T-Mobile to subscribers: Stream Apple Music for free

NEW YORK—Last year, T-Mobile began letting consumers stream music for free on a number of popular music services, including Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeart Radio, Slacker, and Spotify. On Tuesday, Apple Music joined the list of services that don't count against your monthly 4G LTE data bucket. T-Mobile says that 95% of the popular music services out there now participate in this Music Freedom feature, with Amazon Music being the only major holdout.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere wrote in a blog post that Apple Music was the number one requested addition to Music Freedom, counting for 80% of the requests that arrive via Twitter.

Customers taking advantage of T-Mobile's music feature are streaming more than 131 million songs daily, the company says.

T-Mobile also announced that if you buy an iPhone 6 (16GB) or 6 Plus under current $15 or $19 a monthly promotional pricing plans that last until Labor Day and then Apple in the fall say brings out a new iPhone, you'll be able to trade in that 6 or 6 Plus—assuming it's in working order—and buy Apple's new handset for the same $15 or $19 monthly price. You'll pay those sums over 18 months, after which you can swap the device for a new phone under a new 18-month payment plan, or you can pay off the difference in the value for that phone.

"This time of year, everyone's waiting to make a move, waiting to see which devices are coming next. `Will the next one be better?' `Should I go for it or wait?' Today, we're solving all that and ending the wait--in a big way," Legere wrote.

Speaking of waiting, T-Mobile also said that customers who buy a new iPhone 6 under what it calls the JUMP! On Demand promotional initiative, will get priority access to the next iPhone. T-Mobile was careful not to announce anything specific about Apple's device plans.

The latest promotions "amp" up some of the Un-Carrier initiatives that have T-Mobile on the heels of passing Sprint as the number three wireless carrier in the U.S. That could happen as soon as Thursday when T-Mobile announces its latest quarterly earnings. Indeed, T-Mobile US had 33.4 million customers in the first quarter of 2013 when the Un-carrier campaign started. Today, the company has 58.9 million customers. The sum also includes the 10 million MetroPCS customers that T-Mobile added when the companies combined on May 1, 2013.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter