How to Cancel Apple Music
Three taps on an iPhone, and a short window afterwards in which your library can still be rescued.
How to cancel Apple Music on an iPhone or iPad: open Settings, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, choose Apple Music and tap Cancel Subscription. On Android, do it inside the Apple Music app under Account, then Manage Subscription. You keep access until the end of the period you already paid for.
That is the whole process. People search for it because the Apple Music app, where everyone looks first, keeps the option out of sight behind your profile picture, while the Settings route is the one that always works.
On Android the path in the app is the three-dot menu, then Account, then Manage Subscription. On a computer it lives in the App Store or in Apple Music on the web, under your account settings.
Canceling stops the renewal. It does not cut you off immediately, and it never touches music you release: if you are an artist, your tracks, their play counts and your payouts carry on regardless, as the last section explains. That per-track count is also the number Apple Music plays add to.
The part worth knowing before you confirm is what happens to the music you have collected, because the answer differs sharply between three kinds of track.
Anything you downloaded for offline listening stops playing. Those files are licensed, not owned, and the license ends with the subscription. They remain on the device as dead weight until you clear them.
Anything you added to your library from the Apple Music catalog disappears from view. The tracks were never yours; your library was a list of pointers into a catalog you no longer have access to.
Anything you actually bought from iTunes stays. Purchases predate the subscription model and are unaffected, which is why some long-time users have a library that looks half-empty after canceling rather than entirely empty.
Your playlists are the interesting case. Apple retains them for a period after cancellation — commonly reported as around thirty days — so resubscribing inside that window restores the arrangement rather than the files. Leave it longer and the structure goes too. If you have playlists you care about, export or transfer them before you cancel, not after.
Canceling from an iPhone or iPad
Open Settings. Tap your name at the very top, which is your Apple Account. Tap Subscriptions.
You will see every subscription billed through Apple, which for most people is more than they remembered agreeing to. Other streaming services bought inside an app sit in the same list, which is why canceling a Tidal subscription paid through Apple happens here rather than in the Tidal app. Tap Apple Music, then Cancel Subscription at the bottom.
If you do not see a Cancel option, you are looking at a subscription billed somewhere else — through a carrier bundle, or through a device promotion. In that case the cancellation happens wherever the billing happens, not in Apple's settings.
After confirming, the entry stays in the list with an expiry date. That is normal. It means the renewal is off and access runs to the date shown.
Doing it from Android or a desktop
On Android, Apple Music is an ordinary app and the controls are inside it. Open it, tap the three-dot menu, choose Account, then Manage Subscription.
If you signed up through Google Play rather than through Apple directly, the cancellation lives in the Play Store under Payments and subscriptions instead.
On a Mac, the App Store app holds it: click your name in the sidebar, then Account Settings, then Manage next to Subscriptions. On Windows or in a browser, sign in to Apple Music on the web and open the account menu.
The rule that resolves most confusion: cancel where the money leaves. Whoever charges you is who can stop charging you.
Getting out of the free trial without being billed
A trial converts into a paid month automatically, so canceling during the trial is the same sequence and the timing is what matters.
Cancel at least a day before the trial ends. Apple processes renewals in a window ahead of the stated date, and a cancellation on the final day sometimes lands after the charge.
Canceling a trial does not usually end it early. You keep the remaining trial days and simply are not charged afterwards, which means there is no reason to wait.
If you were charged anyway, Apple's purchase history has a Report a Problem link against each transaction, and an accidental subscription renewal is one of the cases they routinely refund.
When the subscription is not in your list at all
Three common reasons, in order of likelihood.
You are signed in with a different Apple Account from the one that bought it. People accumulate accounts across old devices, and the subscription belongs to whichever one paid.
It is a Family Sharing plan and you are not the organizer. Members cannot cancel a family subscription; only the organizer can, although a member can leave the family group. How Apple Music Family Sharing works explains who the organizer is and what each member gets.
It came bundled with a phone, a carrier plan or Apple One. Bundled music cannot be canceled on its own — you either cancel the bundle or wait for the promotional period to lapse.
Checking your purchase history for the charge will tell you which of the three you are in, because it names the account and the billing source.
Taking your playlists somewhere else first
If you are moving to another service, transfer before canceling, because the library you want to copy stops being readable afterwards. The Spotify direction, and what tends to survive the move, is covered in moving a playlist between the two.
Third-party transfer tools read your library through the service's own interface and recreate it on the destination. They match by track, and the match is never perfect: live versions, regional releases and anything that was only ever on one platform will fail quietly, so review the report rather than trusting the count.
A plain-text export is worth doing regardless of where you are going. A list of artist and title survives every platform change there will ever be, and no transfer tool can be relied on to still exist in five years.
Do this while the subscription is live. After cancellation there is nothing for the tool to read.
What canceling means if you publish music rather than listen to it
An artist's relationship with the platform does not run through a listener subscription at all, and the two are regularly confused.
Your music is on Apple Music because a distributor put it there. Canceling your personal subscription has no effect on that: the catalog entry, the plays and the payouts are unaffected, and you can stop paying for listening while continuing to be listened to.
What you lose is the ability to see the consumer-facing side of your own release — how it appears in search, whether the artwork renders, whether the playlist placement you were promised actually happened.
For most independent artists that visibility is worth more than the monthly fee, which is why the usual advice is to keep one subscription on the account you release under, and cancel the rest.
What a play is worth to you as the artist is a separate question from what you pay as a listener, and what Apple Music pays per stream works through it. Plays on an Apple Music release add to the play count on one track and nothing else; they do not change editorial decisions or playlist placement. Distributors usually deliver the same release to Spotify, and every Spotify service is listed on the Spotify page.
Questions people ask about canceling Apple Music
Where is the cancel button in the Apple Music app?
On an iPhone the route that always works is outside the app: Settings, your name, then Subscriptions. Inside the app it sits behind your profile picture. On Android it is inside the app, under Account.
Do I lose my downloads immediately?
No. You keep access until the end of the period you already paid for. After that, downloaded tracks stop playing because the license has ended.
Will I lose my playlists?
Not straight away. Apple retains them for a period after cancellation, commonly around thirty days, so resubscribing quickly restores them. Export anything you care about before canceling.
Does canceling delete music I bought from iTunes?
No. Purchases are unaffected. Only tracks added from the streaming catalog disappear.
How do I cancel during the free trial?
The same way, at least a day before it ends. You usually keep the remaining trial days and are not charged.
Why can I not cancel my family's subscription?
Only the family organizer can cancel a Family Sharing plan. A member can leave the group, but the subscription itself belongs to the organizer.
Keep reading
- plays on an Apple Music release — The artist side of the platform runs on a different number from the listener side, and plays on an Apple Music release add to the play count on one track.
- moving a playlist between the two — If you are leaving for Spotify or arriving from it, moving a playlist between the two covers what survives the transfer and what does not.
- what a stream pays on each service — Rates differ more than listeners assume, and what a stream pays on each service sets out the comparison.