With its just-announced Voice Plan, Apple is halving the cost of entry to its music subscription service. And while that’s good news for those who are looking to save money and don’t mind the limitations, it’s also an unexpected move that demonstrates what Apple ideally wants to get out of its various services.
The Apple Music Voice Plan is a $6-per-month subscription, in contrast to the $12-per-month of the standard individual tier. But it doesn’t give you access to less music; you still get the whole library of 90 million songs, tens of thousands of playlists, Apple Radio stations, and so on.
The Apple Music Voice plan works on Siri-enabled devices like HomePods, iPhones and AirPods.
Instead, the catch is that you can’t press play in the Apple Music app or on a computer, you can only initiate music by talking to Siri. You can ask for a track, an album, a playlist, an artist, a genre, a mood, or whatever you like. You can even use the app to find the song you want to hear, but you’ll have to read it out loud to Siri to get it playing.
At first glance, it seems like the Voice Plan is an arbitrarily limited version of Apple Music. Should it really cost more to press a button in an app than to ask for a track with your voice? Is Apple just creating a cheap tier to get people hooked, only for them to realise how annoying it is to rely solely on Siri and step up to the $12 tier?
There are some premium extras being held only for customers with full subscriptions. Voice Plan customers can’t create playlists or share them with friends for example, and can’t download music for offline listening, although they will find recent music and tracks they own in the app.
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But beyond that, the Voice Plan concept does make sense for a couple of reasons.
First, Amazon Music already offers a $5 tier with access to its full library, and Spotify offers a free tier that’s ad-supported, so it behoves Apple to go low and scoop up some of the people shopping around for a music service that doesn’t burn a big hole in their pocket.
Second, and related, is the fact that the low cost of the Voice Plan will be subsidised by a growing reliance on Apple products and particularly Siri to operate those plans. A full subscription to Apple Music can be used on any phone or computer, and play on a variety of sound equipment via AirPlay or Sonos. But by tying the cheaper subscription to Siri, the company ensures it only works for iPhones, iPads, Macs, AirPods, Apple TVs and HomePods.