Apple Music offers new Australian subscribers five months of free music

Apple Music is offering new Australian subscribers five months of free music.

It is part of a global campaign that runs until March 31 and is aligned with US country superstar Dolly Parton.

It is also a strategy to increase the profile for the UK song and video recognition app Shazam, which Apple purchased in September 2018 for US$400 million.

Australia is one of 45 territories to get the free deal, including the US, UK, Singapore, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Poland and South Korea.

The offer has to be claimed via an iOS device with Shazam installed.

The campaign began during the US Super Bowl over the weekend, which was beamed across the US and globally, and included the halftime show headlined by The Weeknd.

In Australia it screened on Seven Network and was livestreamed on 7plus, reaching a total of 1.5 million viewers nationally, according to Seven.

On the day of the Super Bowl, Parton tweeted of a “special surprise” for those who used Shazam to identify her song.The Shazamed track could be either the original version from the 1980s, about feeling undervalued at work, or a new version with a looped title ‘5 To 9’ which Parton recorded as a Super Bowl ad for US website builder Squarespace.

Those who could not tune into the Super Bowl could still access the free deal via a link.

This was not Parton’s only connection to Apple.

She was one of the first celebs in the Apple Fitness+ feature Time to Walk, a series of audio episodes that encourages gentle exercise and stars talking about their lives.