The last price hike was October 2022. That's nearly four years of holding the line — now over.
Summary
- Apple raised the price of Apple Music on July 17, 2026 — the first increase since October 2022 — citing "rising licensing costs" in a statement to multiple outlets. Individual plans go from $10.99 to $11.99, family plans from $16.99 to $19.99, and student plans from $5.99 to $6.99.
- Apple One bundles are partially affected: the Individual plan stays at $19.95, but the Family plan rises $2 to $27.95 and the Premier plan rises $2 to $39.95.
- The increase follows Apple raising prices on most of its hardware and software products in June 2026 — with the iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch being the notable exceptions at that time. Services are now following.
- Despite the hike, Apple Music's individual plan remains cheaper than Spotify Premium, which raised its price to $12.99 earlier in 2026 — a gap Apple had publicly mocked when Spotify moved first.
- The Apple One math has shifted in the bundle's favor: Apple Music Individual plus Apple TV+ alone now costs $23.98 at standalone prices, already more than the complete Apple One Individual bundle at $19.95 — meaning the price increase inadvertently makes bundling more compelling for fence-sitters.
Apple Music's individual plan at $11.99 is still $1 cheaper than Spotify Premium at $12.99. Apple spent months publicly highlighting Spotify's price increase on social media. Now it has its own. The difference is that Apple framed Spotify's increase as anti-consumer and its own as unavoidable. Subscribers are welcome to draw their own conclusions.
The Licensing Cost Justification
Apple's official statement is straightforward: rising licensing costs. This is the same explanation given every time a music streaming service raises prices, and it's broadly accurate — the major record labels have been renegotiating streaming royalty rates upward across multiple platforms throughout 2025 and 2026. The deals that underpinned the $9.99 streaming price when Apple Music launched in 2015 have been revised multiple times since, and the cost base is genuinely higher.
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What makes this particular increase notable is the timing. Apple raised hardware prices in June citing memory and component costs. Raising service prices in July citing licensing costs adds a second consecutive month of price increases across multiple product categories. Whether these are related or coincidental, the cumulative effect for Apple customers is a more expensive Apple ecosystem entering the second half of 2026.
The Bundle Math Is Now More Compelling
Apple One's Individual plan staying flat at $19.95 while Apple Music alone rises to $11.99 creates an interesting arithmetic. Apple Music plus Apple TV+ at standalone prices now totals $23.98 — already more than the complete Apple One Individual bundle that also includes Apple Arcade and 50GB of iCloud+. For anyone already paying for both services separately, that's not a marginal calculation — it's a clear financial argument for switching to the bundle.
The Family tier is more nuanced. The $27.95 Apple One Family plan versus $19.99 for Apple Music Family alone makes the math dependent on whether the family uses Apple TV+, Arcade, and iCloud+ enough to justify the $8 gap.
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