Starting College This Fall? You Could Get Apple Music and Apple TV+ Free for up to Six Months

As college students head back to school this fall in one form or another, Apple has another new promotion to attempt to woo more folks into the Apple Music fold: Eligible students can now grab six months of Apple’s streaming music service for free.

The new trial offer for Apple Music joins Apple’s bigger Back to School promotion where the company is offering a free set of AirPods for anybody who picks up a new Mac or iPad for university or college.

However, while that back-to-school promotion requires you to actually buy something, this Apple Music student offer will let you take advantage of six months free with no other commitment — you don’t even need to keep the subscription going after the six months is up, although of course Apple naturally hopes most people will.

There is a catch, however: The offer is only for new Apple Music subscribers, so you won’t be able to cancel your service just to try and get six months for free.

When Apple has offered free trials like this in the past, however, it’s offered partial free trials to previous subscribers; since Apple Music normally comes with a three-month free trial for new subscribers, what Apple normally does is just give returning subscribers the difference between the normal free trial (which they would have taken advantage of the first time they signed up) and the extended free trial — so in this case, if you previously subscribed to Apple Music you might be able to get three months free by coming back, but we haven’t yet been able to confirm whether this is the case or not.

The other caveat is that you’ll need to verify your student identity with Apple — unlike hardware purchases, Apple doesn’t run its services free trials on the honour system, so you’ll need to use UNiDAYS to verify your enrolment in a college or university by linking your Apple Music account with UniDAYS.

Apple also continues to offer its normal student pricing for Apple Music, which means that if you decided to stay with the service after the free trial ends, you’ll only pay $4.99/month rather than the normal $9.99/month.

Even if you’re already an Apple Music subscriber and aren’t paying the student price, it’s worth linking your UNiDAYS account and switching over to the student plan just for the cheaper price, even if you aren’t able to take advantage of the free trial.

Apple TV+ Is Still Included Too

As an added bonus, the student Apple TV+ bundle that Apple announced last fall is also still on offer, which means that even those taking advantage of the free trial will be able to access Apple TV+ for free for six months as well, after which the $4.99 monthly Apple Music subscription will still include free access to Apple’s streaming service, making it an even better deal for students, considering that Apple TV+ is normally priced at $4.99/month by itself.

Apple is also rumoured to be in the process of building out other digital service bundles that could be announced later this year, but from everything we’ve heard, it sounds like the student pricing will continue to be the best deal in town for Apple Music and Apple TV+.

The six-month free trial offer runs until October 31, however, Apple hasn’t announced when or if it plans to stop bundling in Apple TV+ with the $4.99/month student Apple Music subscription. If you’re an eligible student, you can sign up through the Music app on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, or directly on the web via UNiDAYS.