When my daughter's friends are over, none of them ask for my network key, they sit around watching YouTube and Instagram for hours on end. And if they do listen to music, they're similarly racking up data charges.
That's on the parents of your daughters friends to teach them how to be responsible with data-capped plans. I don't see how this is Apple's issue at all.
In fact, Apple already accounted for this by lowering the quality of the stream when on cellular, and people complained that they wanted the top quality stream at all times, so Apple added an option for that in the current iOS beta, and it still comes with a caveat that using it will eat more of your data.
It's like someone else said, blaming Apple for data overages is like blaming Sony for the fact that adding a TV to your house will cause your electric bill to go up.
The best part of Apple Music are so-called "curated playlists" which are actually radio stations without a DJ. Whether Cousin Brucie is spinning the vinyl or not, the playlist stations are programmed by someone, you're not discovering new music on your own, it's being fed to you.
Apple Music = Radio. Don't be so gullible.
BJ
You still seem to be ignoring the major differences between streaming and radio.
Traditional radio is:
1. Curated by DJs, who are told to play certain songs a certain amount of times in an hour to satisfy corporate demands.
2. Interspersed with ads
3. Completely linear. I cannot skip a song because I dislike it
Paid streaming is:
1. Curated by you: You can choose what you want to listen to when you want to listen to it. I can listen to a whole album as released, or make a playlist, or shuffle, whatever I want.
2. Ad-free
3. Non-linear. I can skip from song to song, I can skip over songs I dislike, I can pause, rewind, etc.
Now, in regards to curated playlists, they are still different from radio in that:
1. They are ad-free
2. You can skip songs, change the order, shuffle, etc.
Given how many services charge you money just to be able to skip songs, I think we can agree that this alone is a highly desired feature. Combine this with the ability to discover music that may never get played on the radio, or the ability to avoid hearing the same 10 songs played endlessly in a loop as you tend to get in terrestrial radio, makes streaming services worthwhile.
Given your posts in this thread, it's pretty clear that you don't mind putting up with the hassles of radio in order to discover 12 songs a year that you like by having them pounded into your head mercilessly. It's also not shocking that since you seem to mainly listen to corporate radio with mandated song plays that you think there are only 12 songs worth listening to in a year on average. However, a lot of us learned a long time ago that radio is the tip of the iceberg, and not a particularly useful tip at that, and have yearned for more sophisticated means of music discovery. But then that requires having a mindset that actually wants to discover interesting new music, instead of declaring that most new music sucks and obstinately listening to the same few bands and songs while scowling at everyone who has a wider range of tastes.
So yeah, radio is free. Because you would never be able to convince anyone to pay for it. Apple Music isn't radio
even if it incorporates elements that have been used in radio. Beats 1 is radio, and look at the amount of people here complaining about the many repeated tracks and the DJs talking over the music.
Radio is the absolute worst way to discover music. You'd have a better chance of finding good music by going to a record store (if you're lucky enough to live in a town that still has them) and buying 30 records at random from the dollar bin. Radio would be like going to a library which only has 30 books, with most of the titles popping up on the shelves repeatedly, and each book has an ad inserted into it every 3 pages.
Streaming services on the other hand are more like a real library: Ad free and with a large selection. No, it's not free, but it's so much better than radio that it's very much worth it.
