Apple Music quietly added a $99 annual subscription plan

If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, chances are that you’re paying $9.99 every month, $14.99 for a family plan, or $4.99 per month if you’re a student. But Apple quietly added another option as Tehnot spotted. You can now pay $99 for a 12-month subscription.

This setting is quite buried as Apple doesn’t want you to know that you can pay less than what you’re actually paying. We tried different scenarios, and it was quite hard to find the new annual plan — but it’s real.

If you’re not a current Apple Music subscriber, the Music app only lets you subscribe to a normal monthly plan as pictured above. But if you’re an existing subscriber, you can go to your membership settings and switch to an annual plan. So new users will have to buy a monthly subscription first and then switch.

Now stay with me as it’s about to get a bit complicated. Let’s hope that the upcoming App Store redesign is going to make it easier to access the subscription settings because we’re not there yet.

First, you need to open the App Store app and scroll to the very bottom of the Featured tab. Then tap on your Apple ID, enter your password and tap on “View Apple ID.” Finally, tap on the Subscriptions button and you can access your Apple Music membership settings. Here’s what it looks like (prices may vary depending on your country):

So if you think you’re going to keep using Apple Music for the foreseeable future, you can switch in a couple of taps and save around 17.5 percent.

Before this change, you could buy an Apple Music gift card for $99 to get a full year of service access. But if you’re not a gift card person, there was no way to access this discounted rate.