Shazam Deal Offers up to 6 Months of Apple Music Free for Black Friday

If you’ve never tried Apple Music before, now may be a good time to jump in, as Apple has doubled its normal three-month free trial, offering up six months of Apple Music for free to new subscribers.

In addition to hopefully drawing more people in to check out Apple Music, the company is also using it to highlight its music-recognition platform, Shazam, which it acquired two years ago. While Apple hasn’t done much with Shazam on the front-end — the app and service mostly still works the same as it did before the Apple acquisition, it has used the listening data from Shazam to help it build even smarter playlists.

So it’s understandable that Apple not only wants to get more people to try out Apple Music, but hopes it can increase the number of people using Shazam, since that provides it with a wealth of listening data that it wouldn’t otherwise have available.

According to Macworld UK, the Shazam app is the key to unlocking the six month free trial. Users simply need to download and install the Shazam iPhone app and “Shazam” a song between now and Cyber Monday and they’ll automatically be able to sign up for six months of Apple Music for free.

Apple also told Macworld that the deal isn’t just for new subscribers either. Those who have tried out Apple Music in the past but cancelled their subscription can take advantage of a pared down offer that will give them three months of the service for free, basically re-extending the original three-month free trial to them.

The promotion is running in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. from today until Cyber Monday, Dec. 2.

Other Black Friday Subscription Deals

Of course, Apple isn’t the only streaming music service running seasonal promotions this year. Its chief rival, Spotify, is once again offering three months of its Premium tier for $9.99, or the price of one month. Spotify’s deal is available to both new and lapsed subscribers, provided that they cancelled their Premium subscription before Oct. 19, and unlike Apple’s deal, it’s available until Dec. 31.

Amazon Music is offering up four months of its Amazon Music Unlimited service for only $0.99, which offers up to 50 million songs and normally costs $7.99 for Amazon Prime members, or $9.99 for those without a Prime subscription. While Amazon Prime members also get access to a basic Amazon Music service, that only includes around 2 million songs, so Amazon Music Unlimited is much more akin to Apple Music or Spotify in what it offers. If you’re already an Amazon Music Unlimited subscriber, Amazon also has a deal on Cyber Monday that will let you upgrade an individual plan to a family plan for free for two months.

Rapper Jay-Z’s slightly lesser-known competing service Tidal is also playing along with its own four-month membership deal for 99 cents, offering access to over 60 million songs and live-streamed video events. This is for Tidal’s standard subscription, which normally costs $9.99/month, but Tidal is being even more generous here by letting you try out its $19.99/month “HiFi” plan for only $1.99 for four months.

Meanwhile, Hulu wants you to check out its video streaming service, with a Black Friday deal of a year of Hulu for only $1.99/month for the ad-supported version, which works out to $23.88 in total for the whole year. That’s basically two-thirds off the normal Hulu price, although the catch is that it only applies to new customers or those who cancelled their subscription more than a year ago. It also can’t be combined with any other promotions or free trials, so if you’ve already signed up for the Disney+ Hulu bundle, you can’t switch over to the cheaper Hulu promotion.

CBS All Access is also offering a Black Friday promotion where users can try the service out for free for a month. While that’s not nearly as much of an incentive, the one-month trial comes at a good time during the holiday season, since CBS will be airing a number of holiday classics live during the holidays as well, starting this weekend with Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Users can sign up with the promo code THANKS to take advantage of this promotion.

Speakers and Streaming Boxes

Lastly, if you’re shopping for devices to listen to or watch your streaming services, Black Friday is a great time for that too. Apple is offering up a $25 gift card with the purchase of an Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K from its retail or online stores, plus you can still take advantage of a one-year free trial to Apple TV+ if you haven’t signed up already, which is an additional $60 value.

Roku’s Ultra streaming media player is also 50% off on Amazon until Monday, bringing the price down to $48, and with support for Hulu and even Apple TV+ and Disney+, it’s a great inexpensive alternative to Apple’s own set-top box.

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K is also on sale for half price this weekend, down to $24.99, and like Roku’s device, it includes the Apple TV+ and Disney+ apps, along with support for many other streaming services too.

Apple’s HomePod smart speaker, which is a particularly great accessory for Apple Music users, comes with a $50 Apple gift card if you buy it at an Apple Store, but you can also find the HomePod at Best Buy for $299, which is a straight $100 discount off the normal price, and of course Amazon is also selling its own third-generation Echo smart speaker for 40% off at $59.99, which also supports Apple Music, along with most other streaming music services.