Apple Music and Apple TV+ just got price hikes – should you cancel?
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This year, the cost of everything from food to fuel to travel has skyrocketed, up and up. You can now add prices for your Apple Music and Apple TV+ subscriptions on that list.
As posted on 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 subscriptions will see a corresponding price increase from $14.99 / £14.99 to $16.99 / £16.99.
The price hikes 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 up to $16.95 / £16.95
- Family: $19.95 / £19.95 per month to $22.95 / £22.95
- Premier: $29.95 / £29.95 per month to $32.95 / £32.95
This is the first time Apple has increased prices for these subscription services in the US, and the company says the increases are primarily due to higher Apple Music licensing fees and an expansion of the catalog of shows and movies available on Apple TV+ since the service was launched. was first launched in 2019.
An Apple spokesperson gave the following statement to Ditching:
“Subscription prices for Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple One will increase starting today. The move to Apple Music is due to an increase in licensing costs, and in turn, artists and songwriters will earn more for streaming their music. 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+ offers an extensive selection of award-winning and critically acclaimed series , feature films, documentaries and entertainment for children and families from the world’s most creative storytellers.”
Analysis: Are Apple’s Now More Expensive Services Still Worth It?
Apple Music ranks highly among the best music streaming services for its incredible value. It has long offered both lossless and high-res music for the same $9.99/£10.99 price, along with a great selection of albums and tracks in Spatial Audio. Compare that to market leader Spotify, which currently only streams music in a lossy, compressed format (although the company is reportedly finally near launch of a high-resolution platinum layer with a price tag of $19.99 per month, or twice the cost of the current ad-free Premium plan).
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 both lossless and high-res music streaming, but at $19.99 / £19, 99 per month. Following the price hike, Apple Music’s closest competitor offering lossless and high-res streaming along with Dolby Atmos music tracks will become Amazon Music HD ($9.99 / £9.99 per month), though that service lacks Apple Music’s elegant interface and well-organized Atmos music library.
As for Apple TV+, the same as Apple Music and lossless/high-res, your basic subscription tier includes support for 4K and Dolby Vision HDR – there’s no high-end tier that you have to pay extra for. Compare that to Netflix, which makes you pay twice as much for those features when you upgrade from the $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 Basic with Advertising plan is gone).
A price hike for Apple TV+ actually seems overdue: While its offerings were extremely limited in the beginning, it now has plenty of high-quality original shows like Severance and Ted Lasso, along with a strong 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 access to the following Apple services as a family: TV+, Music, Arcade, Fitness+, and News+. All of these 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 good bargain even if it costs $3 a month more now.
While I hate spending more money on anything every month, I can’t say that these price increases in Apple services are outrageous, especially for the high-end Apple One plans. It may not help the company gain new subscribers to Apple Music or Apple TV+, but I suspect most current subscribers probably won’t cancel. I know I’m not.