Ad-supported iTunes Radio stations have today gone off the air. Try to launch an iTunes Radio station on your Apple device
or your computer, and you will be prompted to subscribe to Apple
Music.
The App launched in 2013, had been a free,
ad-supported way to listen to stations devoted to specific artists and
genres. But as announced earlier this month, Apple has turned off the
free App.
Apple decided it would stop its free streaming iTunes Radio
offering, a competitor to Pandora, in an effort to boost subscriptions
to its paid service, Apple Music. Though, there seem to be a few
exceptions. With live broadcasts of music picked by DJs, the Beats 1
station is still accessible. You can also listen to news stations such as
BBC News and ESPN. But all the other music stations is unavailable unless you subscribed to Apple Music.
A
subscription is free for 90 days. After that, Apple starts charging
$9.99 per month for an individual or $14.99 a month for a family plan
with up to six users. For a decade, Apple was the
dominant force in digital music thanks to downloads from its iTunes
store. As music streaming has gained popularity through services such as
Pandora and later Spotify, Apple has played catch-up.
iTunes Radio had been a more limited, standalone service, offering
predefined music stations and the ability to create stations based on
artists or types of music. Beyond serving up audio ads, iTunes Radio let
you skip songs you didn't want to hear, but only up to a point. With an
Apple Music subscription, you can listen to iTunes Radio without ads
and can skip as many songs as you want.
However, iTunes Radio stations may
no longer be free, but the “internet radio” section in iTunes remains live.
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