• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 6, 2016

In a move some see as rather desperate, Apple is trying to lure college kids to its Music service with a half-off sale.

Launched in Australia on Friday, the discount -- which lowers the subscription price from $9.99 to $4.99 -- is reportedly on its way to other markets, including the United States.

Last week, Apple reported that Apple Music had surpassed 13 million paid subscribers -- up from 11 million, two months ago.

Yet, its streaming music service has received its fair share of criticism -- so much so that the tech giant is expected to revamp Apple Music, later this year.

The discount comes at a critical time for Apple, which just failed to report quarterly growth for the first time in 13 years. Along with global economic headwinds, sagging iPhone sales were chiefly to blame.

On the bright side, Apple generated nearly $6 billion in revenue from services, including its App Store, iTunes, Apple Music subscriptions, and Apple Pay over the past year.

As of January, streaming music services saw total songs streamed nearly double over the past year, according to Nielsen. The number jumped from 164.5 billion in 2014 to 317 billion in 2015.

Video streams more than doubled from 85.4 million in 2014 to 172.4 million streams in 2015, while audio streams were up about 83% from 79.1 million to 1444.9 million.

Taken together, the news bodes well for the future of streaming platforms from Pandora to Apple.

It is less clear what the developments means for musicians and music labels, but they have reason to be optimistic. Indeed, while album sales were down by about 6% in 2015, the drop was less severe than the decline of about 10% witnessed in 2014.

Top artists continued to challenge the increasing clout of streaming services, in 2015. For instance, Taylor Swift pulled her album “1989” from every streaming service except  Apple Music, while full songs from Adele’s “25” were only made available to those fans who were willing to pay up front.  

Clearly, the unique distribution of “25” didn’t hurt sales. On the contrary, they totaled 3.37 million in week one, while the release set an all-time record for highest album share of total industry albums. It accounted for more than 41% of the total album sales that week, per Nielsen.