Music lovers prefer getting all their music from one place. Unlike TV shows and movies where one can conveniently switch from platform to platform, say Netflix to Showmax, without getting frustrated or feeling inconvenienced, doing this for music does not always make sense.
Music distribution rights play a role in this because most popular songs from mainstream artists are available across all popular music streaming apps including Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music. This is not the case for TV shows and movies, making switching from platform to platform depending on what show you want to watch, the norm.
Since most music streaming apps offer largely the same kind of music regardless of what service you choose, they largely compete on prices and the quality of audio the end-user receives, with better quality audio being associated with higher tier subscriptions because of the higher amount of bandwidth utilized availing the premium sound.
When Apple Music got its launch in 2015, instead of offering an industry-standard one-month free trial, they opted for a three-month one in order to sway users who were already in the ecosystems of Spotify and Deezer to drop those services and try out Apple Music, free of charge, for three times longer than they would get on any other platform.
The main goal with these extended free trial periods is that when the time elapses, you would have hopefully gotten used to the services being provided, making it difficult to move to another service effectively turning you into a paying customer.
Apple seems to have finally felt they have provided enough time for anyone wishing to try out Apple Music. The Apple Music website now only has one month of free access to eligible users, bringing it in line with other streaming options like Spotify and Deezer. Once the free trial month elapses, the plan will auto-renew at full price.
The change to the free trial period is in effect in all the over 150 countries that Apple Music is available in, including Kenya.
However, to further incentivize users to buy Apple products, the company is still offering six-month Apple Music trials for new subscribers who purchase an eligible audio product. The qualifying audio products include AirPods Pro, AirPods 2, AirPods 3, AirPods Max, Beats, and HomePod mini.
“New subscribers can get six months of Apple Music free with an eligible audio device. Make sure your iPhone or iPad is running the latest version of iOS or iPadOS. Then you can activate your Apple Music trial after you pair your audio device to your iPhone or iPad. You’ll have three months to redeem the offer after the first activation of the eligible device,” reads Apple’s explanation on their blog.
The reason for Apple’s removal of the three-month free trial is still unclear, but 9to5mac hints that they believe it might be a move that aims to quickly convert the users who are leaving Spotify en masse (following the controversy around celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan’s remarks in one on his shows, deemed as spreading misinformation at scale, and the use of racial slurs in previous episodes, which Spotify has since taken down).
