Is It Possible To Get Apple Music For Free?
iPhone or Mac users will naturally be interested in Apple Music. Spotify and Pandora are two popular streaming music services, but Apple Music might seem mysterious to some. In the beginning, Apple Music is free, but if you stick with it long enough, you’ll have to pay. A monthly fee will be charged to anyone who signs up.
If you are looking for a service that offers live radio shows and interesting exclusives, Apple Music may be well worth paying the fee if you choose the right one. How much does Apple Music cost? Let’s find out.
Apple Music plans
Each Apple Music subscription plan includes ad-free content, offline listening, Apple Music 1 live radio and on-demand shows, and exclusive releases. With an account, you have access to more than 90 million songs that you can stream ad-free across all your devices, all in lossless audio. Family membership (more on that soon) allows you to add up to six individual accounts, and you’ll only be charged one flat monthly fee no matter how many people you add.
Apple Music Individual
The only way to get your foot in the door with Apple Music is to purchase an Individual subscription for $10 per month if you do not qualify for any of the discounts below. Aside from offering a year’s service for $99, Apple also offers a $21 value if you pay in advance. In addition to Spotify, you should always compare it with alternatives (we discuss this further below).
If you first sign up for Apple Music on a monthly plan and then go back into your subscriptions, you may not see the discount option for the annual plan.
Apple Music Student Subscription
Like Spotify, Apple Music gives students (with a valid student email address) a half-off membership. In June 2022, the monthly subscription payment will increase to $8 (from $5). College students are the only ones eligible for the offer at this time.
Apple Music Family Subscription
How about Apple Music for six people in your household? With the Apple Music Family plan, stream Apple Music for $15 a month. Having two people in the family saves $5 per month, three save $15 per month, four save $25 per month, five save $35 per month, and six save $45.
Apple Music Voice
With the Voice Plan, launched in fall 2021, Apple Music subscribers can enjoy audio-only streaming for $5 per month. As it requires Siri to activate and control, it’s only usable on Siri-enabled devices (primarily Apple). On Apple Music, Voice has access to all audio tracks but can not view music videos and lyrics.
As well as not supporting Apple’s higher-tier audio formats, like spatial audio (which makes the latest AirPods less effective) and lossless audio, the AirPods will not support Apple’s higher-tier audio formats. HomePods, AirPods, and CarPlay are great for casual users who listen to a lot of music. Additionally, it offers user customization based on their preferences over time and access to all Apple Music playlists.
Apple Music with discounted Apple gift cards
Payments for Apple Music subscriptions can be made using Apple gift cards, including iTunes gift cards. You can now pay with discounted Apple gift cards to save on your subscription. To find them, however, you must first see them.
If you’re searching for special offers, you might come across Best Buy’s offer to purchase an App Store and iTunes gift card. Occasionally, a gift card will include Apple Music for free for six months as part of a special promotion.
Apple Music free deals for new buyers
When you sign up for Apple Music as a new user or purchase specific products, you may be able to save money by finding deals that give you free months. There are many current deals to choose from, but here are a few examples: Best Buy offers a discount for new Apple Music subscribers for up to six months.
Only a Best Buy account is required to take advantage of this deal. In addition to offering free subscriptions periodically to new buyers of Macs or iPhones, Apple also occasionally makes free Apple TV+ available. A new Apple Music subscription comes free when you purchase more unique headphones – AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, or Beats. AirPods and Beats models from previous generations are not eligible.
How Apple Music Compares To The Competition
Its 188 million Premium subscribers across the globe, compared to Apple Music’s 98 million, give Spotify the edge over Apple Music in the United States. However, Apple is in no way a slouch, offering 90 million songs, 30,000 playlists, a best-of-breed human-run radio station network, along with other exclusive content, earning it an extensive fan base in America.
Music And Podcast Selection
Spotify’s music-discovery tools are slightly superior to Apple’s, but its library is slightly more limited (although that gap is shrinking). There will be many eclectic music lovers who will appreciate Apple Music’s broader catalog. The Spotify app tends to have more podcasts than Apple’s and has been pushing human-curated playlists as a countermeasure to Apple’s live radio.
In addition, both services allow you to download streaming tracks for offline listening in the future. It’s easy to find a playlist for anything with Apple’s playlists, from dinner parties to creative drawing sessions to snowboarding, thanks to a 2021 update that added hundreds of human-curated playlists for moods and activities. In addition, apple has enhanced Siri’s ability to play music like this when you ask it.
Free Version
There are a couple of differences between the two top competitors. Users can still listen to on-demand tracks with Spotify’s free version (with some limitations on mobile devices but none on desktops) in exchange for ads. That makes it a great choice if you want to stay free of charge for your music service.
Spotify offers no low-cost options, but rumors suggest they will come soon. If you do, Apple Music’s Voice option is the least expensive.
Sound Quality
With iOS 14, Apple offered many tracks in spatial audio format (which works perfectly with AirPods Max headphones) as part of its audio format and quality investments. However, Apple Music announced support for Dolby Atmos music and lossless audio for its catalog of over 90 million songs in 2021. There are two types of lossless audio; the first has 16-bit at 44.1 kHz, and the second has 24 bits at 48 kHz.
