Music

Apple’s iTunes radio app to challenge Pandora

Apple’s new iTunes radio app hit the market yesterday, 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 offers 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 setting it to “hits, variety or discovery.”

If a user chooses “hits,” radio-friendly songs flow in; “variety” streams 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’ tastes by examining the songs to which they most often listen.

An image of the album cover of the song being played and recently played songs is displayed, much like Pandora.

The app also features 300 built-in stations, some chosen by genre, that users tap to play.

Users are able to skip only a handful of songs before ads are played.

The free version is available with ads 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 permit.

iTunes radio can play from an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, PC or Apple TV.

All users’ stations are stored 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 assistant, Siri, to “play more like 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, Twitter or Facebook.