“With the approach of iTunes Radio’s six-month anniversary, now seems as good a time as any to take a second look at the service,” Christopher Breen writes for Macworld.
“When it first launched I was quite enthusiastic about it for a variety of reasons. To begin with, Apple has a solid relationship with countless record labels and has taken pains to place purchase buttons on Now Playing screens, thus driving more sales to those labels,” Breen writes. “These two factors should encourage labels to open up their catalogs to a greater extent than they might with a service such as Pandora and provide listeners with a greater variety of music to listen to. And it supports both generated and curated content into iTunes Radio. Plus, it’s available not only within iTunes but also to iOS devices, Apple TV, and in-car iOS scheme, CarPlay.”
Breen writes, “With all this, why do I find iTunes Radio so disappointing? Let me count the ways…”
Read more in the full article here.
Slacker is much better they have better stations programmed by real people they also let you cache you station to your phone for saving data or when in bad areas. I have yet to use iTunes Radio because when I try it the stations suck and it’s underwhelming. What else to say.
I’ve ben far happier with iTunes radio than Slacker or Pandora. You have to pay for Rdio or Spotify to get anything better than iTunes radio.
If you’re not using iTunes Radio because “the stations suck,” then you’re just saying you have terrible taste in music. The POINT of iTunes Radio is to MAKE YOUR OWN STATION by feeding it an artist or genre you like. Next time you “try” an app, maybe take TWO MINUTES to learn to use it …
Really?
I stopped using Pandora months ago, I must be a kool aid drinking Apple zombie.
Well it’s hardly anything to brag about. Try thinking for yourself. Just once.
Village.
He made the Kool-Aid comment asswipe. Can you read?
We’ll start right after you pistoff.
What a dope you are Piston.
As to the original question i have used iTunes Match and iTunes radio extensively and have been quite satisfied. I also have accounts with all the other major services.
I love iTunes radio, but it still doesn’t beat listening to my own playlists on shuffle!
What are you talking about. I canceled pandora, and spotify and have been using iTunes Radio since it was released. I must be drinking the kool aid as well.
As did I and I honestly use it every day.
I find myself hearing songs I haven’t heard and then buying them to put in my playlists. Wow, seems very much like the good old days with FM radio was great and they actually played music on the radio (does that still exist somewhere?) 😉
Yeah, I know that existed with the the others but It’s just so clean and easy with iTunes Radio. My wife even uses it and she never used the others. Everyone has an preference.
Remember when MDN was claiming iTunes Radio would ruin Pandora day?
MDN: “Nope, never claimed any such thing. Pandora was always going to win in the end. Tim Cook needs to pull his head out of his ass.”
Sept. 17, 2013
“MacDailyNews Take: If Pandora is “king” today, they’d better enjoy it. Their throne goes poof tomorrow with the public release of iOS 7 and iTunes Radio. The next, true king will make Pandora a pauper.”
Oh iCal, how you come back to haunt us!
I know. 😉
But it seems that nobody appreciated my sarcastic response to MDN’s tendency to change its stance depending upon the way the wind blows.
Clearly, MDN thought that iTunes Radio would be a Pandora Killer, the same way Fandroids think every new Samsung or HTC or Unobtanium phone will be an iPhone Killer.
MDN may end up being right someday. I don’t think so, but it’s possible. But what IS certain is that the folks for MDN will pretend like they thought iTunes Radio was a failure from the start even with evidence to the contrary, such as you provided.
If you go back even further you’ll see the “people want to own their music” statements that MDN was making (and that I still support) back when streaming music services were vying to be relevant, and died of course.
There are so many great ways to learn about music these days and one great place to buy it, and own it. The iTunes store.
iRadio statistics does not show any sign of lackluster in it.
I really doubt Pandora thinks they win since they have lost tons of money and customers because of iTunes radio and had to extend listing time indefinitely because of it. Pretty laughable anyone thinks Pandora won.
I like it and, with iTunes match that I already have, I don’t have to deal with ads. Pandora was okay but the ads were a pain.
Also now with the iPhone 5S, I can buy songs without having to type in the password. Simply press my digit (not telling you which one!) and bingo – song bought.
Also the song variety seems to have expanded so discovering more bands than ever.
I like ITunes Radio. It’s quick break from my own playlists while I am already in the Music app. It may not be as good as Spotify and others, but it’s adequate for exposure to new music, and the acquisition of the music is streamlined. However, you say you don’t have to deal with ads, but I get commercials on iTunes Radio.
Pandora sucks they have a small list of artists and you always have adds I never have ads on my slacker and I have my own programmed stations I worked hard to build. iTunes Radio is only for those who like top 40 I guess. I tried the 80s channel and the Christian rock channel both must have been programmed by idiots.
Why would I want to buy the song? That’s the point of iTunes Radio or slacker to listen to songs I don’t have.
Thank you T.C. and P.O. for counting beans and destroying Apple.
Like a brave little soldier, I keep trying iTunes Radio. And I keep going ‘Meh’.
The source article covers the problems very well.
I’m still stuck on Pandora. Friends keep pushing me to Spotify for sharing tunes I like. OK. But on my own, I’m Pandorafied.
Yes I had a friend who was stuck on pandora till I turned him onto slacker and he loves it said he couldn’t believe how good it was. Of course I mean they have a much wider variety if artists and songs far greater then pandora does.
Yes, I saw a post up the thread about Slacker. I don’t know why I haven’t tried it. Thanks.
Yeah, me too. I want to love iTunes Radio, I really do. But I have channels on Pandora. And they work. So I find myself going back there rather than taking the effort to switch.
——RM
iTunes Radio beats the rest hands down. Free to use and if you are an iTunes Match customer for $25 a year no commercials!
None of the other services have a price like that. Nothing underwhelming about it.
Actually yes slacker always has free plus radio which is unlimited skips and caching and more. All you have to do is do one of the free things on trial pay like Netflix for free a month or something else. Or you can pay $3.99 a month.
Slacker has better stations and programmed by real people. Pandora only plays the top hits they don’t play anything that is deeper into the album. You know like deep tracks on Sirius. Half of the artists pandora doesn’t even know.
real people…I guess Apple doesn’t have real people…
iTunes Radio is the same as the other services. Anyone posting otherwise is just astroturfing. I’m seeing way too many of you dumb paid f&$ks posting in clusters and using the same writing tone.
You think people that have been coming here for years don’t notice?
You tell em Sherlock!
I honestly don’t see how anyone would’ve thought iRadio would’ve or could’ve knocked Pandora or other services off the map? (Okay, yeah I understand why some people may think it.)
The fact is, over the last decade Apple (iTunes) users have overwhelming decided that purchasing content was better than renting or even listening to free ad-sponsored music.
Given the fact that iRadio is only available on Apple’s devices (and iTunes), the vast majority of potential listeners across the globe, don’t even have access to it.
I listen to it sometimes, because it’s convenient – it’s right there in iTunes. I’ve never even used Pandora and don’t listen to Internet or terrestrial radio. I mainly still listen to my own library, however I have discovered new music by being able to build an iRadio station around a certain group of bands and having new bands pop-up… and ended up buying some albums from those artists.
With iTunes Match, I lost my playlists to the cloud, and I can’t hear them when hiking out of cell service. I want my “exercise music” playlist to remain on my 64-gig iPhone 5s with Mophie juice. Anyone know how to do this?
That’s why i like slacker. I can cache my music and then listen to it anytime service or no service
Turn of music syncing with iCloud and sync your songs directly from iTunes to your iPhone and your music will stay on your iPhone. When you turn on iCloud for music it removes your synced songs.
I like iTunes Radio. Meets my needs.
I love iTunes Radio, especially the ability to set up Stations based on specific artists. I’ve discovered and purchased quite a bit of new music. For me, it’s 75% iTunes Radio, 25% Internet Streams.
Honestly tho- I never used Pandora or other similar options, so I don’t t have a basis for comparison.
I like iTunes Radio, but oh, does it have some issues still that make me switch back to Pandora.
In iTunes Radio some of my stations stop playing sometimes for no reason. When I try to start them again, nothing happens. I have to manually quit the Music app to listen again. There’s also an annoying issue where no album art for the currently playing track will display.
Sounds like a connection problem not an iTunes radio problem.
Nope. Fully connected. If I switch to another station in iTunes Radio it’s fine, but if I try to switch back to the station that suddenly stopped playing, then nothing happens. It’s as if I’ve been locked out of that station and it will no longer play. I forgot to mention this sometimes will occur if I attempt to skip a song. iTunes Radio programmatically tries to load an advertisement if you skip a song from time-to-time. I can only assume it’s because of the attempt to load an advertisement and failing.
I cancelled my Pandora subscription. Pandora is better for low bandwidth (like edge) but for LTE everyday usage, and wifi radio usage, I love iTunes radio. it’s every bit has satisfying as pandora for me.
I liked the Radio stations in iTunes before located in the far background, not up front, and I will always like my playlists better, I stopped listening to Radio 25 years ago, and don’t see the point of going back.
Obviously I can’t quote any stats but I strongly suspect that fans of Eno, Beethoven and Miles Davis (massive Miles fan myself) do not make up an overwhelming percentage of Apple’s target demographic for iTunes Radio.
They are trying to bring in younger and more transient music listeners who do not normally commit to particular artists enough to consistently purchase their music.
I own my music. I have great playlists of my music. My music tells the story of my life.
When the music died, I just retreated back to my music and ignored the crap that came out in the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s.
Radio that tries to sell me crap is just a wast of my time.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to downsample iTunes Radio to a lower rate? I liked it but had to stop using it because it was eating up my 3gb plan… I’m not an audiophile so I can’t really hear/ care about the difference between 256 streams vs. 128 or even 64. I’ll stick with Pandora until I hear of an option to mitigate iTunes Radio’s data consumption.
From looking over my data usage, it seems that iTunes Radio streams are encoded at 128k resolution. Apple does not provide any options for downsampling for any of their streaming services.
If you stream your music collection using iTunes Match, then the files are encoded at 256k resolution. However, iTunes Match also caches the music files on your device, so you can listen to them offline or repeat play without eating into your data.
Thanks! I didn’t know it cached songs… I’m sure that helps but with my usage at work, in the car and at the gym, I was tearing through about 3x more data than with Pandora. I like Apple’s algorithm and improved controls but I really wish they’d let me drop the bitrate over cellular. Supposedly they use different rates automatically depending on connectivity but that’s moot with LTE. It’s a shame.
“And that’s fine for the “close enough” listener. For those of us who really care about music, however, it means a service that’s regrettably half-baked.”
Man, what a pompous windbag! Was the Jack Black character in “High Fidelity” based on this guy?
Yes, iTunes Radio still leaves a lot of room for improvement. But, I have also discovered a LOT of new (to me at least) and interesting music through the service. The algorithm does not always work logically, but I’ve learned how to tweak with the settings to make it better match up with what I’m looking for.
Generally, I find that creating a station with an obscure artist or genre will increase the odds of hearing more repeats sooner. And no matter what, just keep replenishing or adding to the list of “similar” songs or artists. Anyone who wants to expand the variety of songs that come into the rotation basically has to instruct the service to do exactly that.
Also, you might want to specify songs as the basis for a radio station, rather than an artist. In Breen’s article, he griped about creating a Miles Davis station, and hearing McCoy Tyner and Thelonious Monk. Well, if you’re into Miles’ fusion phase, you might want to create a station using “Bitches Brew” instead. It won’t only play Miles, but it might better hone in on the type of music you want to hear.
Breen claiming that iTunes Radio is “not for fans” is just ridiculous. Sounds more like he wants something more akin to a music subscription service.
Weird how Apple’s lawyers haven’t really.. gotten this out to other countries. After all, Apple only ‘Talks’ like twice a year now ><