Following price increases for Apple hardware and the AppleCare+ subscription, the company is now making Apple Music and the Apple One plan more expensive in the United States. This is the first time since 2022 that the company has made its music streaming service more expensive. In a statement to Forbes, the company said: “Due to rising licensing costs, Apple Music is increasing its subscription price starting today. »
As Brazilian blog MacMagazine noted, Apple Music isn’t the only service seeing a price hike after today’s news. Subscribers now have to pay $2 for the Apple One Familiar and Premier plans in America. As of yet, Apple hasn’t sent an email to customers highlighting the changes, but newcomers now have to pay more for these subscriptions, according to the company’s website.
With this, Apple Music now costs $11.99, still a dollar less than Spotify’s Premium option. The Family plan went from $16.99 to $19.99, and even the discounted student tier became a dollar more expensive, now costing $6.99/month. For Apple One, the Family plan now costs $27.95 per month and the Premier is now priced at $39.95 per month. The basic Apple One plan still costs $19.95/month.
Apple continues to highlight the benefits of the Apple One plan
For the moment, Apple TV, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+ and Apple News+ remain the same price. Apple says that if one subscribed to all of them, plus 2TB of iCloud+ storage, it would cost almost $73, while Apple’s bundle only costs $40 per month. For the Family plan, which removes Fitness+ and News+ and adds 200GB of iCloud storage instead of 1TB, users would pay around $43 per month, while Apple’s plan offers all of these services for almost $28 per month.
Apple One was introduced in late 2020 as the company continued its efforts to diversify its offerings beyond hardware and software into services. Over the years, Apple Music has added Apple Music Classical, Apple TV has added sports offerings, and Apple Arcade has a library of games. For Fitness+, Apple continued to release new workout content and News+ invested heavily in games, which became a hit for traditional media outlets, like the New York Times.
Even though Apple has given a reason for the price increase for its products, including Apple Music, it has still not explained why it needs to make AppleCare+ more expensive for users, nor for Apple One. That said, not only will users need to be more careful when upgrading their products, but they might also want to re-evaluate their subscriptions. Apple, on the other hand, has just become the most valuable company in the world again, almost ready to surpass a market capitalization of $5 trillion.
