Apple Music has raised its prices by $1, the streaming service confirmed Friday, marking its first price hike since 2022.
“As a result of rising licensing costs, Apple Music is increasing itssubscription price beginning today,” Apple said.
A standard premium subscription will now cost $11.99 a month, according to Apple’s website, while the family plan is up $3 from $16.99 to $19.99. Its student plan has gone up a dollar to $6.99 a month.
The new price still puts Apple Music at a dollar less a month than its chief rival Spotify, whose cheapest premium plan goes for $12.99. Spotify confirmed a price hike of its own back in January as well. Spotify’s premium subscription, though, also includes 15 hours a month of audiobooks. (That audiobooks offering has been controversial in the music publishing industry, as the bundle allows Spotify to pay out a lesser royalty rate to songwriters.)
Price hikes of course frustrate consumers, and today’s change will likely be no different. Still, industry stakeholders including the major record labels have been advocating for streaming services to charge more for years, both to account for inflation and to close the gap with what they argue is still an undervalued product as what amounts to the cost of one CD now gives customers access to hundreds of millions of songs.
Apple last raised its price on Apple Music in October 2022, also raising Apple TV+’s price at the time. Apple similarly attributed the 2022 music price hike to rising licensing costs.