Apple Announces iTunes Radio Streaming Service

11 June 2013

There was no getting away from it last night. As the world eagerly watched Apple's developers conference, Apple unveiled iTunes Radio, a streaming service that will launch later this year with iOS 7.

For now, iTunes Radio will only be available on US devices, but excitingly will be completely free on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, PC, or Apple TV, with an ad-free version for iTunes Match users (which costs $25 per year).

Like Pandora, iTunes Radio will build stations around listener taste, selected songs and artists. It features more than 200 genre-focused stations that “evolve” based on user interactions, and will include full-integration with iTunes. Users will also be able to share their stations with friends and buy songs with one click via the iTunes store. Aside from this it'll also show “featured stations” that pull in music from what is trending on Twitter.

“The strength of the Apple brand and the sheer number of iTunes accounts as well as the popularity of the iPad will naturally draw users into iTunes Radio. Apple’s total revenues will not be affected by how much revenue iTunes Radio brings in, so they have somewhat of an advantage over Spotify. I’m sure they will push all the major agencies for deals but they have other income streams that will bring in the majority of the revenue.” - Mike Williamson, Head Of Radio At Global Media Agency Carat

Following the obvious success of digital downloads, music streaming is set to be the next major frontier for the music industry, although negotiations surrounding royalties have slowed any new developments whatsoever.

ITunes radio should be made available in India by 2014.

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