Back near the start of the month we were talking about Apple’s plans for Beats Music, following its acquisition of Beats earlier this year. To hear the rumors, Apple was interested in making the streaming music service a whole lot more affordable, slashing the existing $10 a month subscription rate. Just how low did it intend on going? At the time, we didn’t know. But now a new report is out detailing just how cheap things could get, claiming that Apple is shooting for a five dollar price point.
Unfortunately, this info doesn’t come from a first-hand source, but based on what’s been past down the grapevine, Apple has supposedly been making the case with its label partners that the average music purchaser spends about $60 a year on downloads, so if labels are interested in seeing these users transition to a subscription model, they need to hit the same $60 price point – which works out to five bucks a month.
It remains to be seen how keen the labels are to acquiesce to Apple’s suggested pricing, and what we end up with may ultimately be some middle ground between $5 and the $10 Beats charges now. And if Apple does end up getting what it wants, we’ll have to consider what the fallout might be for pricing on competing subscription services; quite a few are already around that same ten dollar level, so would they also drop rates by 50% to keep their user bases from fleeing? We can’t yet say, but streaming music could be about to get a whole lot easier on your wallet.
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