Apple’s new iTunes radio app hit the market yes🐼terday, offering iPhone users an alternative to Pandora.
Like Pandora, the app allows users to create customized music stations for streaming by choosing a song, artist and genre — but it offer💛s a handful of unique features.
One of those is its “tune this station,” which helps users more tightly control the songs that stream in by s♎etting it to “hits, variety or discovery.”
If a user chooses “hits,” radio-friendly songs flow in; “variety” stre♋ams out-of-genre jams and “discovery” sends tunes the listener likely hasn’t heard before.
It also uses data from the iTunes library to🍃 gauge users’ ta🅘stes by examining the songs to which they most often listen.
An image of the album cover of the song bei🍃ng played and recently played songs is display𝔍ed, much like Pandora.
The app also features 300 built-in st꧃ations, some chosen by genre, that users tap to play.
Users are abl𝓰e to skip only a handful of songs before ads are played.
The free version is available with ad🍬s and a $25 yearly🀅 subscription to iTunes Match lets users listen without interruption.
It will be available first in the United States, and later expand globally — presumably as music-licensing agreements per🍃mit.
iTunes radio can play f🐽rom an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, PC or Apple TV.
All users’ s𝕴tations are stꦏored in iCloud, Apple’s online storage system, so if they stop playing a station on one device, they pick it up on another.
iTunes Radio can build stations around artists, songs or genres. Users can tell the voice assi🧔stant, Siri, to “play more liꦺke this.”
Creators said the stations evolve based 🥂on the music played and downloaded.
Users can also share their stations via the new AirDrop feature or through e-mail, Twittꦜer or Facebook.