Telstra inks deal with Apple Music

Apple Music launched globally with a three month free trial. But now in a world first, Telstra is offering an Apple-endorsed free access subscription for 12 months, for customers who sign up to either its 12-month or 24-month Go Mobile Plan on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Accepting the Telstra bundle means that customers automatically have any Apple Music trial offers cancelled.

It advises, “If you sign up and agree to T&Cs to put Apple Music on your Telstra account this will roll on to a paying subscription at the end of the trial… unless you cancel it. You will receive an SMS 3 days prior to rolling over to a paid subscription.” More details at https://www.telstra.com.au/applemusic.

It means that Telstra customers will, after the 12 month freebie, pay for Apple Music as part of their monthly Telstra bill rather than through their iTunes account.

It is expected similar deals will be expanded to the US, Germany and UK with local carriers.In the UK, for instance, Spotify teamed with Vodafone on a premium subs bundle deal for £5 extra a month.Spotify boasts similar bundlepartnershipswith Vodafone in Australia (since October 2014) and Spark in New Zealand (since February 2014).

Last week, UStelco T-Mobile announced it would add Apple Music to its Music Freedom perk, which lets users stream content from various music services without it counting against their data allotments. These include Beatport, Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Google Play Music, SoundCloud and SiriusXM.