Music Subscription Tracker
Track Every Service in One Spreadsheet
Start with columns for service name, plan type, monthly price, renewal date, and who shares the login. Add Spotify at $10.99, Apple Music at $10.99, and Tidal at $10.99 for the individual tiers. Enter the exact dates you signed up last year. The sheet immediately flags that two accounts renewed on the 12th and 15th of the same month, creating a $21.98 double charge you never noticed. Update the tracker every time you add or drop a service and you stop guessing. Most households discover they pay for at least one extra plan they stopped using after a free trial ended in March 2023.
Calculate Real Overlap Costs With Specific Dates
Run a quick formula that multiplies overlapping months by the combined price. If you kept Spotify and Apple Music active together from January through September 2024, the sheet shows $197.82 wasted on duplicate catalogs. Add Tidal for hi-fi tracks you used only twice and the total climbs past $300. The tracker forces you to pick one service instead of letting all three auto-renew. People who review the numbers once a quarter cut their music spending by 38 percent on average without losing access to the songs they actually play.
Compare Family Plans Against Solo Prices
Plug in the family numbers next. Spotify Family runs $16.99 and covers six accounts while Apple Music Family sits at $16.99 for the same. If three people currently pay separate $10.99 plans, switching drops the household total from $32.97 to $16.99 and saves $191.76 per year. The sheet lists each person’s email and last login date so you see who actually uses the service. Cancel the unused solo accounts the same day you activate the family plan and the savings start immediately instead of bleeding out over several billing cycles.
Decide Which Service to Keep Based on Usage
Sort your listening data by hours played per service. If 87 percent of your streams come from Spotify playlists created in 2022, keep that one and drop Apple Music and Tidal. The tracker shows Tidal’s $10.99 cost delivered only 4.2 hours of unique listening last quarter, equaling $2.62 per hour. Compare that to Spotify’s $0.31 per hour and the choice becomes obvious. Export the final numbers to a summary tab you check every January so you repeat the same cuts instead of rebuilding the sheet from scratch each year.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Family plan worth it?
A family plan saves real money once three or more people share it. Spotify Family and Apple Music Family both cost $16.99 and replace three separate $10.99 plans, cutting the total from $32.97 to $16.99. Enter each user’s login date and listening hours in your tracker. If two accounts show zero plays in the past 90 days, cancel them first. The switch pays for itself in under two months and keeps everyone on the same catalog without extra logins.
Spotify vs Apple Music cost
Both services charge $10.99 for individual plans and $16.99 for family plans in 2024. The difference shows up in your tracker when you add student discounts or bundle prices. Spotify sometimes drops to $5.99 with a qualifying bundle while Apple stays flat. Log the exact price you actually pay after taxes and compare total yearly spend. Most users find the catalogs similar enough that price alone decides the winner once overlaps get removed.
Multiple services overlap
Overlaps cost $21.98 per month when Spotify and Apple Music both stay active. Add Tidal and the total hits $32.97. Your tracker lists every renewal date so you see the exact weeks two services charge at once. Cancel the least-used account on the day the second one renews and the double charge stops. Users who audit overlaps quarterly recover between $180 and $260 annually without losing the music they actually stream.
Free tier limits
Free tiers force ads and block offline downloads. Spotify’s free version skips tracks after six plays and removes song selection on mobile. Apple Music offers no free tier at all. Enter these limits as a column in the tracker and mark how often you hit them. Once you exceed three ad interruptions per session or lose offline access twice in a month, the paid plan becomes cheaper than the time wasted. Most listeners switch after tracking one full week of free-tier friction.
Annual audit
Run the full audit every January using the same spreadsheet. Pull renewal dates, current prices, and hours streamed for Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal. Compare against the prior year’s numbers and cancel anything under ten hours of unique use. One user found a forgotten Tidal subscription from 2022 still charging $131.88 yearly. The annual check takes twelve minutes and typically surfaces $150 to $250 in cuts before February statements arrive.
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