Apple Music to drop its pricing by 20%?

Apple Music may be contemplating a price cut in time for Christmas sales, two US sources close to the streaming service told Digital Music News.

Currently, its charges are the same as its main rivals – $9.99 per month for one user and $14.99 for a family or group.

It’s a rate that has seen Apple Music quickly build up its subscriber base within its first 16 months. The figure is currently 17 million, up from 15% in August 2016.

In comparison, Spotify has 100 million users and 40 million paying subscribers (which it took ten years to reach) and Pandora has 80 million.

But overnight speculation is that Apple is threatened by Amazon’s upcoming Music Unlimited service which has plans starting at just $3.99 for customers of its Echo, Echo Dot, or Tap speaker. Those already on its Prime program pay $7.99 while regular consumers will be charged $9.99.

According to Digital Music News, Apple is considering lowering the price of Apple Music to $7.99 per month for one user and $12.99 for six.

This would, if the story is correct, be offered to new subscribers who’ve been sitting on the fence so far as a one-off to offset any moves to Amazon’s new service. The lower rate will continue as long as the new customers continue to pay each month.

Existing subscribers might be transitioned to the lower rate “if it becomes permanent.”

Student pricing would remain unchanged at $4.99 per month.

The $2 drop would be carried by Apple itself, which is worried about a negative response from record labels about their share being lowered.

Digital Music News’ latest claims are being met with scepticism in some quarters. In May, it cited two sources (hopefully not the same two) who said that Apple was planning to axe iTunes downloads “within two years”. After angry denials from Apple executives, DMN softened its prediction to “the next 3-4 years, maybe longer.”

In this instance, DMN insists that “serious discussions” are taking place at Apple’s senior management level but might not necessarily happen.

According to a recent J.D. Power Streaming Music Satisfaction Study, 35% of respondents were “strongly committed” to Apple Music. In comparison, 30% of respondents were strongly committed to Spotify and Google Music.

Almost 62% said that “device compatibility” was the main reason to sign up for Apple Music, compared with 53% for Google Play Music and 52% for Spotify.