Apple today announced the Apple Music Voice Plan, a new subscription tier for Apple Music designed around the power of Siri. The Voice Plan offers subscribers access to the service’s catalog of 90 million songs; tens of thousands of playlists, including hundreds of brand new mood and activity playlists, personalized mixes, and genre stations; as well as the award-winning Apple Music Radio — all through Siri for just $4.99 per month.
“Apple Music and Siri are natural partners and already work seamlessly together,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats. “With Siri actively used on hundreds of millions of devices worldwide, we are thrilled to add this new plan that delivers an effortless music experience just by using your voice and makes Apple Music accessible to even more people around the world.”
Users can subscribe to the Voice Plan through Siri by saying “Hey Siri, start my Apple Music Voice trial,” or by signing up through the Apple Music app. Once subscribed to the Apple Music Voice Plan, users can request music be played across all of their Siri-enabled devices, including HomePod mini, AirPods, iPhone, or any other Apple device, and when using CarPlay.
Apple Music is also adding hundreds of new mood and activity playlists created by Apple Music’s editorial experts that are fully optimized just for voice. Subscribers can ask Siri to “Play the dinner party playlist,” “Play something chill,” or even “Play more like this” for a truly personalized music experience. These new playlists are available to every subscriber of any Apple Music plan — and make using Apple Music, together with Siri, even better. Subscribers to the Apple Music Voice Plan will also have access to Apple Music’s entire lineup of playlists, including favorites like New Music Daily, Rap Life, Today’s Hits, Today’s Country, A-List Pop, R&B Now, and more.
The Apple Music Voice Plan will be available later this fall in 17 countries and regions, including Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Voice Plan subscribers will get a customized in-app experience with suggestions based on the listener’s music preferences and a queue of recently played music through Siri. Within the app there will also be a dedicated section called “Just Ask Siri” where subscribers can learn tips to optimize Siri for Apple Music.
For access to Apple Music’s premium offerings, including Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio, Lyrics, Music Videos, and more, subscribers can easily switch to Apple Music’s individual plan for $9.99 per month or family plan with up to six accounts for $14.99 per month at any time.
Pricing and Availability
• The new Apple Music Voice Plan for $4.99 (US) per month is available later this fall in select countries and regions.
• Access to Apple Music’s global catalog of over 90 million songs is available through Siri.
• Subscribers have full playback controls including unlimited song-skipping through Siri.
• The Apple Music Voice Plan offers hundreds of brand new stations and playlists for every mood and activity designed for easy voice requests.
• Subscribers can access the Apple Music Voice Plan across all of their Siri-enabled devices and features, including HomePod mini, AirPods, CarPlay, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Mac.
• A one-time, seven-day free preview with no auto-renewal is offered to non-subscribers who request music through Siri.
MacDailyNews Take: The reviews for this plan ought to be interesting.
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More confusion and intermingling with privately owned music on the owner’s device. I’m all for such new products, but I absolutely abhor the “battle” that Apple creates by co-mingling their profit centers and my ability to own and listen to what I’ve paid for.
Apple already has a VERY committed customer base–including me–I ain’t going anywhere. This should be clear and needs to be respected. Please turn down the Google-like tendency to use the relationship to ALWAYS be gaining more (greed). A little more respect of your customers, please.
Apple needs to separate their music service into a separate app. If they did, I might subscribe, but as it commingles with my owned music, I’ll never use it. It destroyed personal data and is a menace shared in the same app. Agreed.
As if there isn’t already enough confusion.
When streaming playlist or even albums, Apple has now taken to substituting live or alternate takes of songs that were not originally used.
Just last night on AIC “Jar of Flies” the album played fine except for “Nutshell”, which was live.
It’s happened to many songs on different playlist I have.
WTF Apple?
THIS USED TO WORK FOR FREE. I am accustomed to saying, “Hey Siri, Play some Miles Davis” and she just does. If I say “Play the theme to Gilligan’s Island,” she would. Today I was working on a problem with a broken calendar server. I found it. I started to play my victory song. “Hey Siri, play Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice.” She used to have no problem with that, now she played kid’s retro rock… put the lime in the coconut.
So I asked again. Again she played put the lime in the coconut.
I said, “Play Beethoven” thinking that would be easy. She played some stupid elevator jazz version of Fur Elise.
THEY FUCKING BROKE A FUNCTION THAT WORKED PERFECTLY AND NOW WANT TO RANSOM IT BACK FOR $4 A MONTH?
Could not agree more! Unfortunately, these days if I had to use one word to describe Apple, that word would be “BUGGY.”
Yeah, the other day I told Siri to play Mantovani, and she said “Now playing Mantovani” and then proceeded to play Mozart. What the hell is wrong with Apple these days?
Couldn’t agree more about “buggy.” macOS Monterey just is not ready for prime time. Especially Safari. The ads on MDN are always locking it up for me. Many times I have to crash the computer to gain control back. It happened just now. Luckily it was just your normal this webpage is using up too much memory or something.
So I tried asking Siri to play music through my HomePods ( I have two of the “old” large ones. ) Interestingly enough it worked perfectly. I got everything I asked for including my playlist and the theme to Gilligan’s Island. Why doesn’t it work on the Mac though?
This was the most confusing Apple product announcement I have ever witnessed. It was not clear what the service was (music available via your voice?) or how it was different from other existing services.
Apple just wants you to pay for basic functions. My response is stop buying Apple
Agree…goofy “product” name. Siri’s deficiency with things “voice” surely limits what should be obvious.