Apple said iTunes Radio will be available this fall in the U.S., it said Monday. It will be free with advertisements included, although subscribers of Apple s iTunes Match music-storage service will get a commercial-free version of iTunes Radio. That service costs $25 a year.
In unveiling the long-expected service Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple enters a crowded field. Google Inc.
started an on-demand subscription music service called All Access last month. Other leading services include Spotify, Rhapsody and Pandora.
Apple was a pioneer of online music sales and is still a leader there, but streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify have emerged as popular alternatives to buying. Pandora relies on its users being connected to the Internet at all times and plays songs at random within certain genres for free.
As with Pandora, iTunes Radio will let people create stations based on specific songs, artists or genres. So users can put in a particular song, and the station will play songs like it. Apple did not provide details on how the other songs will be determined. Pandora uses a formula to analyze songs based on musical and other characteristics.
Users won t be able to type in the name of a specific song and have it play right away. Pandora doesn t allow that, either. That s something available through other services that charge monthly fees, including Spotify and Google s All Access.
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