In a recent X.com post from Aaron Perris, Apple may be testing a lower-tier offering for Apple Music, hinting at skip limitations and a premium-tier paywall. Here’s what you need to know.
Perris, a contributor to MacRumors, discovered some code in a recent beta version of the Apple Music app for Android hints that Apple may be developing another subscription tier model. According to him, some strings in the latest Apple Music for Android beta mention ‘Can’t skip any more tracks’ and ‘Premium access required.’
There have been no official reports or hints from Apple that they plan to introduce a lower-tier offering for Apple Music. Perris adds that this could be used for something unrelated, like radio stations.
Back in April, the Vice President of Apple Music, Oliver Schusser, sat down with Billboard to discuss Apple Music. Here’s an interesting thing he said when asked about what he doesn’t like about the music industry:
“I’m sure you’ve heard me say this: I think ‘free’ was a terrible idea. Apple Music is the only service that doesn’t have a free tier, and believe it or not, we are really proud of that. I think it’s not the right thing for songwriters and artists to just say, you know what, we’re going to give this away for free — especially with the very little monetization that artists and songwriters are going to get in return.”
Later in the interview, Schusser stated:
“The monetization of [a] free service is so poor and so little. All paid services have to compete with free means, not enough people are paying, because they can get it for free, and the paid services can’t actually charge the correct price for the service because they’re always competing with free.”
On a related note, do you still remember the Apple Music Voice plan? It was apparently a lower-tier plan that Apple Music offered, where users could access the entire Apple Music library using only Siri. With the lack of other “luxury” features like Spatial Audio and Family Sharing, the Voice plan pretty much crashed and burned, and it was discontinued in late 2023, so this would suggest that we may not see another Apple Music plan anytime soon. Who knows? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Apple Music is available for $10.99/a month for Individual, and $16.99/a month for Family. I always recommend families go towards the Apple One subscription for $25.95/a month that includes Apple Music and other Apple Services like iCloud+, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade.
