Apple Music Costs More. Sonos Rediscovers Tabs.

Two pieces of consumer-audio news landed in the same week, and together they make a tidy summary of modern listening: the music service costs more, while the speaker app is trying to become less irritating.

Apple Music raised U.S. prices. Sonos brought back the bottom navigation tabs it killed in 2024.

Progress comes in strange packages.

Apple Music: The New Bill

Plan	Old monthly price	New monthly price	Annual increase
Student	$5.99	$6.99	+$12
Individual	$10.99	$11.99	+$12
Family	$16.99	$19.99	+$36

Apple says the increase is the result of “rising licensing costs.” It took effect July 17 and is the first Apple Music price increase since October 2022. New customers get the new price immediately; existing subscribers typically move to it on the next billing cycle after Apple sends notice.

The individual plan remains $1 per month below Spotify Premium Individual, which now costs $12.99 in the U.S. More important for an audio buyer, Apple Music still includes lossless and Hi-Res Lossless audio, Spatial Audio, and Apple Music Classical without a separate upcharge. Hi-Res Lossless may still require an external DAC, because physics has not yet been bundled into the subscription.

That does not make a price increase fun. It keeps the raw audio-value case intact.

The family plan is the sharp edge. A $3 jump is a 17.7% increase, taking the annual bill from $203.88 to $239.88. At that point, Apple One deserves a calculator: Individual is currently $19.95, Family is $27.95, and Premier is $39.95 per month. A bundle is only a bargain when you use the other services, but the math has changed.

Sonos: The Tabs Return

Sonos app version 87—87.00.36 on iOS and 87.00.35 on Android—began rolling out July 14. Its headline feature is not artificial intelligence, spatial computing, or a new subscription. It is tabs.

Home. System. Search. The three shortcuts sit at the bottom of the app, where users can reach them without remembering which panel to swipe, pull, or excavate.

The joke writes itself because Sonos used its April 2024 app-launch announcement to praise a new Home screen that was “making tab to tab jumping a thing of the past.” Two years later, the current release notes say the company is “(re)introducing tabs.”

Product design has many roads. Some are round trips.

The new navigation is initially optional. Once version 87 reaches your device, go to Settings and enable Improved Navigation. That adds direct Home, System, and Search tabs, along with new ways to organize the System view: actively playing, frequently used, or alphabetical, plus the option to pin rooms and products at the top. iOS users also get a revised volume interface.

This is not a clean-slate replacement for the app. It is the more sensible version of a rebuild: incremental, optional, and focused on making ordinary controls ordinary again. A whole-home audio app should disappear into the act of listening. It should not become the hobby.

Why These Stories Belong Together

Apple Music and Sonos are not making a joint announcement, but they occupy the same listening chain. Apple even lists Sonos among Apple Music’s supported platforms. One company controls the recurring content bill; the other controls whether selecting a room and pressing play feels obvious.

This is what budget audio increasingly looks like. The hardware may last for years, but the experience depends on subscriptions, licensing deals, cloud services, app design, and software support. A price increase can quietly add $36 a year. A bad interface can make thousands of dollars of hardware feel worse overnight.

Bottom Line

Apple is asking listeners to pay more. Sonos is finally asking them to swipe less. One change hurts the budget; the other may help the blood pressure.

Sources: Music Business Worldwide, Apple Music, Apple One, Spotify, and official Sonos release notes and support documentation.