cybart: ‘Apple Music is the right product at the wrong price’ – July 1, 2015

19 Comments

    1. The situation in the UK is also bad compared to the rest of Europe where they charge €10, which equates to £7.09 and the Euro price also includes local sales tax ( VAT ).

      It would have been much fairer to charge £7.50 inc tax in the UK. My feeling is that Apple Music will be deemed to be too expensive by a lot of British people and will earn less than if it had been priced at a similar point to the rest of Europe.

        1. Yes £10!

          lets do it again shall we…

          Not Including TAX
          ============

          We pay $9.99
          They pay (£9.99 -20%Tax) = £7.90. That’s about $12.

          So its $2 more! Wow, let’s start a RIOT!

        2. I don’t think that anyone wants to start a riot. I just thought that it was worth clarifying that there was a cost difference, and $2 is a 20% premium. Do you want to pay $12 rather than $10?

  1. I repeat…
    Think yourselves in the US lucky! In the UK we’ve been slammed with the usual $ to £ conversion 1 to 1. We’re paying equivalent of $15.71 for your $9.99 tier and $23.58 for your $14.99 tier. So moaning about price in the US is laughable.

  2. I’m in the UK. I’ve got an iPad, an iPhone, a MacBook Pro and MacBook Pro. That’s four devices, yet I’m paying £2.99 a month for extra iCloud storage. There’s no way I’m paying for  Music at the current price.

  3. 1. The Apple Music app is clueless.
    2. Price is too high… these labels won’t get my money.
    3. I don’t millions of shit songs.
    4. Apple Music doesn’t have the full catalog of the top artists.
    5. Apple Music doesn’t have some obscure old ones.
    6. The discoverable part is a joke.
    7. This Connect thing sounds like Ping part 2.
    8. I love Apple, this may be a reponse to the labels to show what the music fans want.
    9. Who needs radio?
    10. I will pay for my songs and for the artists. This streaming all you can eat is ridiculous. Them can drope songs anytime…. These labels are useless and greedy.
    11. Music is very important to me, so I don’t believe in DRM proctect files… I want to change the song name (put some info) change the cover… lyrics…. the genre. I can’t start a some in determinate time. why?
    12. We need an imdb.com buit-in.
    13. I would love to delete some songs and in this Music Apple it’s impossible… I will always see this 200 songs from an artist… yeah 1000 playlists. yeah right
    14. I would love a better app… where you can search words in all lyrics, songs by similar vocals… I don’t know.

    1. I would add that it is possible to accidentally destroy all your hard built playlists if you turn on iCloud Music Library. I had to restore back to iTunes 12.1.2 with Time Machine to recover all my lost thousands of playlists with iTunes 12.2.

  4. MDN, with respect, I would suggest you come off the Apple mountain top and breathe a little of the air we mortals are inhaling.
    Here in the UK, the price is £9.99.
    That’s a very large premium over the US pricing.
    It’s early days but there are real gremlins – trying to sign in to Apple Music on my 5s seems to be impossible – I get taken to a “Sign in with your Apple ID” screen and when I sign in, there is no way of going any further.
    The tabs on Itunes grey out leaving me just able to access the “My Music” tab.
    At the same time, the Apple executives pay themselves $50m + per year, so I expect not to have problems of this kind.
    Take top dollar, give top dollar experience.

  5. The price seems a little rich to me, but I will see how indispensable it is after three months.

    I see comments all the time of how artists deserve more money for a recording they did once; the pricing seems to reflect that need to pay the artists. It is not possible to have artists make money and the service to be free (or extremely cheap).

    My personal perspective is a bit more that musicians should be like painters: the painter does not get money every time someone looks at his painting, so I am unclear why the musician (or his label) gets money whenever the recording is played. That is what live performance is for: buy admission, listen to a performance. I see Apple Music like a library: I can go read any entire book in a library without buying it. All are examples of artists (musician, painter, writer), but only the musician gets paid every time his work is consumed. Why is that?

  6. On launch day I listened to 11 songs on Apple music. My son listened to 23 songs, my daughter listened to 4 songs and my wife listened to 7 songs.

    That’s 45 songs in one day – between 4 people.

    If we had bought those songs on iTunes @ 99p each yesterday we would have spent £44.55p

    Conclusion – APPLE MUSIC SUBSCRIPTION IS VERY CHEAP!

    I will be subscribing to Apple Music family plan – it’s a no brainer!!!

    —-

    Ps – You only need to listen to 16 songs A MONTH for Apple Music to be value for money on the family plan.

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