Here’s How to Get Extended Free Trials of Apple Services This Holiday Season

How to Get Spotify Wrapped on Apple Music Credit: NikkiMeel / Shutterstock
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If you haven’t tried out some of Apple’s Services yet, this holiday season is a great time to take the plunge, with several ways to get free access to services like Apple Music for as long as six months.

First up, Apple is once again offering an extended five-month trial through Shazam. This promo runs until January 31, 2022, and appears to work in every country where Apple Music and Shazam are available.

This isn’t the first time that Apple has offered this promo through Shazam. In fact, it seems to be a recurring event for the holidays. Apple first unveiled the promo in 2019, about a year after it completed its acquisition of Shazam, and then repeated it last year as part of a big iOS update.

Those in the U.S. can also take advantage of Best Buy’s promo, which started on Black Friday and appears to still be available. Best Buy is offering digital download codes to unlock free trials of Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+, and even Apple Fitness+.

Since these free offers from Best Buy come in the form of redemption codes, you can also buy them as Christmas stocking stuffers for others. The trial isn’t applied to an Apple ID until it’s punched in to someone’s iPhone, so there’s no connection between the person who buys it and the one who redeems it.

The only catch is that you’ll need a Best Buy account to download these, and you’re limited to one of each per customer. Unlike the Shazam promo, these are also only available in the U.S.

You can also get an even longer trial of Apple Fitness+ if you buy an Apple Watch from Best Buy, where the retailer is offering a free four-month trial — one month longer than what you get when you purchase a new Apple Watch directly from Apple.

While these extended free trials are technically only for new users, since of course Apple is trying to attract new subscribers, many of them can also be at least partially used by former subscribers who want to return to give one of Apple’s Services another spin.

Technically, Apple won’t let you repeat free time that you’ve already used, but it allows you to add more free time if you’re able to pick up a longer free trial. For example, if you’ve already taken advantage of the standard three-month free trial for Apple Music, you’ve already used up those three months, but you can get an extra three months if you sign up for a six-month trial. Basically, any free months you’ve already used are deducted from any new free trials you’ve signed up for.

With the Shazam promo, however, several folks have reported that they’ve been able to use it to get a two-month extension to their current Apple Music subscription, so it’s worth a try even if you’re already a subscriber to Apple Music.

This presumably only works if you haven’t previously used another extended free trial of five months or more. It also doesn’t appear to work for those on an Apple One bundle, which makes sense as Apple Music isn’t priced out individually in this case.

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