Will Apple Launch iRadio this Summer?

[tubemonkey]

...and will there be a free version?

If you have been following the rumor mill closely, you might have heard that Apple is looking to launch their own brand of streaming radio in 2013. The specifics have yet to be unveiled but according to a new report, Apple has managed to negotiate a deal with Universal and Warner, two of the major record labels, and based on this breakthrough, they are apparently pushing for a release of their “iRadio” service this summer. Given that Apple’s WWDC takes place in the middle of the year, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Cupertino company took advantage of their event to make the announcement.

The last we heard of Apple’s rumored iRadio was a couple of weeks ago when it was reported that the launch could be delayed as Apple was looking to pay half the royalty rates that Pandora is currently paying. Either way take this with a grain of salt for now, but we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for additional details so be sure to check back with us at a later date for more info.

[Faterson]

"Looking forward" to the usual silly geo-restrictions where the "fabulous" new service will be available in exactly 3 out of hundreds of countries of the world. (Yes, I'm talking about you, LastFM.)

[Jessica Lares]

I still think buying music is cheaper.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

I still think buying music is cheaper.

It all depends how much new music your tastes extend to. I've been subscribing to Napster for eight years now. I love exploring new music, working my way through the reviews each month and listening to what's out there.

For the price of 1 CD each month I can listen to most of the new releases that catch my eye. Before subscription services arrived I would buy those releases that I really wanted to hear - without having heard them first. There'd be the occasional duff CD that I'd listen to once and then never again, but more importantly the majority would fall into the bracket of 'listen to half a dozen times the first month, then a couple of times in the next few months, and then very, very rarely if ever again.'

Subscription music takes you through that period where you fall in love with a CD but then grow tired of it.

Out the other side of that come the real gems, the CDs that stay with you forever. Those I eventually buy.

So, for an outlay equivalent to just one of those CDs I used to buy each month that went on to gather dust, I get to listen to far more new music than I could ever afford before, and hone in on those wonderful releases that really resonate with me.

What's more, because the subscription allows me to explore far more widely, I find more of those all-time favourites than I could before.

Win-win, I say.

Graham

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

I still think buying music is cheaper.

Free music is even cheaper

I'll try Apple Radio only if there's a free version. With so many sources for free music and radio out there (local AM/ FM, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, YouTube, Slacker, etc), I see no reason to pay anyone for this content.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Free music is even cheaper

I'll try Apple Radio only if there's a free version. With so many sources for free music and radio out there (local AM/ FM, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, YouTube, Slacker, etc), I see no reason to pay anyone for this content.

Agreed if this is pure radio. It's hard to justify paying for curated radio when there are so many excellent free services.

It depends whether this allows you to pick and play your own content though, making it more of a subscription music service. With Google rumoured to be launching a subscription streaming service, and with Samsung, Sony and Microsoft already in the game with Spotify, Deezer and Rhapsody/Napster, I'd be surprised if both Apple and Amazon weren't at least looking at this.

Graham

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Graham

Agreed if this is pure radio. It's hard to justify paying for curated radio when there are so many excellent free services.

It depends whether this allows you to pick and play your own content though, making it more of a subscription music service. With Google rumoured to be launching a subscription streaming service, and with Samsung, Sony and Microsoft already in the game with Spotify, Deezer and Rhapsody/Napster, I'd be surprised if both Apple and Amazon weren't at least looking at this.

Graham

I go back and forth between the various types of music services depending on my mood. If I want straight genre based music where I have no control over content, I'll listen to services like TuneIn Radio, 181FM, or local FM stations. If I want some control where I can choose music tailored to a song or artist and the ability to skip songs, then I'll listen to Pandora or Slacker. If I want music on demand (a particular song or album), then I'll listen to YouTube, Amazon MP3, or my ripped collection via mSD.

With those bases covered, I have no need for a subscription service.

[Faterson]

Generally saying, I'm very dissatisfied with online music offerings -- or rather, the lack of them.

Please note that many of the services you keep praising in your posts above, are only available in a handful of countries -- it's very typical of such "subscription services" to be discriminatory against most people around the world. You simply need to reside in one of the few "lucky countries", in order to be able to subscribe to them. It's disgusting.

I even used to be a paying Last FM subscriber (here is my Last FM profile page), until LastFM came up with the grand idea earlier this year, to lock out users from around the world from their site, except for 5 or 6 super-big countries. So, even if I wanted to pay them for their service, they would no longer let me.

And even though I enjoyed LastFM's "suggestion radio stations", they did not fully satisfy me. I hate categorizing music (or literature, for that matter) into genres. A song, or a book, is either good or bad -- regardless of genre. The thing is, LastFM kept pushing me into listening to music of a particular genre -- which I hate to do, and want to avoid at all costs.

The online radio station that comes closest to my ideal, is the delightfully eclectic Radio Paradise. Jim & Rebecca don't hesitate to mix Led Zeppelin with Mozart -- that's how it should be!

However, even Radio Paradise has its flaws: for one thing, it's prejudiced against certain music genres, and refuses to play them, regardless of quality -- and I reject such prejudices. For example, they won't play hip-hop music under any circumstances. I'm definitely no hip-hop fan, but at the same time I recognize there are top-quality, important artists working in that genre, such as Black Eyed Peas, whose music I greatly enjoy and admire.

A second flaw of Radio Paradise is that it's heavily focused on "Anglo-Saxon" music, that is, music from English-speaking countries, and predominantly sung in English. Yes, they do include "non-English" songs here and there, but there is no balance whatsoever.

If anyone here on MobileRead could give me a hint as to where I could find a station similarly eclectic to Radio Paradise, but balanced in terms of playing music from around the world, I would appreciate such a hint. Does such a radio station even exist? The situation seems so desperate and bleak to me, that it almost seems as if I had to found such a station myself, in order to enjoy it. And if I were a millionaire, I'd definitely found it -- but I'm not.

To clarify, I'm not interested in anything of the sort usually labelled "world music" -- nope, that's just another genre, you know, consisting of obscure songs and artists. Nope, what I'm looking for is a radio station that would play the best music of all genres from all countries. I believe we have quite a few top-quality rock and pop artists in Slovakia and the Czech Republic (both today and in past decades) -- but has any one of you ever heard of a Slovak or Czech rock or pop artist? Nope... because you're imprisoned in your "Anglo-Saxon" radio stations. And I'd like to avoid that for myself. It's tragic... you never get to hear any music on radio stations in my country, except for "Anglo-Saxon" music and local (Slovak/Czech) music. But what about music at least from the neighbouring countries? Forget it! There is nothing. And not because of lack of musical quality in those neighbouring countries, I assure you. It's because the DJs don't give a damn about musical quality -- they're a bunch of lazy and/or corrupt dogs mostly only there to collect their paychecks. Whenever I think of that, I must chant with The Smiths:

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music they constantly play

Hang the DJ, Hang the DJ, Hang the DJ
Hang the DJ, Hang the DJ, Hang the DJ

[/rant]

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Please note that many of the services you keep praising in your posts above, are only available in a handful of countries -- it's very typical of such "subscription services" to be discriminatory against most people around the world. You simply need to reside in one of the few "lucky countries", in order to be able to subscribe to them. It's disgusting.

Well, the issue here isn't really the subscription service providers, but the music licensing laws, which are by territory rather than worldwide. So for a service to expand its reach it has to relicense the content country by country. That takes time and resources.

Each service therefore has to start somewhere and expand in the same way as any business grows globally. Bear in mind that Spotify, arguably the most famous of the subscription services, started in Sweden - one of the 'smaller' countries.

I'm sure all of the services would like to be worldwide, but the cost of licensing and rollout limits this expansion. They're not discriminating willingly.

Graham

[rem736]

i'm curious about something. i used to be a rhapsody subscriber and now have dropped that in favor of spotify. however, the one feature missing on both is the ability to create a dynamic playlist that is specifically based to the artist name. the idea is that i would just create this one playlist that would dynamically update with all songs by the said artist on the fly so that i don't have to keep up with what artists just released what new albums. all songs belonging to the artist, old and new, should just automatically pop up when i choose to play this playlist. i should not have to add the new album to a playlist. the general idea is to have all songs that match a criteria that i set show up when i bring up that playlist. the idea is simple. yet neither rhapsody nor spotify has done it (these are the only two that i have every used, so i can't say how other music subscription services perform). begging and pleading did not help. is there a reason for this?

i bring this up because if apple comes up with its own subscription service, they would probably have this feature, and it would probably win me over for life. say what you want about itunes (and you would probably be correct), but what itunes does very well is have a very logical/intuitive way for you to view/filter/list/play your music collection. based on this logic, i believe that a dynamic artist-based playlist would be available in "iradio".

on spotify, even as of this very day, i haven't found a way to create a dynamic playlist based on my single criteria of "all songs that belong to a single artist". and there's no way i can just shuffle my entire library. i have to choose a playlist, then i will be able to shuffle the songs within that playlist. i could create a single playlist and place the entire collection on this single playlist, but that would be an organizational nightmare.

so if anyone as an answer as to why dynamic playlists based on the user's criteria can't be created, i'm very interested in the explanation.

thanks.

[forsooth]

will satellite version be offered?

[alicepattinson]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Free music is even cheaper

TOTALLY!!! hahaha

[Jessica Lares]

Originally Posted by rem736

i'm curious about something. i used to be a rhapsody subscriber and now have dropped that in favor of spotify. however, the one feature missing on both is the ability to create a dynamic playlist that is specifically based to the artist name. the idea is that i would just create this one playlist that would dynamically update with all songs by the said artist on the fly so that i don't have to keep up with what artists just released what new albums. all songs belonging to the artist, old and new, should just automatically pop up when i choose to play this playlist. i should not have to add the new album to a playlist. the general idea is to have all songs that match a criteria that i set show up when i bring up that playlist. the idea is simple. yet neither rhapsody nor spotify has done it (these are the only two that i have every used, so i can't say how other music subscription services perform). begging and pleading did not help. is there a reason for this?

i bring this up because if apple comes up with its own subscription service, they would probably have this feature, and it would probably win me over for life. say what you want about itunes (and you would probably be correct), but what itunes does very well is have a very logical/intuitive way for you to view/filter/list/play your music collection. based on this logic, i believe that a dynamic artist-based playlist would be available in "iradio".

on spotify, even as of this very day, i haven't found a way to create a dynamic playlist based on my single criteria of "all songs that belong to a single artist". and there's no way i can just shuffle my entire library. i have to choose a playlist, then i will be able to shuffle the songs within that playlist. i could create a single playlist and place the entire collection on this single playlist, but that would be an organizational nightmare.

so if anyone as an answer as to why dynamic playlists based on the user's criteria can't be created, i'm very interested in the explanation.

thanks.

This is the way I understand it...

It has to do with the licensing. It's the reason why Pandora works the way it does too. You cannot curate a "radio" station with just songs by one artist.

Keep in mind that they want you to do some thinking when you're using services like Spotify and Rhapsody too. Because they don't want to waste their money paying a fee for a song that doesn't get played all the way through. It's different when you've brought the song, and are doing that through Windows Media Player/iTunes/whatever - Can you imagine having to pay $0.02 every time you started a song, but decided not to finish it?

A single artist station sounds better on paper too. You have to think about the awkward hidden tracks that are 10 minutes long, the b-sides you may or may not have heard (and most artists having pretty hit/miss ones), the 30 second intros/skits, and the setup of an album in general (some are seamless, some have weird transitions, and then the last track closing the door). The listening experience isn't all that nice once you run into these issues. Even most greatest hits albums that aren't just money grabs are set up in a way where tracks don't seem so out of place, even though they could be YEARS apart and from different albums with different moods.