Apple Ending Ad-Supported iTunes Radio Stations at End of January

[marshallld]

To quote the current (Jan 16, 2016) apple web page advertising iTunes Match.
" With iTunes Match, all your music can be stored in iCloud — even songs you’ve imported from CDs. You can access your music from all your devices and listen to your entire library wherever you are. Subscribe to iTunes Match on your Mac, PC, or iOS device, and listen to on-demand music stations without ads"

That does not describe a perk but an integral feature with an equal weight as storing your music in iCloud.

AM is a great service and actually I think a $10/month for what's available great deal, its just not a great deal for me, I tried it for the 3 months and really didn't use it very often differently than how Id used Match. The radio, the on-demand music stations without ads that I create and dial in (as I'd don before on Pandora) was the at least as much a selling point. without it I'm very much leaning to dropping Match and using Pandora and Amazon music.

 

[macUser2007]

Apple Music is still not as good as the original MOG service (which Beats bought for $15 million not long before Apple paid $3 billion for Beats).

I used to love MOG, but Beats ruined it by removing the radio stations after it acquired it. I tried Apple Music for 3 months, but it was basically a repackage of Beats with the same lame curated lists.

So I went back to Google Music (which has a better library than Spotify, IMO).

But if you just listen to radio and don't care about access to specific albums or tracks, then Pandora has the best algorithm there is.

 

[shoulin333]

Tidal HiFi is totally worth the $19.99 a month.

 

[Tech198]

I guess someone at Apple thinks the move to Beats 1 is more worth it then. What happends if u still have an Apple TV 3 like me, and wish to tune into iTunes Radio?.. Apple's gonna have to replace it.

But at least "we" get one extra day

 

[adamjackson]

Oh no, the end of free music. If this trend carries on I will have to pay for my shopping at the supermarket. Bloody producers, wanting money for their work. That is just outrageous!!!

It wasn't free. I paid yearly for iTunes Match that included commercial Free Radio.

 

[rbrian]

What's wrong with hip-hop?

I'm not going to risk sounding like my dad, so I'll just say different people have different tastes. Every time I listened to Beats 1, I heard sounds which weren't to my taste. After the third try, I didn't try again.

If they'd mixed it up, hip hop then rock then pop then dance then classical, for example, everyone would find something they liked and something they didn't. They could then have sold a subscription with the promise of extra stations which match your own taste. Instead they went heavy on one particular genre, alienating many of the commenters on this thread.

It seems Dr Dre had far more influence than Zane Lowe.

I always downloaded the free single of the week. Some I liked, some I didn't. A few I bought the albums. That's what the free radio station should have been: an advert for the breadth and depth of the iTunes Store.

 

[jayducharme]

But, @ $10 a month for the rest of my life? For me, that is a crap load of money for something that you never will own.

Ironically, you don't even own the music you do buy. There have been a few legal challenges to this over the years, but essentially music publishers have claimed to own whatever music you buy, and that by purchasing a download or CD or vinyl copy, you're basically leasing the music from them. These days it seems that "ownership" of a creative work is really only possible if you yourself created (and financed) it.

 

[Macyourdayy]

Dr. Dre, Drake, and Pharrell Williams? Nothing could get me to join another service faster to be honest.

Too right mate. iTunes Radio was great if it wasn't appropriate for me to run my own music, or if I just couldn't be bothered picking a playlist, but I'll never subscribe to any music service. No hippety hop or warbling idiots for this little black duck.
iTunes Radio would play almost 100% great music if I picked an artist to style from, or even the generic stations, so I'll be sorry to see it go. I now really wish SnowTape still worked, damn.
[doublepost=1452985989][/doublepost]

I have zero interest in subscribing to their Beats service

Likewise, very disappointing news here. I'm really losing respect for Tim Cook.

That's a bit harsh. Tim's obviously not the music guy, so it's down to them. Maybe people hadn't figured out the way to use iTunes Radio, or it wasn't promoted enough, even the the ads weren't intrusive. This move is probably strongly influenced/pushed by the music distributors, but it might be that not enough people were using the service, anyhow, goodbye Apple Music (from me).

 

[mva68]

Basically Apple want's to move people subscribing from Itunes Match towards Apple Music at 6x the cost. This is the first step in dismantling the Match service... Actually one should consider Apple Music family subscription for 180,-/year against Itunes Match for 25,-/year since with the latter your songs can be matched to 10 devices within the family. A price increase I am not going to pay for. Once you are locked in with Apple Music you can never leave because then all your songs are gone also the ones you paid for in the first place.

 

[rijc99]

I subscribed to Match for the radio portion of the service. I rarely used it but at $25 for the year it was ok. If they strip out the radio feature then I guess I'll have no use for the Match service either.

 

[WigWag Workshop]

i have this feeling that the other services will follow suit, from what I been reading on here Pandora and Spotify are losing a ton of money. Why should a company offer a free ad-supported service if they are losing money? What will happen to Google's "free" services when all the ad money dries up? Not sure why everyone is pointing the finger at Apple for doing this, I am sure there are many factors that are out of their control.

 

[2010mini]

I'm not going to risk sounding like my dad, so I'll just say different people have different tastes. Every time I listened to Beats 1, I heard sounds which weren't to my taste. After the third try, I didn't try again.

If they'd mixed it up, hip hop then rock then pop then dance then classical, for example, everyone would find something they liked and something they didn't. They could then have sold a subscription with the promise of extra stations which match your own taste. Instead they went heavy on one particular genre, alienating many of the commenters on this thread.

It seems Dr Dre had far more influence than Zane Lowe.

I always downloaded the free single of the week. Some I liked, some I didn't. A few I bought the albums. That's what the free radio station should have been: an advert for the breadth and depth of the iTunes Store.

You have become your dad now.... lol

I for one like 'old school' hip-hop not this modern stuff. so I fully agree with you and your dad. But in a recent article Apple has just patented extra Beats stations. so it is a good guess additional genre Beats stations are coming.

https://www.macrumors.com/2015/12/28/apple-files-trademarks-beats-2-3-4-5/

 

[\-V-/]

Uh ... so not only are they not supporting Apple TV 3 anymore, they're ending iTunes Radio on it as well. That's just ... lovely. Fortunately I can still Airplay music to it.

 

[rdlink]

It wasn't included with iTunes Match from the start because iTunes Radio has only been around for just over two years.
Apple Releases iTunes 11.1 with iTunes Radio, Genius Shuffle and More

You're correct. Thanks for refreshing my memory.

 

[neutralguy]

Apple just went from being Audi to Kia! Everything is upsell now!

 

[gixxerfool]

Before? They already have 10 million subscribers.

But I do agree that they should've kept the stations for iTunes Match customers like me. Now they will only be available to AM subscribers. Sigh.....

I'll probably join AM family sub anyways. As a musician I like being able to access almost any song during band practice when the need arises. I currently do this with YouTube... But the ads are starting to piss me off.

They didn't even wait a full year. It seems like they waited until the majority of the free trials were over and then went in for the kill. This is the first time I feel like Apple is going for a money grab. It seems self defeating to offer subscription only service when Spotify has a larger user base with a free service available.

 

[2010mini]

They didn't even wait a full year. It seems like they waited until the majority of the free trials were over and then went in for the kill. This is the first time I feel like Apple is going for a money grab. It seems self defeating to offer subscription only service when Spotify has a larger user base with a free service available.

true. But artists HATE free streaming services. Could be a calculated move to get more exclusives and rights to music from big name hold outs.

 

[drunifex]

i thought it was going to be cancelled when the ads all disappeared a few months ago.

 

[gixxerfool]

true. But artists HATE free streaming services. Could be a calculated move to get more exclusives and rights to music from big name hold outs.

A very good point. I hadn't thought of the leverage. So, if Apple tells the labels it's no longer free they're likely to get stuff over other free services. Wow. That could have big implications.

 

[verdi1987]

Does this include the public radio stations?

 

[Denmac1]

Just came to post this:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-music.html

Perhaps we can use this link to express our thoughts directly to Apple, Inc. Democracy FTW!

Just sent in my 2 cents. However I think this is a bad idea that Cue and Jimmy decided would drive people to AM. As others have stated: bad interface, too much garbage on Beats. I actually did discover some new artists on Radio and purchased.
I don't buy that much music as I already have a large collection. I have found other place to buy music that download to iTunes.

 

[npmacuser5]

I guess someone at Apple thinks the move to Beats 1 is more worth it then. What happends if u still have an Apple TV 3 like me, and wish to tune into iTunes Radio?.. Apple's gonna have to replace it.

But at least "we" get one extra day

If you have any Mac you could use remote app to AirPlay to AppleTV. The Mac would act as a server to stream Beats to the AppleTV 3. Works fine if both are on the same network.

 

[marshallld]

What I think is so very nice, is the email Apple sent announcing this to Match subscribers was sent out Friday evening. classy move.

 

[mconk]

I wonder what will happen to the iTunes Radio tab on the 3rd Gen Apple TV...

 

[eroyce]

We have been big listeners to iTunes Radio (the kids love the disney and although I've always thought Pandora did a better job of building interesting stations, iTunes Radio was more convenient as the rest of our media is located in iTunes and because we could airplay to multiple speaker sets (we have 4 zones in the house), so we went with the ecosystem to keep it simple. This changes things however. At this point I'm not planning on paying a subscription so I'll probably figure out how to get Pandora working, but at the same time, I'm really starting to question the value iTunes provides me anymore - I was locked in to the Apple ecosystem, but I guess not anymore. If I need to go searching for internet radio I might as well start looking at what the competition has to offer for complete solutions. Sure I still have lots of movies and music purchased from iTunes, but if I'm already jumping between different services making purchases other places isn't really that big of a jump. This irks me off a bit, but honestly I'm just not in love with Apple like I once was - they aren't making things easier, they aren't innovating, things don't "just work" any more, and their competition is getting some of these things right.