Apple Raises the Price of Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple One

For Apple TV+ the increase from $4.99 to $6.99 per month is a 40% increase. That’s way above the rate of inflation.

As we noted in the article, Apple said the Apple TV+ rate hike was due to the increased size of the catalog.

I’m a premier subscriber here in Australia. The price has gone from $39.95 to $42.95 which is actually less than I expected. I figured it would be $3 US increase or about $5 AUD.

I’d prefer no increase but I’m pleased it’s less than I was expecting. I’d much prefer an à la carte option where you could pick the services you want and still get a bundle price. I’d drop games and fitness in a heartbeat (no pun intended).

The Apple TV+ increase is the most disappointing. I haven’t watched it in months. There are a couple of shows that draw me back when there are new episodes (For All Mankind, maybe 2 others) but most of the catalog is (to me) so boring I almost never watch it.

What was so amazing about their increased catalog I wonder?

Hulu is generally more interesting I think.

Anyway, just a personal opinion.

It’s also more than double the price (unless you don’t mind ads, and then Hulu is still more expensive.)

Fwiw, I’ve watched more content on TV+ than on Hulu the last year. HBO and TV+ have been my two most-watched services. Then Netflix, then Hulu, then Disney+.

I agree. For the smaller bundle of 4 it would be really nice to be able to pick which ones I want. I’m sure Apple structured it this way on purpose to upsell people to the premier level.

TV+ is going up to $69/year. I just renewed my Hulu (yes with ads) for just $59/year.

The last time I watched TV+ was the season finale of For All Mankind. That was months ago, right?

I’ve enjoyed watching Murdoch Mysteries lately on Hulu. I didn’t originally know there were that many seasons.

Hulu is the one I watch most often. Then Netflix, but much less. And sometimes Amazon Prime Video. TV+ has almost nothing I want to watch except when they come out with new seasons of something like Severance and Ted Lasso. But in-between those seasons there seems to be a dearth of offerings.

I’ll probably renew though, for the few shows I like.

I just checked Hulu’s website and the ad-supported annual plan is $80? Did it also recently increase? (Just checked. Yes. It went up on October 10.)

Ah. My annual renewal fell on September 23. Whew. .

Thanks for the useful article.

But I disagree that the increases are necessarily “small”. It’s always dangerous to judge what is small when it comes to money. What is small to one person might be significant to others.

Major League Friday Night Baseball and Major League Soccer are tremendously popular, and Soccer has an especially huge global audience. The games will be available live and on demand, and no local blackouts. Apple is rumored to be pitching this service to other sports leagues.

I’ve also been hearing rumors that Apple is considering having a free membership tier that is ad supported, along with the ad free paid subscription service.

What has really surprised me is that subscriptions will not be exclusive to owners of Apple hardware. And it will be available to anyone who pays for a subscription anywhere around the world. It’s a great opportunity for Apple as well as for the teams. IMHO, if Apple inks more deals with different leagues, it could be almost as disruptive and revolutionary as when Steve Jobs unleashed iTunes on the world.

I can’t think of anything that would drive me further away from a subscription.

The price increases are small and not entirely unexpected, given rampant inflation, but we hope Apple doesn’t raise them again.

Common fallacy confounding cause and effect. This is what drives inflation, not the result of it.

It will be a while before Apple, a big cash-laden corporation headquartered in the US, sees its actual cost for providing these “services” increase by the same 10% they just raised their prices. But I’m sure they enjoy people believing their cost has increased by 50% yet they are so generous to pass only 10% on to their customers.

Me too. And as I have said before, I am nothing even resembling a sports fan. I can hardly tell the difference between a baseball and a football. I am, however, very interested in Apple’s business strategy, and how they are performing and growing in an extremely competitive market.

Apple’s services have traditionally run on slim or zero profit margins. Steve Jobs developed iTunes and negotiated an exceptionally beneficial deal for the record companies so he could sell iPods. He also developed, and regularly updated, Numbers, Pages, Keynote, Photos, iOS, Mac OS, iPad OS, Books, FaceTime, iMovie, Time Machine, Swift Playground, etc. Apple continues to give them away for free to help sell Macs, iPhones and iPads. These are big selling points for new and repeat hardware customers. And they’ve been very successful in developing and expanding into health services, especially with Watch.

Apple TV+ is priced competitively with Netflix, etc. And these new exclusive live sports broadcasts are priced very competitively with ESPN, etc. Subscriptions are a very smart strategy to sell hardware and keep new and loyal customers happy.

Yeah, I struggled with that a little in editing, but being under the weather with COVID, decided not to worry too much about trying to tease it out.

The problem is that inflation is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I understand it. The more people think there’s inflation, the more they change their behavior in ways that encourage more inflation. I imagine that the same is true for companies to an extent—if prices are going up in one sector, that makes it easier to raise prices in another, even if the direct costs haven’t risen commensurately. In other words, if inflation is causing prices of iPhone components to increase, Apple can offset that reduction in revenue by raising Services prices rather than iPhone prices, even though the Services prices probably haven’t risen in the same way.

Apple said it’s raising the Apple Music price to accommodate higher licensing fees and the Apple TV+ price to reflect the larger catalog—in essence to recoup more of the costs of commissioning new content. (Apple also said that music artists would receive more royalties, suggesting that the Apple Music increase exceeds just the licensing costs.) I’m no economist, but none of this feels directly connected to inflation to me.

Or maybe it’s all just the coronavirus talking. :-)

Hmm, viewing the recent piece: Apple Raises the Price of Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple One
Regarding " For Apple TV+, the prices are now:

• $6.99 per month ($2 increase)
• $69 per year ($20 increase)"

I realized that I was never presented with an option to pay on a yearly plan.
What’s up with that?

Update, sort of a moot point I guess, I figured out how to do it, … it’s just that as is the usual form when subscribing to these type services, I was never presented with that option up front. Oh, well my bad …

This is why musicians have tended to greatly prefer iTunes to Spotify:

Spotify Stock: Growing Competition And Low Profitability (NYSE:SPOT) | Seeking Alpha

I always saw $4.99 for TV+ being a lowball “introductory” price that would inevitably be raised later as it grew more popular. Netflix used to be less than half of what they charge now and Disney+ was also incredibly cheap in the beginning. It’s a standard tactic to gain traction.

I can’t say if Apple’s costs are going up or if this is just a money grab, but I know for sure that my costs have skyrocketed. Thankfully my monthly bills haven’t, but the price of groceries and other essentials have doubled over the past year.

That’s part of it.

Inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing too few products. Either in a single sector or across the entire economy. This is another way of describing supply and demand. When there’s more demand than supply (that is an increase in money being spent without a corresponding increase in goods to sell, or a reduction in the amount of goods to sell without a corresponding decrease in money being spent), prices rise. And when the opposite happens, prices fall.

The ways to reduce inflation is one or more of:

• Reduce the money supply. For example, by raising interest rates, by increasing the percentage of deposits banks are required to hold (vs. lend out), by issuing fewer government bonds, or by printing less money.
• Reduce spending. Either by consumers (the self-fulfilling prophecy you described) or by government. Which is also a form of reducing the money supply.
• Increase the amount of goods. That is, grow the economy. Which is particularly difficult right now, due to supply-chain issues and other related problems faced by manufacturers.

I’m an Apple One subscriber. Of the six services, I actually care about two, iCloud+ (2TB) and Apple TV+. I don’t mind having Music, and my wife seems to like News+. Arcade isn’t getting used at all, and Fitness+, I should use it, and it’s aspirational, but it’s not getting used at all, either.

When I look at the price increase, it makes me think again about what I spend every month on subscriptions. And I start thinking that maybe I should just subscribe to the services I actually use. $17/month < $33/month, by quite a bit. I can live without Apple Music, and my wife has plenty of Internet left to read if News+ goes away.

So my question is, is there a safe, standard process for leaving Apple One, and signing up for the (two) individual services I want?

I’m specifically concerned about iCloud+, since we’re way over any free limit for iCloud storage. (The only reason we were on the Premier plan for Apple One was for two TB of storage.) I don’t want everything wiped just because we’re changing plans, and the transition requires resetting, or something awful like that…

The process to cancel an Apple One subscription anticipates your issue. Accessing the subscription is easiest from a mobile device. Just go to Settings->AppleID and open the subscriptions item. Tap the Apple One button and you’ll see the current renewal info and 2 more buttons:

1. Choose Individuao Services and
2. Cancel All Services

Selecting Choose Individual Services lists everything, although it shows the family version of Music. Nevertheless, you then can pick the services you wish to keep. I suspect that if Music is one of them, you can subsequently demote yourself to an individual plan if you wish.

This describes my situation perfectly. My ‘needs’ are iCloud 2TB ($15 AUD), and Apple TV+ ($10). I use Apple Music (even though I think the GUI and implementation are atrocious) and I use Apple News+ a fair bit - primarily for daily new but also for the magazines to which I used to subscribe (Nat Geo, Mac Forum, Photo mags etc). Family Apple Music is $20 and Apple News+ is $15. I guess I can justify the $42 for Premier even though I’d love to them for less.

Arcade and Fitness are excess baggage - I’ve never opened either.

One thing that is interesting to me is that starting last month Apple stopped collecting sales tax on my AppleOne subscription (without any explanation). So, if that continues, when the price increases, my cost compared to what I am used to paying will only go up about $1.17.

That’s part of it…but inflation is, well…complicated and somewhat irrational, just like the stock market is.

I noticed the same. I’m in Indiana. I wonder why they stopped adding sales tax? Not that I’m complaining.

Different states have different rules regarding things like digital purchases. A quick search for Indiana finds this page: Sales Tax Handbook: Indiana: Are Software and Digital Products subject to sales tax?.

According to that page:

• Canned software is taxable, whether purchased on media or downloaded
• Custom software is not taxable, whether purchased on media or downloaded
• Customization of canned software is taxable
• Digital media products are taxable if they are purchased (that is, you have a perpetual right to use it), but not if an ongoing payment is required (e.g. subscriptions).

So, based on this, iTunes purchases should be taxable, but rentals and media subscriptions (like Apple Music and Apple TV+) should not be.

IMPORTANT: These laws vary substantially from state to state. If you don’t live in Indiana, the above is not applicable. You will need to do your own research to find out what your state’s laws are in this area.

IMPORTANT: I am not a lawyer. You should do your own research to be sure. If the item is taxable and the seller does not collect sales tax, then you are obligated to pay it as use tax, typically as a part of filing income taxes.

And an extra note on the new lower-cost ad-supported Netflix plan. It doesn’t include all the shows! For example, it doesn’t include “The Crown.” I wouldn’t go for that plan.

I wish Apple would supply membership and audience numbers of subscribers in the US and internationally, including the number of paid subscribers vs. 3 month free trials. I’m guessing that the reason they aren’t breaking the numbers out is because they might not look so good, especially when compared with Disney, Netflix, etc.

Maybe when they start accumulating audiences of Major League soccer and Friday Night Football fans across the globe?

Having watched that, maybe you can tell me just who Ed shot (I think by mistake) from the Mars-capable shuttle replacement just before emerging from “back of the moon” communications blackout.

Is there any clarity yet to just how Apple will sell or rent access to classical music with its now more-than-a-year old promise to fix how abysmally it catalogs it and presents it to its users?

About a year ago, Apple bought Primephonic, a highly ranked classical music streamer:

They have been diligently rejiggering it, and it looks like Apple is getting ready to launch it as a new classical music service:

I hope they offer a good product but cheaper than IDAGIO. They have a good selection (for my non discriminating ears) but I ended up canceling and sending the monthly money to my local Classical Radio network. Not as expansive of a selection and not as high quality. I will wait to see what Apple offers.

My prediction is that they will offer tiers based on quality of the feed.