This procedure doesn’t affect the 6-month trial program that you get when you purchase some Apple devices for a limited time, such as AirPods, HomePod mini, and some Beats products. The monthly subscription price is clearly unaffected yet. One Apple Music plan is still $ 9.99 ($ ??4.99 for college students) and a family plan for five is $ 14.99. There is also a new Apple Music Voice Plan. It limits access to parts of the music catalog for $ 4.99 per month, without audio and spatial or lossless audio via Siri.
While on the surface that sounds counter-intuitive a shorter generic trial system could open room for experimentation with interesting and potentially appealing side offers through third parties for Apple—in a way bringing its trial program closer to Spotify’s. The latter technically also offers a banket one-month free Premium trial for new users beyond its ad-based free tier. However, in the U.S. and some other countries, Spotify runs limited two-month trial campaigns, and paying for Premium through PayPal can get you three months free.
