Apple’s Music streaming service Apple Music is now even cheaper in Kenya.
A quick on the Apple Music app reveals that an individual monthly subscription costs USD 2.99, a family subscription plan costs USD 4.99 monthly and, for the students, it will cost just USD 1.49 to access the over 50 million songs that platform boasts of hosting.
The latter subscription option, which comes to about just Kshs 160 at current exchange rates, is possible because, for the last 2 years, Apple’s university membership access programme has been open to Kenyan students, another example of Apple’s unrelenting courtship of music listeners in the local market and other such-like countries.
Previously, it cost USD 4.99 for a monthly individual subscription to the service, USD 7.99 for a family membership and USD 2.49 for a university student subscription.
As if slashing subscription fees by half wasn’t enough, Apple has also doubled the grace period provided to new subscribers to properly sample the service. Whereas the company previously gave new subscribers a free 3-month trial of the service, now, new users are getting half a year for free!
This latest development is likely to open up online music streaming for many Kenyans and, hopefully, give Apple a leg up since, alongside Deezer, its Apple Music service appears to be the only one capable of upsetting “local” giant Boomplay thanks to its expansive music catalogue.
Due to content licensing processes, rival music streaming service Spotify remains officially unavailable in the country and users have to go through hoops – like faking US ZIP codes and resident addresses and using VPNs – to access it. Don’t get me started on the challenges when one wishes to move from the basic subscription tier, which is free, to the premium tier, which lets them select songs to play as they wish as well as download them on mobile for offline playback. At USD 9.99 when one is using a US-based account, it is also prohibitively expensive when compared to the alternatives.
