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Apple Adds ESPN and Local NPR Stations to iTunes Radio

atmc said:
And still no iTunes Radio in Europe. And because of that, I left iTunes and iTunes Match and started using Spotify.
iTunes is declining, and Apple doesn't seem to be aware of that. They need to bring iTunes Radio to Europe, and need to have a Spotify-like service. And they need it NOW! Tomorrow may be too late.
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Did you miss the whole news two weeks ago about buying Beats for $3 billion?

Beats so far seems better than Spotify aside from the "you can't use it for free like you can with Spotify, although that just started in the past few months" feature. Straight up paid service based on my experience with both, I like Beats better. I bought a $25 card at Target so I can try it out for a couple of months now after the free trial. It's missing some music Spotify had, but that'll be the case between the two.

I can't tell you how much I dig the human-curated playlists. Tim Cook wasn't kidding. I put in three artists I kinda liked. I've been favoriting some songs since then and adding some others to my library. The awesomeness of the playlists that show up on my home page is outstanding.

BUT it's hard to compete with Spotify's free playlist shuffle on mobile and the head start it has. I'll be interested to see what Apple does with Beats now. The best thing would be to just get it everywhere and advertise it.
 
wiimixer said:
Isn't the issue that with buying Spotify (maybe also Pandora), that the rights to stream the music aren't transferable (grandfathered) in the event of such a sale? If that contractual limitation wasn't placed on Beats by the labels, it might explain why they were attractive to Apple.
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Ah, I didn't realize that such a limit was in place. I feel like that somehow violates some law... Preventing one company from getting as good of a deal as another and all...
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Should we take this as an indicator that Apple is still clueless about what the competition is doing? Or is Apple confused about who their competitors are? It sounds more like Apple is trying to outdo I Heart Radio, which I don't think can be done (how could you possibly beat free, nearly every station, and available on every device?), but shouldn't their target be Pandora and Spotify?
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Perhaps they are clueless, perhaps they're confused, perhaps they're both. However the fact they bought Beats shows they're aware.

If they keep Beats separate from the iTunes brand for the foreseeable future then perhaps we'll continue to see things added to iTunes Radio. There's no harm in that is there? I imagine there's a team that works on iTunes Radio stuff and they are still separate from the Beats team - and will be for a while. They have probably been working on features for a while. So why not add them if they're ready to go.

ArtOfWarfare said:
They should have bought Pandora or Spotify if they really wanted to buy their way into this arena... Buying Beats for it was just dumb.
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There's more to beats than just streaming. Hardware, streaming and 2 well connected executives.

Also remember Apple likes human curated stores. From the recommendations on iTunes, Apps of the week on the App Store and iTunes Radio which are more than just algorithms. They're actual people pulling together popular and new things for users to discover. And Beats does that too.

Ultimately though Apple is a business and Beats is very profitable. To quote Cook on the Beats deal:

"So we're projecting it's going to be accretive in fiscal year 2015"

So the ~$3 billion price tag doesn't seem so bad for such a healthy business. Neither Spotify or Pandaroa would be so profitable.

I've read elsewhere that streaming services become profitable once they get to around 10 million subscribers - a number Spotify is just reaching. And Pandora IMO isn't what Apple needed/need. Besides Apple doesn't need user numbers - they have them already due to the lock-in they get from their connected hardware, software and services. They just need the products and services - so why pay a premium for Spotify due it's large user base when they get Beats which to me appears a smarter fit.
 
no Airplay on iTunes 11.2.2 but works on iOS

Explorz said:
Worthless since neither ESPN nor NPR can be played through airplay speakers.
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I raised this with Apple support; they have no clue. One idea was this was some licensing issue, but since you can use Airplay with these stations on iOS devices that seems unlikely.

More likely: bad software design and/or implementation. No big surprise, given Apple's predilection with icon flatness and fluff over making stuff work.
 
Echoing literally everyone else; a year in with no sense of when it will arrive has killed my interest in iTunes Radio. It's already a competitive space and I have plenty of options that are already here. The technicalities of the hold up are irrelevant to the end user; they just end up looking like a "me too" service that couldn't be troubled to show up on time to the party, and doesn't bring anything special to the table.
 
lhammer610 said:
Who cares? NPR has a great app that gives me access to all NPR stations, plus individual shows, news and music articles. No reason to use iTunes Radio.
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First, the app doesn't always work. Some stations never get past their promo intro using the NPR app.

Second, there is no NPR app for Mac OS -- I'd much rather listen via my plugged-in MBP to Airplay rather than draining the batteries on my iPhone.

Though, as several have mentioned, these new NPR and ESPN stations idiotically don't work with Airplay on OS X, only on iOS.
 
Michael CM1 said:
The deal just went through. Spotify took a couple of years to make it to the US. I'm just glad I don't have to work out those deals with all the egos involved.
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I realise that but you had offered Beats as a solution to a member that was frustrated by the lack of an iTunes streaming service in Europe.
 
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