Apple Music is one of the biggest music subscription services and its cost are comparable to other services like Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Play Music.
Apple Music Cost
You can subscribe to the service either as an individual, family or student. The student plan is only $4.99 per month and you have to be enrolled in an accredited college. The family plan is $14.99 per month, allowing you to share with a total of 5 other people. The individual plan is $9.99 per month and if you chose to pay annually, it’s only $99 a year which comes out to be $8.25 per month. This option is not advertised by Apple, so what you’ll have to do is subscribe first and then change the billing option in the setting. Since Apple Music gives you a 3 months trial for new subscribers, you’ll have plenty of time to try the service before deciding which plan is best for you. If you’re a music lover and plan on subscribing to a service annually, then the Apple Music annual individual plan is the best deal out there.
| Plan | Cost / month |
|---|---|
| Individual (Monthly) | $9.99 |
| Individual (Paid annually) | $8.25 |
| Family | $14.99 |
| Student | $4.99 |
Digital Locker Library
Apple also allows you to have 100,000 tracks in your digital locker for Apple Music music or iTunes catalog, which means you can also store and listen to music tracks from your own collection. Keep in mind though that songs you import or added from the library all count against the limit. With a music library, you’re able to browse and play your songs a little easier. You can also download songs from your library to your mobile device for offline listening which is another reason to save albums and songs into the library. But if you just want to search and play any song, then you don’t need to save it at all.
In order to upload your own music, you’ll need to install iTunes onto your computer. For Mac users, iTunes comes preloaded. For PC users, you can download and install the latest version. Keep in mind iTunes application is severely outdated but usable.
Android Tablets Compatibility
iPad users have always had the luxury of an optimal Apple Music app. As of December 3, 2018, Apple Music will finally be fully supported on Android tablets as well. It gives you an optimized and more intuitive interface for choosing music tracks. A bottom navigation bar should speed up access to the most common features and it’s now also designed for a bigger screen.
Amazon Echo Compatibility
On December 14, 2018, Apple Music service started being available on Amazon Echo devices, which means the most popular music service in the US can be played on the most popular smart voice assistant speaker now. This native integration will allow you to default your Alexa speakers’ music platform to Apple Music. All you need to do is activate the Apple Music Alexa skill, link it to your account and then select Apple Music as the default music service. Fantastic! However, you can’t play songs you’ve uploaded to your library unless you add it to a playlist. Why may we ask? Shuffling a playlist also doesn’t work at all or not well. At least this is a good start. We’re pretty sure functionalities will improve over time
