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Steps to Discontinue Your Subscription: Deactivating Apple Music Without Using iTunes - Insights

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iTunes is dead. iTunes has been dead since 2019. Alas, poor iTunes, we knew you well. Some of us got along well with you. Some of us did not. ZDNet‘s Ed Bott once wrote , “I dislike iTunes with a passion that burns like the fire of a thousand suns.”

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Even thinking about iTunes gives me a creepy-crawly feeling at the back of my neck. But the last time we wrote about how to cancel Apple Music , back in 2015, you had to use iTunes to cancel your subscription. In fact, even now, if you Google “How to cancel Apple Music,” most of the search engine results will send you to iTunes.

But iTunes is dead. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Its ghost lingers on. Apple actually released a security update (12.12.4) just this past May for iTunes for Windows. iTunes is no longer shipped with MacOS, but Apple still technically supports it. According to Apple’s iTunes page , you can still run iTunes on any Mac that has an Intel processor.

Apple Music hasn’t been tied to iTunes for account management since 2019. Now, for those of us who have moved on from our iTunes days, we can cancel an Apple Music subscription either from the web or from iOS device Settings. Let’s look at both.

How to cancel Apple Music from your Web browser

Head on over to Apple Music and sign in. Obviously, if you’re already signed in, you won’t have to sign in.

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Next, click the Account icon (the little head) and then choose Settings.

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Scroll down to Subscriptions and click Manage. Mine says “Subscribe” because I already cancelled my account.

David Gewirtz/Screenshot

Once you’re on the Manage screen, choose Cancel Subscription. That should do it for you.

How to cancel Apple Music from your iPhone or iPad

First, launch the iOS Settings app. At the very top of the screen, tap your name.

David Gewirtz/Screenshot

Then tap Subscriptions.

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Tap the subscription you want to cancel. I no longer have my Apple Music account, but as you can see, I have Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade (and, at least for now, I have no intention of cancelling them). If you can’t see your Apple Music subscription (like I no longer see mine), that means it’s already cancelled.

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On the Apple Music Subscription page, scroll down and hit Cancel Subscription. If you cancelled your subscription already, but there’s still time left in your billing cycle, you won’t see the Cancel Subscription button. Instead, you’ll see a note telling you when the subscription ends.

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And that’s all there’s to it. I quite liked Apple Music, but it doesn’t work with Alexa, and I have Alexa devices all through the house. I’ve standardized on Spotify because Spotify works with all my devices.

Also: 16 incredibly useful things Alexa can do on Amazon Echo

What about you? What music service do you use? Do you use Apple Music or Spotify ? Let us know in the comments below.

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