Adam Kos Apple unveiled a new subscription plan for its music streaming service Apple Music at its October keynote, saying that the Voice Plan will be available until the end of 2021. It now looks like it will launch with the release of iOS 15.2. But that doesn't mean you want to use it exclusively on your iPhone. His idea is a little different.
The Apple Music Voice Plan is compatible with any Siri-enabled device that can play music from the platform. This means that these devices include iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, HomePod, CarPlay and even AirPods. Don't count on third-party integration like Echo devices or Samsung Smart TV just yet.
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What Voice Plan enables
This Apple Music "voice" plan gives you full access to the Apple Music catalog. With it, you can ask Siri to play any song in your library or play any of the available playlists or radio stations. The selection of songs is not limited in any way. In addition to being able to request specific songs or albums, Apple has also dramatically expanded themed playlists, so you can make more specific requests like "Play a playlist for dinner" and so on.
What the Voice Plan does not allow
The pretty big catch with this plan is that you can't use Apple Music's graphical interface with it - neither on iOS nor macOS or anywhere else, and you have to access the entire catalog only and only with the help of Siri. So if you want to play the latest song from that artist, instead of navigating through the user interface in the Music app on your iPhone, you have to call up Siri and tell her your request. This plan also does not offer listening to Dolby Atmos surround sound, lossless music, watching music videos or, logically, song lyrics.
Music app with voice plan
Apple will not automatically uninstall the Music app from your device. It will therefore still be present in it, but its interface will be greatly simplified. Typically, it will only contain a list of requests that you can say to the Siri voice assistant, you should also find a history of your listening. There will also be a special section to help learn how to interact with Apple Music via Siri. But why is that so?
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What is Voice Plan good for?
Apple Music's voice plan isn't primarily for iPhones or Macs. Its purpose lies in the HomePod family of speakers. This smart speaker can work completely independently, independently of being connected to any other device. Apple's reasoning here is that if the HomePod is your main source of music playback, you don't actually need a graphical interface, because the HomePod doesn't have one of its own, of course. The same can be the case with cars and the Car Play platform, where you just say a request and the music plays without being disturbed by any graphics and manual selection. And so are AirPods. Since they support Siri too, just tell them your request. In these two cases, however, it is of course necessary to have the device connected to the iPhone. But you still don't really need the graphical interface in any of them.
Availability
Do you like the whole point of the Voice Plan? Would you use it? So you are simply unlucky in your country. With the arrival of iOS 15.2, Voice Plan will be available in 17 countries around the world, namely: USA, Great Britain, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and Taiwan. And why not here? Because we don't have Czech Siri, that's also why HomePod isn't officially sold in our country, and that's also why there's no official support for Car Play.
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Amaya Toman However, it is rather interesting how to activate the plan itself. Due to its meaning, in supported countries and languages it is enough to ask Siri for it. There is a seven-day trial period, then the price is $4,99, which is about CZK 110. Since we have an individual tariff available for 149 CZK per month, it would probably be too high a price. In the US, however, Apple also offers a student plan for Apple Music for $4,99, which costs CZK 69 per month in the country. It can therefore be assumed that if we ever get a Voice Plan here, it would be at this price.
