Apple Music UK pricing leaked

UK pricing significantly higher than in the US

I’ve been running the various beta releases of iOS 8.4 for some time now. This forthcoming release includes an updated Music app that, come June 30th, will include Apple’s new Music offering.

Last night, it seems that Apple were doing some behind the scenes work as suddenly elements of the new Music service started to show up in my music app.

At one point I could see the signup page, including what would appear to be confirmation of the UK pricing.

Though the US pricing ($9.99 for single user, $14.99 for family) has been announced, Apple hasn’t yet officially confirmed pricing in any of the other 100 countries it is launching in.

In my head, I’d been hoping for UK prices to be £7.99 or £8.99 for the single users and £11.99 or £12.99 for the family. However, assuming the signup page I saw is correct, the UK prices will be £9.99 and £14.99.

When I tweeted this last night, I immediately got a lot of responses saying how Apple always screw UK users with pricing. Though in this instance it may well be the case, many people don’t often realise that US prices never include sales tax as this is different in all states. So the US price is $9.99 plus the sales tax of the state the person lives in. The UK price of £9.99 already includes the 20% VAT.

That said, it would seem that UK users will be paying no small amount more than US users for the Music service. In light of the fact that £9.99 is the price of Spotify though, it seems that this is the price the music labels are demanding and not Apple themselves.

All that said, I still think that the £14.99 family offer in particular is a pretty amazing deal, even if we are paying more for it than our friends in the US.