Apple Looking to Bundle Services Like Apple Music and Apple TV+ for One Flat Monthly Rate

[FlyingDutch]

I would easily pay for a bundle subscription like that.
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I guess I am not a target customer? I am not subscribed to any of these services. iCloud is expensive and clunky, probably the poorest cloud service out there feature-wise.

I have my music on my iPod and I don't find the need to pay monthly to listen to my music, if a song I like comes out, I will get it and put it in my list... it is that simple.

And Apple TV+... The only reason I will have it is because it came free with my purchase.

Apple News, who that?

Edit: I DO have a cloud service... it just happen to be a better option than iCloud.

iCloud is not expensive nor clunky.
I can’t see any better option if you are an Apple user
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If Apple hardware is no longer selling well, the subscription service will take a big hit in revenue.

Except Apple hardware is still selling well.

 

[SidricTheViking]

Question now is, I bought my 11 Pro Max on 21st Sep. Come 1st Nov when TV+ launches, am I still entitled to the free 1 year subscription?

Yes.

 

[FlyingDutch]

It seems an enormous amount of customers are not interested in a bundle.

Based on what research ? I think you are trolling...

 

[Duncan-UK]

I can actually imagine Phil, Eddie and Tim on stage announcing this but with a price premium to have a bundle. Tim could say how he “couldn’t be more excited” to have greater access to your wallet whilst Phil could wax lyrical about “courage”. And Eddie? Well what the hell does he do anyway?

 

[DevNull0]

Offering another bundled option for a slightly discounted rate is a good idea.

They should keep the a la carte as well.

I wonder how much discount would be needed to make it worthwhile for the majority of people. A slight discount only makes sense for people who would sign up for everything anyway.

In my case, I'd be interested in music, icloud storage, and maybe TV+. I would use arcade and news+ a little bit if it were free, but probably wouldn't pay $1/month for both combined (this is just my usage, I'm not saying the services are worthless in general).

But a free year of TV+ when I buy a new piece of hardware means it's not really worth $5/month to me no matter how good the content. Within my household, we average more than 1 qualifying product a year, so we'd never pay for TV+. In the past 13 months, I've bought an iPhone, iPad Pro, and AppleTV, all before the TV+ promo was announced, but my next iPhone purchase isn't too far off anyway, so I'm not going to sign up for TV+ before then.

So overall, $10 for iCloud, $10 for music. I wouldn't go over $20 for a bundle of everything.
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I can actually imagine Phil, Eddie and Tim on stage announcing this but with a price premium to have a bundle. Tim could say how he “couldn’t be more excited” to have greater access to your wallet whilst Phil could wax lyrical about “courage”. And Eddie? Well what the hell does he do anyway?

I honestly could see this from Timmy, Phill, and Eddie. They'd include something like a special edition animoji, different color apple credit card, or maybe a different shade of blue in iMessage to show off you were on the premium-priced bundle and they'd get millions of takers.

 

[MallardDuck]

I can actually imagine Phil, Eddie and Tim on stage announcing this but with a price premium to have a bundle. Tim could say how he “couldn’t be more excited” to have greater access to your wallet whilst Phil could wax lyrical about “courage”. And Eddie? Well what the hell does he do anyway?

Magical!

 

[unQuestionable]

I'm on Catalina Public Beta from a few weeks back(stopped updating after the keynote). How do I upgrade from this Beta to the public release?

 

[ksec]

I am not really thrilled with Apple services because of the expense. There is no question that I can afford their offerings, but what is reasonable? Forbes did a dissection of the costs last month:

Apple’s 6 Consumer Subscription Services Will Cost You $100/month

Did you say SERVICES COMPANY, Mr. Cook?

www.forbes.com

I am not paying $100 per month.

Did you actually read the damn thing, the cost includes the price of iPhone aka iPhone Upgrade Programme.

i.e For $100 a month you get a latest iPhone along with all the Services and Media included.

 

[ksec]

I am thinking if this Apple bundle will be priced at all of its subscription MINUS the price of Apple TV+.

i.e If iCloud + Apple News, and AppleTV+ etc... cost $35 individually added together, the bundle will be sold at $30 ( minus the $5 for Apple TV+ )

You are essentially getting Apple TV+ for free by signing up the bundle.

Because that is the only part in the Bundle where Apple doesn't pay on a per uses basis. They could spend $10B on contents, and it doesn't matter if they have 100M user or 1M user, it would still have cost them $10B.

And Apple could even use this as a power play with Carrier. By giving them a small % for reselling, and long period of credit to create much better cash flow for them.

 

[unQuestionable]

The logical step would be to include iCloud Storage as a part of the plan as well.

 

[BWhaler]

This is probably the only way to get people to subscribe to the craptacular Subscriptions+

 

[Baymowe335]

I wonder how much discount would be needed to make it worthwhile for the majority of people. A slight discount only makes sense for people who would sign up for everything anyway.

In my case, I'd be interested in music, icloud storage, and maybe TV+. I would use arcade and news+ a little bit if it were free, but probably wouldn't pay $1/month for both combined (this is just my usage, I'm not saying the services are worthless in general).

But a free year of TV+ when I buy a new piece of hardware means it's not really worth $5/month to me no matter how good the content. Within my household, we average more than 1 qualifying product a year, so we'd never pay for TV+. In the past 13 months, I've bought an iPhone, iPad Pro, and AppleTV, all before the TV+ promo was announced, but my next iPhone purchase isn't too far off anyway, so I'm not going to sign up for TV+ before then.

So overall, $10 for iCloud, $10 for music. I wouldn't go over $20 for a bundle of everything.
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I honestly could see this from Timmy, Phill, and Eddie. They'd include something like a special edition animoji, different color apple credit card, or maybe a different shade of blue in iMessage to show off you were on the premium-priced bundle and they'd get millions of takers.

We'll see. Apple seems to be able to justify pricing for many of their products and services, so they have a lot of experience. They can do a lot of testing because changing pricing is so easy for services. I suspect they'll be aggressive as they are in acquisition mode for TV+.

 

[jayducharme]

One of my favorite artists has stopped recording music because of this. He makes no money from streaming, so it's not worth it. He just tours constantly.

Historically, that's been the only reliable way for music artists to make money. The only exception is if you can write a tune that is either a monster hit or that others want to cover. But those are few and far between.

 

[Unity451]

I thought iTunes Match was included if you got the full Apple Music.

Ah good call... *cancelled* ?‍♂️

 

[Mimiron]

Bundle Apple Music up with Storage and you've got me interested! I couldn't care less about Apple TV or the subpar Arcade service when I've got Netflix & PS4.

 

[FlyingDutch]

Hahaha... Have you checked the competition? OneDrive and Google Drive offer you more storage for better pricing plus access to services, real professional software and universal integration with all sorts of devices independent of manufacturer.

iCloud web is primitive compared to what you can do in web-based Google Drive for example. Not long ago even drag&drop was not supported, and the website is still super clunky.

I do have a job by the way. Thanks... I also have a cloud service I rely on, it just happen to be a better option.

google drive? Seriously ? I don’t want to give google access to my data.

 

[dmr2112]

Ok you're really trying to misinform on purpose here. Pricing wise iCloud Storage takes the cake over Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and others. As well as being the most natively integrated into the OS and devices it's used on. None offer 2TB of storage built into the OS that isn't super clunky. They all require third party apps and Dropbox has 2TB for the same price but it doesn't offer the integration or backup of stuff like settings and per device options. For people who enjoy music too Apple Music by far is the top option, being able to upload your own CD's to the cloud as well as instantly have new music you hear daily with Shazam Siri integration. On top of custom playlists and compilations based on what you like literally picked by hand on Apple Music by employees for you every single week. And yes some people like news and magazines still imagine that. Apple TV+ isn't even out yet either and you're trying to criticize it already.

I guess I am not a target customer? I am not subscribed to any of these services. iCloud is expensive and clunky, probably the poorest cloud service out there feature-wise.

I have my music on my iPod and I don't find the need to pay monthly to listen to my music, if a song I like comes out, I will get it and put it in my list... it is that simple.

And Apple TV+... The only reason I will have it is because it came free with my purchase.

Apple News, who that?

Edit: I DO have a cloud service... it just happen to be a better option than iCloud.

 

[cardfan]

Ah good call... *cancelled*

The difference between iTunes Match and Apple Music is basically drm.

With Apple Music, I can rip all my cds and upload my paid for original music to iCloud. Apple matches im your iCloud library but it’s drm protected now and only playable on devices where you have Apple Music enabled on. Better not lose your original files.

iTunes Match matches what you upload or puts what it can’t match in your iCloud library. These are drm free. Download them. Do what you want with the files.

 

[Flight Plan]

iCloud is on average $36 per year for 250gb of storage. You are either extremely stingy or don't have a job.

Why anyone is NOT using iCloud is completely beyond me if you have multiple apple devices or a family with multiple devices. It's the one NO BRAINER everyone should be taking advantage of.

And you are extremely rich. Or maybe just pretentious. It’s NOT a no brainer. Not everybody is like you, and therefore doesn’t need or necessarily want the same things you do.

So long as you can cancel at anytime, subscriptions are not a bad thing. Are credit cards evil? Not if you understand how to use them and don't get caught paying off interest all the time. They might be a little predatory for ignorant consumers but subscriptions are no different.

My “evil” comment was merely literary liberty. Subscriptions are not evil. They’re just evil.

I suspect majority of the Apple TV+ subscribers will be getting the first year of Apple TV+ for free. I think the bundle will more in response to tepid Apple News+.

Apple News is idealogical and very left-leaning. I’m looking for MIDDLE of the road. If their free offering is too left for me, then why would I pay for it? If you reward certain behavior, you get more of that behavior.

This could bring the remaining free holdouts into paying for content. I know friends who either use the free tier on Spotify or play music on YouTube but all of them pay for cable because it's just something they're used to. If you could tell them that $15 bucks gets them TV but also gets them music, news and maybe even games, they'll jump at the chance. People only have a finite amount of time so whichever service they spend more time in, would get most of that revenue. If anything, the music industry would get a bigger cut because it's perfectly common to have people listen to music in the background whereas watching TV is more of an activate participation and most people don't have a lot of time for it.

I’m a remaining holdout. Still not gonna pay for content that does not serve me.

Ok you're really trying to misinform on purpose here. Pricing wise iCloud Storage takes the cake over Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and others. As well as being the most natively integrated into the OS and devices it's used on. None offer 2TB of storage built into the OS that isn't super clunky. They all require third party apps and Dropbox has 2TB for the same price but it doesn't offer the integration or backup of stuff like settings and per device options. For people who enjoy music too Apple Music by far is the top option, being able to upload your own CD's to the cloud as well as instantly have new music you hear daily with Shazam Siri integration. On top of custom playlists and compilations based on what you like literally picked by hand on Apple Music by employees for you every single week. And yes some people like news and magazines still imagine that. Apple TV+ isn't even out yet either and you're trying to criticize it already.

Dropbox recently started limiting the number of devices that could access their free version. But their paid version is very rich. For them, not for me. At this point, I’d rather host my own.

 

[Flight Plan]

I read an article a couple years ago saying that Spotify, Pandora, and the like all try very hard to get people to commit to paid subscriptions, but only 5% do. 95% of their subscribers use the free version of the service. Paid subscriptions are the Holy Grail of gravy for all of these companies, because once you and I sign up, we’re very resistant to switching to another provider. But none of them can really crack 5% even in a good economy like the one we’re in now.

 

[sakurarain]

If the users, at least for me, can choose the service to build his own bundle, then it is a big WOW! I personally would like to have 1T iCloud & Apple Music & Apple TV+

 

[Tech198]

I must be getting old... Am I the only one who reckon separation is better ?

It seems people will happily pay for a 'bundle' if there is the right stuff inside. No cherry picking for me.

Apple will have to provide a 'generous' discount on the bundle otherwise it will be a flop out of the gate.

 

[tgwaste]

The bundle would have to include the 2TB iCloud I subscribe to.

It’s freakin crazy how many subscriptions I have to things now.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

I’d be interested without News.

 

[amartinez1660]

I second the TV+, Music, Arcade and Storage idea... would gladly pay $25 for all that. $30 for family shared bundle.