by This year, the cost of everything from food to fuel to travel has skyrocketed higher and higher. You can now add prices for your Apple Music and Apple TV+ subscriptions to that list.
As published in 9to5Mac, the company has quietly increased the price of an individual monthly subscription to Apple Music from $9.99/£9.99 to $10.99/£10.99 and Apple TV+ from $4.99/£9.99 to $6.99 /£6.99. Apple Music Family plans will see a corresponding price increase from $14.99/£14.99 to $16.99/£16.99.
The price increases also extend to the company’s Apple One plans, which bundle a number of services. These have increased as follows:
- Individual: $14.95 / £14.95 per month at $16.95 / £16.95
- Family: $19.95/£19.95 per month at $22.95/£22.95
- Premier: $29.95 / £29.95 per month to $32.95 / £32.95
This is the first time that Apple has increased the prices of these subscription services in the US, and according to the company, the increases are primarily due to increased licensing costs for Apple Music and an expansion of the catalog of programs and movies available on Apple TV+ since the service first launched in 2019.
An Apple spokesperson provided the following statement to TechRadar:
“Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple One subscription prices will increase starting today. The move to Apple Music is due to increased licensing costs, and in turn, artists and songwriters will earn more from streaming their music. We also continue to add innovative features that make Apple Music the best listening experience in the world. We introduced Apple TV+ at a very low price because we started with just a few shows and movies. Three years later, Apple TV+ is home to a wide selection of widely acclaimed and award-winning series, feature films, documentaries and entertainment for kids and families from the world’s most creative storytellers.”
Analysis: Are Apple’s now more expensive services still worth it?
Apple Music ranks high among the best music streaming services for its incredible value. It has long offered hi-res and lossless music for the same price of $9.99 / £10.99, along with a huge selection of albums and tracks on Spatial Audio. Compare that to market leader Spotify, which currently only streams music in a lossy compressed format (though the company is said to eventually be upcoming release of a hi-res platinum level priced at $19.99 per month, or double the cost of your current Premium plan with no ads).
Even with the price increase to $10.99 / £10.99, Apple Music is still a great value compared to services like Tidal that also offer lossless, high-res music streaming, but for $19.99 / £19.99 per month. Following the price increase, the closest competitor to Apple Music that offers lossless, high-resolution streaming, along with Dolby Atmos music tracks, will be Amazon Music HD ($9.99/£9.99 per month), though that service lacks Apple Music’s slick interface and well-organized Atmos music library.
As for Apple TV+, as with Apple Music and lossless/high-res, your base subscription level gives you support for 4K and Dolby Vision HDR; there is no level of high quality that you should pay more for. Compare that to Netflix, which makes you pay double for those features when you upgrade from its $9.99/£9.99 per month Basic plan (which currently doesn’t even offer HD streaming, though that will change in November when the company’s Basic drops). of the ad plan).
A price increase for Apple TV+ actually seems overdue: while its offerings were extremely limited at first, it now has plenty of high-quality original shows like Severance and Ted Lasso, along with a great selection of documentaries and movies.
If you’re an Apple One subscriber, the walks are even less painful. I currently have a Premier Apple One subscription, which gives me family access to the following Apple services: TV+, Music, Arcade, Fitness+, and News+. All of those are used almost daily, and when you consider that it also comes with 2TB of iCloud storage for photos and other files, it’s still a great bargain, even if it’s now $3 a month more.
While I hate parting with more money each month for anything, I can’t say these price increases for Apple services are outrageous, especially for high-value Apple One plans. It may not help the company rack up new Apple Music or Apple TV+ subscribers, but I suspect most of the current ones probably won’t be cancelled. I know I’m not.
