Beats Music Tipped Cut To $5 As Streaming Wars Amp Up

So you saw Beats Music earlier this year and were impressed, but not enough to pay the monthly fee imposed until now? It may be that Apple has seen what Beats Music (now owned by Apple) is all about and wants to cut the price per month. The new pricing – in a pitch heard thirdhand from Apple – is being suggested at $5 USD. That price might never be met. What's far more likely is that Apple will cut the price, but that music labels they're working with will still want at least $7 or $8 USD from end users like you.

Most services currently charge you $9.99 per month for their streaming music feeds. That includes Spotify and Beats. Now Spotify has been tipped to be rolling out a $5 secondary user plan – that's if they're in your family or your household – which allows you to pay $15 instead of getting caught sharing your password and having your service shut off entirely.

Like most decisions made at Apple, the idea of a Beats Music subscription cost cut down to $5 per month would need to have a good standing in basic logic. According to Re/Code, Apple's "best iTunes buyers" pay around $60 a year downloading music from the iTunes music store. That's $5 a month, the subscription price they hope to reach for Beats Music.

If the same amount of cash (sort of) is generated as iTunes top buyers would normally spend, music labels win. Users that normally might not have even purchased a single track from iTunes might sign on with this lower price for Beats, and Apple wins.

Apple and Beats have massive staying power, especially together – might it be enough to leverage against music labels to make them lower their costs to pass on to end users?

It's far more likely that Apple/Beats would be able to capture a $2 or $3 price reduction than a $5 cut – especially given the several services the music labels would have to tend to after this one discount.