Apple begins offering half-price $4.99 Apple Music subscriptions for students

Starting today, students enrolled in an eligible college or university will today be able to subscribe to Apple Music at a discounted price, as Apple is offering half off the standard subscription rate for its streaming music service.

The new student pricing began rolling out on Friday in Australia, and is expected to arrive in other markets,Â including the U.S., according to TechCrunch. In America, where a single standard monthly subscription to Apple Music costs $9.99, students will be able to pay $4.99 for the same level of service.

Eligible participants must be able to prove that they are a student at a qualified school, and the reduced price is available for up to four years following enrollment. The years do not need to be continuous, so students who take a break from school can regain their eligibility once they return to finish classes.

In addition to the U.S., half-price Apple Music subscriptions are also confirmed to be available in the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Ireland, and New Zealand. In each market, the pricing will be 50 percent off the standard local pricing.

Apple is working with UNiDAYS to verify that students who sign up are actually enrolled in classes.

Last week, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook revealed that Apple Music has 13 million paid subscribers. That was up from 11 million subscribers two months prior.

Apple is expected to revamp Apple Music this year, and unveil the upcoming changes at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Among the changes said to be in the works are a shakeup to the product's user interface, aiming to make it easier to use.

Apple also reportedly plans to expand the Beats 1 radio service, and could potentially add new, live streaming stations to the lineup. And the company is also said to be planning a marketing blitz that will promote the new changes after they are unveiled at WWDC, which is set to kick off on June 13.

20 Comments

linkman 1040 comments · 11 Years

About 8 years ago

My daughter would jump on this but she says that there is no way she will manually recreate all of her Spotify playlists. If she had a way to automatically export and import them...

NY1822 620 comments · 8 Years

about time they use tactics like all the other streaming music services use to boost their paid user count....good for Apple. Now we are playing on an even playing field...and the weak will be exposed.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2015/05/1-for-3-months-of-spotify-premium-is-back-but-with-no-ads-how-are-artists-label-getting-paid.html

levi 344 comments · 10 Years

sog35 said:

This should be the price for everyone.

Its nuts that music streaming is charging $10 for A SINGLE USER while Neflix offers movies for THREE DEVICES for $8. That is ridiculous.

In order to get real penetration the standard price should be $5 for individual and $8 for family plan.

Apple Music and other streaming services have the full catelog with some exceptions. Netflix on the other hand is comparatively limited - which is ordinal why they're going into content development. Apple Music content is implicitly available forever. Netflix content is often time limited. Users may also listen to a song or album hundreds of times, whereas a show or movies one or a handful of times. I also suspect it costs more for music services to secure the content. Just some thoughts.

ahx1 6 comments · 9 Years

linkman said:

My daughter would jump on this but she says that there is no way she will manually recreate all of her Spotify playlists. If she had a way to automatically export and import them...
Hey, I had the same issue and used http://movetoapple.com, worked like a charm!

rogifan_new 4297 comments · 9 Years

sog35 said:

This should be the price for everyone.

Its nuts that music streaming is charging $10 for A SINGLE USER while Neflix offers movies for THREE DEVICES for $8. That is ridiculous.

In order to get real penetration the standard price should be $5 for individual and $8 for family plan.

Not going to happen. In the week after Prince died over 4 million records & singles were sold. He's not on any streaming service except Tidal. Prince shows people will pay for good music. The problem these days is most music sucks hence why people are renting over buying. Prince once said people value things less when they get them for free. He's right. Look at the App Store. Good quality apps struggle because people are conditioned to free or 99 cent apps with stupid IAP. Maybe one of the reasons there's so much garbage music is because people don't want to pay for it.