Apple Music Continues to Offer Free Extra Month to Previous Trial Customers Who Never Subscribed

[a0me]

My objection to AM isn't necessarily the price, or even my disdain for subscription services that leave you with nothing. I don't understand how you streaming era people are comfortable trusting all of your media to an internet connection!? And that's not to mention the absolute mess AM makes of your personal music library, or the headaches it creates for everyone not subscribed.

Apple Music messing with our locally saved music library is the reason that made us stay away from even the free trial. The other reason is that I'm fine with ad supported free streaming services like Spotify because it's still a step up over listening to the radio. When I want to listen to my own library it's on my phone, my laptop or streamed from my online backup.

 

[jlwarlow]

I’ve had the 3 months trial with Apple and later 6 months free with EE. I don’t think Apple will be emailing me another free month even though I’ve never paid.

 

[ncollingridge]

It’s not limited to Apple devices? It’s available on a lot of other platforms like Sonos, the other mobile OS, and even Windows. It may not be on Echo, but it’s definitely not an Apple-exclusive service that limits you to Apple devices.

When are Apple going to realise that it's no longer possible to come along late to the party and still clean up. They may have been successful with doing that in the past, but the other guys are getting better and better at executing whenever Apple leave the prime mover slot open. Home Pod may be a good product, but it's only one product, expensive, and only does one thing. Too little, too late.

AppleTV, similarly, is too limited in its scope and reach, and other products are eating Apple's lunch.

They need to execute much more quickly, and MUCH more thoroughly.

I say all this as an Apple advocate and enthusiast, but I'm not blind to the competition and will happily use other products if they suit my needs better. Apple must be very careful that they are not marginalising themselves too much right now.

Apple Music may not be Apple-exclusive, but Amazon in particular are positioning themselves really well and moving very quickly and, apart from the Fire phone, also executing really well. Not perfectly, but they learn quickly and are not afraid of throwing lots of stuff out there and iterating quickly. Apple are perfectionists but this may not be the right approach to take any longer in a very fast-moving landscape.

I haven't given up hope yet of Apple continuing to maintain their relevance, but I am concerned at what I see happening around them.

 

[tha_man]

It f****d up my local library once, I have no interest to possibly go through all that again. And besides that, there is so much great music available on various internet radio stations, soundcloud etc...

 

[morphineseason]

I initially liked having all the music in one library, but I agree with the others that it would probably be beneficial if Apple split Apple Music from the iTunes library, into a separate app, or at least filter it to a dedicated AM tab.

I feel like the marketing team really shot themselves in the foot when they combined all of iTunes with Apple Music. When an artist says their music is available on “Apple Music” it doesn’t always mean it’s streaming, but rather it could just be an iTunes purchase. It’s confusing for the consumer and adds another abstraction layer.

 

[1050792]

My objection to AM isn't necessarily the price, or even my disdain for subscription services that leave you with nothing. I don't understand how you streaming era people are comfortable trusting all of your media to an internet connection!? And that's not to mention the absolute mess AM makes of your personal music library, or the headaches it creates for everyone not subscribed.

Where's the mess you talk so much about? What's wrong with using an internet connection? You know you can save songs for offline listening aswell? If it wasn't for streaming services, music discovery wouldn't be as good as it is now and it's much better since we don't need to download or rip cds and manually create a library.

 

[tonyr6]

Apple Music messing with our locally saved music library is the reason that made us stay away from even the free trial. The other reason is that I'm fine with ad supported free streaming services like Spotify because it's still a step up over listening to the radio. When I want to listen to my own library it's on my phone, my laptop or streamed from my online backup.

Ad supported media is so annoying. Enough with the stupid progressive ads, rocket mortgage and quickin ads. I don't drive or have a car, I am not buying a house or getting a loan. That enough is worth to pay for a service..

 

[anzio]

When are Apple going to realise that it's no longer possible to come along late to the party and still clean up. They may have been successful with doing that in the past, but the other guys are getting better and better at executing whenever Apple leave the prime mover slot open. Home Pod may be a good product, but it's only one product, expensive, and only does one thing. Too little, too late.

AppleTV, similarly, is too limited in its scope and reach, and other products are eating Apple's lunch.

They need to execute much more quickly, and MUCH more thoroughly.

I say all this as an Apple advocate and enthusiast, but I'm not blind to the competition and will happily use other products if they suit my needs better. Apple must be very careful that they are not marginalising themselves too much right now.

Apple Music may not be Apple-exclusive, but Amazon in particular are positioning themselves really well and moving very quickly and, apart from the Fire phone, also executing really well. Not perfectly, but they learn quickly and are not afraid of throwing lots of stuff out there and iterating quickly. Apple are perfectionists but this may not be the right approach to take any longer in a very fast-moving landscape.

I haven't given up hope yet of Apple continuing to maintain their relevance, but I am concerned at what I see happening around them.

I haven’t found any Amazon products that do what I require my products to do. The only benefit I see to Amazon’s TV products would be an official Twitch app. But that means sacrificing dozens of Apple TV exclusive apps like CBC, Global TV, and so many others.

I find Amazon’s products too limited for what I need to do and the Apple TV is the only smart tv product that meets my needs. So they certainly aren’t eating Apple’s lunch in my household or universally. Quite the contrary, especially seeing usage reports from Global.

Maybe Spotify will mature soon too and offer a better selection of content and a better UI, but until then, it will remain a “do-not-touch” for both me and most investors as seen in their recent offering. Spotify is good for a casual listener though that doesn’t have a big interest or demand in music.

 

[a0me]

Ad supported media is so annoying. Enough with the stupid progressive ads, rocket mortgage and quickin ads. I don't drive or have a car, I am not buying a house or getting a loan. That enough is worth to pay for a service..

I guess I'm old enough to have listened to the radio most of my childhood and teenage/young adult life and that just a couple of ads every 30 minutes in between songs is actually an improvement.
And as I said, we have a good chunk of our own music library saved on our devices -which hold way more than tapes and CDs- so it's really easy to listen to what we want without distraction.

 

[cashville2400]

Apple sent me a free month offer too. No thanks, I have been a paid Spotify user from the beginning and I love it. I backed up gigs and gigs of my favorite, non-streamable music to google play music for free. So I don't need, or want this offer, or the unlimited Tidal offers I keep receiving. I guess it is cool for people who want it though.

Plus, I have been streaming a lot of music from my Spotify account using my multiple echos playing together all over the house. I would add a homepod to my speakers but it won't allow me to play Spotify, so I guess I won't be getting one of those either.

 

[iPhysicist]

It's 5 bucks if you're a student. Also... How the hell do you guys survive in the pre-streaming era? The price of two Starbucks coffees a month for essentially access to all the music available is mind boggling to me.

You sound to beautifully young but in the real world not everyone is a student... and not everyone converts money to Starbucks coffee.
I also seem to have missed the beginning of the pre streaming era. Maybe I was to occupied with rewinding tapes.

 

[funandblindness]

Where's the mess you talk so much about? What's wrong with using an internet connection? You know you can save songs for offline listening aswell? If it wasn't for streaming services, music discovery wouldn't be as good as it is now and it's much better since we don't need to download or rip cds and manually create a library.

Most of these people don't understand how it works.

 

[n-evo]

Quite. I am bought in to Echo now as well as iPhone, Mac etc, and Spotify does the job really well for me on all the platforms I use. Why would I jump ship to Apple Music only to be limited to Apple devices?

I wasn't aware Apple made Windows PC's, Android smartphones and Sonos hardware. Since - you know - they're compatible with Apple Music.

 

[Arran]

I initially liked having all the music in one library, but I agree with the others that it would probably be beneficial if Apple split Apple Music from the iTunes library, into a separate app, or at least filter it to a dedicated AM tab.

I feel like the marketing team really shot themselves in the foot when they combined all of iTunes with Apple Music. When an artist says their music is available on “Apple Music” it doesn’t always mean it’s streaming, but rather it could just be an iTunes purchase. It’s confusing for the consumer and adds another abstraction layer.

Totally agree. It's extremely confusing what Apple means by "Music" now. Their branding/segmentation is all messed up. A complete cluster.

Surprised someone's not been fired.

 

[kazmac]

Still not subscribing, no interest.

 

[Arran]

...The price of two Starbucks coffees a month for essentially access to all the music available is mind boggling to me.

Yeah, All the music that's available on the service...

... until it's not.

And in any case, I'm not interested in "all the music" - just like I'm not interested in 99% of what's on cable TV (and, increasingly, the cheap, low-quality "filler" programming that's creeping into Netflix).

The "all you can eat" business model starts off great BUT unfailingly degenerates into junk food.

Every time.

 

[EdT]

Yeah, All the music that's available on the service...

... until it's not.

And in any case, I'm not interested in "all the music" - just like I'm not interested in 99% of what's on cable TV (and, increasingly, the cheap, low-quality "filler" programming that's creeping into Netflix).

The "all you can eat" business model starts off great BUT unfailingly degenerates into junk food.

Every time.

Or until you are in an area where you’re streaming connection isn’t great and you didn’t download songs ahead of time because you didn’t know that your phone has lousy service in that city/county/state.

 

[Mascots]

I doubt the customers that didn't buy in previously are "waiting and hoping" for this promotion.

You need to learn more about marketing.

 

[Jeffois]

Am somewhat interested, but I've heard people allude to problems associated with Apple Music FUBARing local libraries. I have about 100gb of local music that I value. Is it still an issue?

 

[cheekyjeremy]

At this point, any new subscriber is pure profit. It costs them zero to keep on adding more users. So they're going to continue to push music hard.

That’s not entirely true. Apple is paying out to the record companies for anything you listen to. If you are a heavy listener, then a $5 plan is probably costing Apple money to have you.

 

[0924487]

I accidentally clicked off how do I get it back?