A new report by Re/code gives some extra details about Apple’s future plans for its streaming service, Beats Music. A few weeks ago Apple was reportedly looking to push prices down, although specifics were not known at the time.
Today, Re/code says that Apple wants to cut prices in half, from $10 a month to $5 a month. This would be part of a relaunch of the Beats Music service — exactly what a ‘relaunch’ entails is not yet known. It is possible that Apple will disassociate the Beats brand from its streaming service.
Re/code says that negotiations revolve around a stat about Apples ‘best iTunes customers’, who apparently spend $60 a year on music. This works out to $5 a month. Beats Music currently costs $9.99 per month. Apple executives are arguing that pushes the price down will result in a situation where revenue from music sales remains at least constant from its dedicated audience, if not greater from the wave of potential additional customer adds.
The report notes that any price cuts Apple arranges would also have to be offered to competing services as well. Negotiations are just that and much of this will be subject to change as talks are ongoing. The revamp of the streaming service is not expected to debut any time soon, so it will take a while for anything to be finalized.
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Wow. If Apple lowers the prices like that and pushes Beats Music in intensive ads, the industry might get back a part of their revenues. Even with the most cheap people.
If they did this at only $5 and it was a better service than Spotify, focused the marketing by saying something like “All the music in the iTunes store… for only $5 a month”
Well, it’d be nice to have a subscription service of any sort from Apple outside of the US and Canada. We UK folk are still waiting for ITunes Radio. Meanwhile Spotify, Deezer and Napster are the go to services.
$5 a month and have it utilize iTunes Match and I’d do it in a heartbeat! I have no problem paying $25 a year for iTunes Match, and cannot imagine being without it… mix that into Beats and you’ve got it made Apple!
I’d probably be a buyer at the $5 price point. I will continue to pass at $10 for now though.
Bundling Beats Music with iTunes Match subscriptions would be nice as well.
I signed up for the Beats trial last night. Wow, I’m not as smart as I thought I was, because I can’t make much sense of this. Why can’t I just pick an artist and have a channel created around their music. I thought it was like Pandora, but I guess not. And the setup process was even more stupid. I’ve never been more frustrated by a music app before. From the reviews though, it must just be me that doesn’t get it. Seems everyone else does.
Stick with it. It definitely is a different type of curation. As of now, its not as “on demand” as Spotify, but (IMO) it is more “accurate” than Pandora. I liked the UI of it, but I didn’t like the usability of it until I had it for about 2 weeks.
Would be a huge if it also included iTunes Match.
I was about to sign up for Spotify until I saw the $10 price tag. I would easily pay $5 for this service. I’m already paying for iTunes Match. The combo would be stellar!
What worries me about this is the “exclusive” deals that are inevitably going to become more prevalent. You can get this artist on this service but not this other one. That’s when we as customers loose. I don’t mind paying more for real access. I liked Beats when I did the free trial, but I pay for Spotify now though mostly for GF to use since I still prefer to just buy albums and use iTunes Match. If Beats by Apple actually brings the breadth of iTunes to the party then we may actually have a killer service here.
$5 a month? Count me in. $10 is too steep (maybe just a mental hurdle), but at $5 they’d have a new customer.