Apple is diving into streaming music with a new service called iTunes Radio, the company announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco today.
Similar to Pandora, iTunes Radio will create themed Internet radio stations based on specific songs, and Apple provides "featured" radio stations as well. The service will be free for users, although it's supported by ads. However, if you're an iTunes Match subscriber, you'll get it ad-free.
iTunes Radio will be available on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) running iOS 7 as well as the iTunes on the Mac or PC. Some of the pre-packaged stations include Summer Songs and Trending on Twitter (which appears to pull in songs from Twitter Music).
Apple made deals with the major music labels for iTunes Radio in the last few weeks, reports indicate. The company first signed on Universal Music, then Warner and finally Sony just a few days ago.
Although streaming music services have been around for a long time, Apple appeared content to remain the dominant player in music downloads, offering only only an extremely basic "Radio" section of the iTunes app for online radio stations. However, user habits are shifting away from iTunes toward streaming services, market statistics reveal, and Apple clearly decided it need to compete in the space.
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