It has taken four years, but Apple is now following the industry trend by increasing the price of its Apple Music subscription. Unsurprisingly, the news is unlikely to be welcomed by subscribers.
With some music streaming services introducing multiple price increases within the space of just a few months, subscription costs continue to climb. The trend has been ongoing for several years, and don’t be surprised if an individual subscription reaches €20 per month within the next few years.
At that point, the question becomes whether maintaining a streaming subscription is still worthwhile. We’ll leave that decision to you. One undeniable fact, however, is that music regularly disappears from streaming platforms as licensing agreements expire or contracts with record labels change. Nothing remains available forever, regardless of which streaming service you use.
For that reason, it may be worth considering investing in downloadable music again, using services such as HDtracks or the Qobuz Download Store. Once purchased and stored on your computer or NAS, those albums remain part of your own collection indefinitely—provided, of course, that you remember to make regular backups.
Apple
Apple’s iTunes Store is also still very much alive. Now that the company has announced another price increase for Apple Music (see, among others, here), purchasing music outright may once again become an attractive alternative.
Admittedly, you will miss out on the continuous stream of algorithmically generated music recommendations offered by streaming services. On the other hand, that is arguably more of a disadvantage for the streaming platforms than for the listener. By consciously buying the music you really want, you return to building a collection based entirely on your own taste—much like browsing the shelves of a traditional record store before deciding whether an album was worth your money.
Over the course of a year, that approach could even prove considerably cheaper than maintaining a subscription, especially if you do not stream music particularly often.