Apple today announced iTunes Radio, a free Internet radio service featuring over 200 stations and an incredible catalog of music from the iTunes Store, combined with features only iTunes can deliver. When you tune into iTunes Radio on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, PC or Apple TV, you’ll have access to stations inspired by the music you already listen to, Featured Stations curated by Apple and genre-focused stations that are personalized just for you. iTunes Radio evolves based on the music you play and download. The more you use iTunes Radio and iTunes, the more it knows what you like to listen to and the more personalized your experience becomes. iTunes Radio also gives you access to exclusive “first listen” premieres from top selling artists, Siri integration, plus the ability to tag or buy anything you hear with just one click.
“iTunes Radio is an incredible way to listen to personalized radio stations which have been created just for you,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, in the press release. “It’s the music you love most and the music you’re going to love, and you can easily buy it from the iTunes Store with just one click.”
iTunes Radio offers music fans access to thousands of new songs every week, as well as serving up exclusive music from new and popular artists before you hear them anywhere else. Whether it’s an exclusive single from an up-and-coming band or a pre-release stream of an entire album, iTunes Radio has it all. iTunes Radio will also be home to special events including live streams direct from the iTunes Festival in London and other exclusive iTunes Sessions.
Coming this fall, iTunes Radio will offer you an incredibly personalized experience on day one based on your listening history and past purchases from iTunes. In addition, if you’re listening to a song you like from iTunes Radio or your music library you will be able to have a station built around those. It’s easy to create and customize stations based on whatever you want to hear. Search for artists, songs, or genres, and iTunes Radio will instantly build a station around your choice.
Let Siri make your listening experience even more fun. Ask Siri “Who plays that song?” or “Play more like this” and Siri will make it happen. Say something like “Play Jazz Radio” or ask for any of your existing favorite stations and genres. Shape your stations by telling Siri what you like and don’t like, or tell Siri to pause, stop or skip. You can also have Siri add songs to your Wish List to download later.
iTunes Radio is ad-supported and free for everyone. iTunes Match users get iTunes Radio ad-free, so instead of hearing the occasional ad on iTunes Radio, iTunes Match makes your listening completely ad-free. With iTunes Match, all your music—even songs you’ve imported from CDs—are stored in iCloud. So iTunes Radio can use information about your entire music collection to make your stations even more personalized. iTunes Match costs $24.99 for a year.
Source: Apple Inc.
$2/month with iTunes Match?
uh buy-bye Google Music and Spotify Premium at $8/month
spotify you can play what you want when you want. its not just radio
Right. I wasn’t too excited about an ad-supported service. Since I already subscribe to iTunes match, I will certainly consider dropping Rdio if the catalog is sufficient.
You guys aren’t too bright are ya? They have all the major labels on board… It’s everything folks… If you have head it, chances are it’s gonna be there… It’s Apple’s Genius Playlist in the cloud and in a different container, that’s all… Amazing execution… Goodbye Pandora
Perfect for me since I already have iTunes Match. One click purchase is something I’ve wanted from Pandora.
Man seeing that along with their video options makes you realize how they are completely missing the boat on streaming/subscription.
They should be developing spotify/netflix competitors, not clinging onto their purchasing model.
I can’t remember the last time I opened iTunes or the music app. It is especially frustrating because I can’t change my default music player to spotify.
Disagree. Very few subscription models have panned out. People want to buy their music or listen for free. They don’t want their music to disappear if they cancel their subscription.
whatever happened to “available today”? major snorezzzzville, the entire presentation. What the fuck is that black vagina-lookin’ POS?
What presentation were you watching and on what were you watching it?
So after years and years of people b***hing about no new Mac Pros, Apple finally delivers a very different take on a pro computer and what do you do . . . b***h.
Biz, it looks like a huge, black vagina. It’s the dumbest design, both in aesthetics and practicality, that has created. (The Hockey Puck Mouse was the former benchmark.)
If you think it looks like a huge black vagina then you’ve clearly never had sex.
Not an iTunes Match customer. Not going to be a supporter of ad-supported radio on iTunes either. It’s just another marketing tool. The original business model for iTunes was the best: allow the end user to buy and manage what he wanted, when he wanted it. Period. Now Apple stoops to the same level as the competition: ads and subscriptions. How pathetic.
bingo.
This adds more functionality to iTunes. You still can buy and manage music as the original business model intended.
I manage my music library using iTunes and will continue to do the same.
Just seems like you want to complain about something.
You say “more functionality”, I call it more bloat.
Apple is losing its way if it thinks application-level tools need to be installed in the OS, or that all media must be managed through iTunes. iTunes is already too bloated as it is.
If you like to subscribe to a “radio”, or feed Apple your music preferences, then there are many good reasons for it to be a separate application. Those of us who already own and share huge music libraries, a good portion of it rare and unreleased on any modern music service, iRadio reeks of pathetic push of both the advert and the subscription business model at the same time. This “innovation” is 180 degrees opposed to the Apple I used to admire when it first released iTunes as a handy, consumer-friendly, a-la-carte media store.
More functionality is not automatically bloat. Features only add “bloat” if they strain resources or get in the way of existing functionality. You don’t want to use iTunes Radio, don’t. You never even have to know it’s there.
People forget that iTunes has had a “radio” function from the beginning, a catalog of free streams. This will just add more streaming options.
——RM
You can still purchase all the music you want. Nothing is really free and 2 dollars a month for ad free radio customized for you is too much? Not only that, through the match service, I have access to all my purchased music.
Sometimes you just can’t satisfy some people.
I guess it can’t be repeated enough: some of us MAKE music. We also listen to music that isn’t available on your digital media outlets. We want a music manager like iTunes that is not BLOATED with the fluff Apple keeps pushing to attract subscribers.
If this is the future of Apple, it is long past time Apple offers a standalone iTunes Basic and also a fully bloated-out “iTunes Marketing to the Max” version — subscription priced, with Ping re-enabled, of course.
It’s obvious Apple doesn’t need your input.
They can’t cater to individuals and won’t.
So Apple should design a service just for all of the people in your demographic, all 7 of them?
If you just want a simple music manager, there’s gotta be one out there you can find and install. Why don’t you do that and quit whining? Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use iTunes.
Or is iTunes the best solution, and you’re just pissy that it’s not catering directly to you?
——RM
BLOATED?
Are you dumb or do you just have a very strange definition of BLOATED? iTunes is anything but BLOATED…
On the computer, the “Radio” button in iTunes is already in the current version of iTunes (when you select the Music category). Currently, it just provides the old Internet streaming audio service that’s been there since the beginning. So this new service is a highly enhanced replacement.
Making the ad-free service part of iTunes Match is a good move. It is already worth $25/year to me, so this is just more value for my money.
1) I understand that I will have access to all my contend in the cloud including Match! And this withoud loading and erasing like now.
2) What about Tunein? iRadio is not I hope a substitute for it, we now that iCloud was suppose to sustitute Dropbox, Box….
Well… This is good, but…
If you can’t select songs you want to play yourself, something people want to do every now and then there will still be a need for a Spotify subscription. Not before Apple enables that will all other services be obsolete. I can not help but feel a little bit dissapointed actually. I guess it will be better than a normal radio station but I want to control myself what I listen too. This
Might be good for the car but bit if you want to show some one that specific song or if you want to select your own party music… Sadly, Apple did not kill the other subscription services now when they had the chance. Apple will be a player but not total domination. Something they could had been.