Which Apple Music Plan Is Best for You?

Apple Music is a premium music streaming service with more than 100 million songs available to stream from the cloud. It also hosts several free internet radio stations broadcasting 24 hours a day in over 160 countries around the world. Billed as a one-stop-shop for all your music streaming needs, the service allows access to an extensive library of songs as well as your own personal library of purchased music from iTunes via iCloud integration.

Apple Music is a popular streaming service for people in the Apple ecosystem, but which is the best subscription plan?

Apple Music currently offers three subscription plans: Individual, Family, and Apple Music Student. (Apple Music has stopped offering the Voice plan since November 2023.) Each plan has unique features and prices. Let’s take a closer look at which one is best for you.

Apple Music Individual

Apple Music doesn’t have a free plan, so if you’re looking for the most basic way to get your foot in the door, you’re going to need a $10.99/month Individual subscription. Apple also offers customers the option to pay for a year’s worth of service upfront for $109.

Apple Music Individual plan offers access to the entire Apple Music catalog of over 100 million songs. It enables you to download music for offline listening and the ability to listen across different devices. Alongside millions of songs, you also access over 30,000 playlists available on the platform, plus live radio. Apple Music Individual also allows you to watch music videos inside the app, view song lyrics, create playlists, and see what your friends are listening to.

Equally important, the plan offers an ad-free listening experience and supports lossless audio and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos, which come in handy when you want to listen to music at the best quality possible.

Apple Music Family

If you want to enroll up to six people in your household in an Apple Music plan, you can subscribe to the Apple Music Family plan for $16.99 per month. That works out to a total savings of $5 per month for two members, $16 for three, $27 for four, $38 for five, and $49 for six family members.

Similar to the Individual plan, the family plan has all the features available in other plans. However, the main difference between Apple Music Family vs. Apple Music Individual and Apple Music Student is it supports up to six people on a single subscription. Each account has personalized playlists and recommendations and a unique music library.

Apple Music Student

Apple Music's Student plan costs $5.99/month. It includes everything you get with other plans, like the entire Apple Music catalog in lossless audio, on-demand radio stations, and the ability to curate playlists, download music, stream across different devices, and an ad-free listening experience. The offer is available only for college students at this time.

Apple Music Voice (Apple has discontinued the Voice plan since November 2023.)

This is the cheapest Apple Music subscription plan. It's a voice-only plan that includes access to the entire Apple Music catalog for $4.99/month. Unlike other conventional music streaming plans, you can only activate and control it with Siri, so it’s only usable on Siri-enabled devices (primarily just Apple devices).

Voice has access to all the audio songs on Apple Music, but you won’t be able to watch any music videos or look up lyrics on the service. It also won’t support Apple’s higher-tier audio formats, like spatial audio (which renders the latest AirPods less effective) or lossless audio. Even worse, it doesn't have a library, meaning you'll have to specify everything in your voice command. This plan is a good fit for more casual users who listen to a lot of music through HomePods, AirPods, or CarPlay.

How to Use Apple Music for Free?

It's common for music streaming platforms to offer a free tier to attract new users. Sadly, unlike some competitors, Apple doesn't have a free plan. Apple offers a free trial on all plans. You can try it and cancel your Apple Music subscription before it expires. Besides the trials, are there ways to get Apple Music for free forever? The answer is yes. Boilsoft Apple Music Converter can help you to get Apple Music premium free forever.

Boilsoft Apple Music is a leading Apple Music converter to unlock M4P songs with the best output quality. It will convert Apple Music M4P to MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, AIFF and WAV for any other media player. Boilsoft Apple Music Converter converts audio files at 10X faster speed, and the ID3 tags will be saved in the output files after converting. After downloading Apple Music songs and removing DRM from them, you can keep Apple Music songs forever without a subscription. Here are several steps to get Apple Music for free by using Boilsoft Apple Music Converter.

Step 1 Log in to Your Apple Music account

Download, install and run Ondesoft Apple Music Converter version on your Mac or Windows. Click the Sign In button on the top-right corner. Simply follow the on-screen prompts to finish entering the data connected to your Apple Music.

Click the Sign in button and enter your Apple ID.

Step 2 Set the Output Parameters

Before selecting the Apple Music you want to remove DRM from, click the Settings button to complete the output settings. You can customize the output format, output sound quality, output path, and other parameters for your songs.

The following parameters are available:

Output Format: Auto, MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC
Output Quality: 320kbps, 256kbps, 192kbps, 128kbps
Output File Name: Track Number, Title, Artist, Album, Playlist Index, Disc Number, Space
Output Organized: None, Artist, Album, Artist/Album, Album/Artist

Step 3 Select Apple Music Songs to Convert

Follow the on-screen instructions to choose the playlist or album you want to convert.

Click Add songs.

Step 4 Start Conversion

By default, all songs in the playlist/album will be checked. If there are songs you don't want to convert, please uncheck the box. Then click Convert button to start downloading songs to the format you choose.