Apple Music just got a lot more expensive in India

I had gotten pretty comfortable with Apple Music’s India pricing in recent times. I’ve been a long-time Spotify user, long before it launched in India (thanks, Ronak). However, I’d grown increasingly annoyed at them for pushing their podcasts into their music app, and their recommendation engine — something that had worked incredibly well for the longest time — had become terrible. But I still maintained an active Apple Music subscription, because it costed just ₹99 a month. So some time last year, I switched to Apple Music full-time and ditched the Spotify subscription I’ve held for so long. 

The Apple Music subscription was active long enough that I’d stopped noticing the monthly deduction altogether. That changed this week. Apple has raised Apple Music subscription prices in India by up to 28 percent, while leaving its Apple One bundle completely untouched (so far).

The new Apple Music India pricing in July 2026

  • Individual: ₹119 → ₹139/month (~17% hike)
  • Family: ₹179 → ₹229/month (~28% hike)
  • Student: ₹59 → ₹69/month (~17% hike)

The Family plan takes the biggest hit by far. For context, the US Individual plan only went up about 9 percent ($10.99 → $11.99), so India’s getting a noticeably steeper increase this time around — not the first time regional pricing hasn’t scaled 1:1 with the US, but a bigger gap than usual.

Apple hasn’t put out an India-specific statement, but the new prices are already live on Apple’s India pricing page. This is also the third time Apple has increased their pricing in the country in recent times, following the MacBook and Pro price hikes in June over rising memory costs, and the AppleCare+ price hikes earlier this week by roughly ₹3000.

As for the reasoning, Apple told Music Business Worldwide:

“As a result of rising licensing costs, Apple Music is increasing its subscription price beginning today.”

Same explanation Apple’s given before — more of the fee is supposed to flow through to artists and rights holders, not just Apple’s margins. Licensing costs genuinely have been climbing across the industry, to be fair, and Apple isn’t alone here: Spotify raised its own India and global pricing earlier this year too, and Apple’s marketing team happily took a jab at them for it on social media at the time.

Apple One in India hasn’t changed — and that’s the interesting bit

Globally, Apple did revise Apple One pricing too — the Family and Premier tiers went up in the US, though the base Individual tier there was left alone. In India, though, Apple One isn’t budging at all: it’s still ₹195/month for Individual and ₹365/month for Family, the same pricing the bundle has had since it launched here in 2020. Also worth remembering: India still doesn’t get the Premier tier at all — that’s stayed US/UK/Australia/Canada-only since launch.

Practically, that makes the bundle a noticeably better deal than it was a week ago. Apple Music Individual alone is now ₹139/month — just ₹56 short of the ₹195 Apple One Individual plan, which also gets you Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud+ storage on top. If you’re already paying for two or more of those separately, it’s worth doing that math this week.

I don’t know if Apple’s planning to eventually bring India’s Apple One pricing in line with this Music hike, or if it’s deliberately holding the line to keep the bundle looking like the smarter buy while everyone absorbs the standalone increase. Either way — if you’re an Apple Music subscriber in India who’s never bothered looking at Apple One, this is probably the week to.

But my gut says Apple One pricing in India is increasing too.

July 18, 2026 · + Permalink

Daft Punk 1993 - 2021

February 22, 2021 · + Permalink

Spotify Signs with Saregama for India

Vikas SN, reporting for ET Tech:

As per the deal, Spotify will get access to more than 100,000 music tracks across various genres like Film, Carnatic, Hindustani classical and devotional music in over 25 languages. This includes songs from artists like Lata Mangeshkar, R.D. Burman, Mohammed Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey, Kalyanji-Anandji, and Hemant Kumar among others.

Saregama’s “Carvaan” is one of the best collection of songs on this planet, and I’m glad some (most?) of that is coming to Spotify.

May 11, 2020 · + Permalink

Apple Addresses Spotify’s Claims in a Statement

After Spotify filed a complaint against Apple earlier this week, Apple has today released a statement trying to address Spotify’s claims.

According to the statement:

What Spotify is demanding is something very different. After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace. At the same time, they distribute the music you love while making ever-smaller contributions to the artists, musicians and songwriters who create it — even going so far as to take these creators to court.

and

Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.

Great points, but the statement complete sidesteps why the company disallows apps to mention other available payment models. I think Apple is fair in asking for a 30% cut for payments made through the App Store, but Spotify (and other apps) should also be allowed to tell their users that they can purchase the same subscriptions, using other payment methods, sometimes cheaper, from the service’s own website. Apple itself says that many Spotify users are free users and Apple is fine not getting any revenue from them. For any revenue Spotify receives outside of the App Store payment system, Apple shouldn’t need to ask for a cut.

Moreover, Spotify wouldn’t be in this tough position if Apple didn’t have its music streaming service, with substantial unfair advantages over Apple, offered at the same price as Spotify. Right now, Apple offers a competitor service on the same platform as Spotify, at the same price as Spotify, and has substantial advantages that users like.

March 15, 2019 · + Permalink

Spotify Files a Formal Complaint Against Apple

Spotify has announced that it has filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission (EC), the regulatory body responsible for keeping competition fair and nondiscriminatory.

Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify, writes:

In recent years, Apple has introduced rules to the App Store that purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience—essentially acting as both a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers. After trying unsuccessfully to resolve the issues directly with Apple, we’re now requesting that the EC take action to ensure fair competition.

and

We aren’t seeking special treatment. We simply want the same treatment as numerous other apps on the App Store, like Uber or Deliveroo, who aren’t subject to the Apple tax and therefore don’t have the same restrictions.

More power to Spotify!

The company has created a lovely website called Time to Play Fair that shows a timeline of all the ridiculous App Store policies that Apple has in place as well as the rejections that Spotify has faced over the years.

March 13, 2019 · + Permalink

Apple AirPods Review — Intelligent Wireless Earbuds

Apple AirPods Review in India

AirPods were introduced by Apple on September 7th, 2016 at an event that also gave us the iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch Series 2. Unlike these devices though, the AirPods didn’t actually go on sale immediately and instead, Apple did not start accepting orders until December that year. It has been quite difficult to get your hands on the AirPods, and the product is still seeing long shipping estimates, as late as six weeks at times.

I had made up my mind not to buy the AirPods. There was no way I could manage to somehow get my hands on one, and I had already spent ₹25,000 on the incredible Bose QC20i noise-cancelling earphones [Buy Now on Amazon or Flipkart]. There was no way I could afford them. But more importantly, I just didn’t feel the need to spend ₹15,400 on another pair of earphones, just to get rid of the wires.

Then, over the last six months of 2017, I witnessed several people that I follow on Twitter slowly end up buying AirPods for themselves and tweeting about their experiences using them. Every single person who bought these AirPods had high praises to sing for them. It was great to hear about the experience of owning the AirPods from people I know and look up to. Six months ago, I had made up my mind to not buy them, and by the start of June 2017, I was torn. I wasn’t immediately looking to buy them since they weren’t officially available in India anyway, but a big part of me really wanted them. Badly.

Apple wasn’t sending me a review unit, so in the end, I decided to dive in on my own and by June 13th, I was holding a pair of AirPods in my hand.

(more…)

July 30, 2017 · + Permalink

Rdio buys Dhingana to Enter India

NT Balanarayan, Vikas SN & Nikhil Pahwa reporting exclusively for MediaNama:

US-based music streaming website Rdio has acquired Indian music streaming website Dhingana, Dhingana has confirmed to MediaNama. MediaNama had heard about the development from multiple industry sources.

Sources also told MediaNama that the amount being offered to Dhingana is lower than the amount of funding they had raised.

This is great news. I’ve been waiting for either Spotify or Rdio to enter this market for a long time now, so this was welcome news to wake up to. I do hope Rdio launches with their complete (English) catalogue and not just a country-specific (Hindi) one.

March 14, 2014 · + Permalink

Rockmate for iPad is FREE for a Few Hours

From the makers of the DM1 — The Drum Machine app, Rockmate is a brilliant iPad app that turns the screen into a complete music studio, letting you produce your own albums. It comes with a drumset, two guitars and a keyboard along with a host of other features.

It’s free for the next 48 hours, so there’s no reason NOT to grab this one.

November 8, 2012 · + Permalink