I'm a
consumer (including a consumer of a lot of Apple stuff). I'm a consumer who likes to buy Apple stuff. While I completely appreciate that Apple is a business, I view Apple as a consumer. Perhaps you are an employee? Or someone who pretends to be an employee but isn't paid anything for it? Or someone who puts Apple "the business" before Apple's
customers?
As a consumer, my "complaints" about this particular "innovation" revolve around not seeing much in it. From my perspective, it's like Apple is looking backwards rather than forwards. I know Pandora, Spotify, etc and think they are not bad implementations waiting for Apple to get it right. I think they are just fine. But even if Apple can do digital radio much better than either of them (and Sirius and others), what's in it for us consumers? One click to spend more money in iTunes is a benefit for Apple much more than a benefit for consumers. It's not that hard to go from hearing a song on free radio or Pandora, etc and locating it in iTunes (or Amazon) if I want to buy it. I think there's even an app that will identify the song for us.
I get what's in it for Apple "the business." I also get what's in streaming radio for Apple's business partners (AT&T, Verizon, etc) too. I'm trying to grasp the big benefit for us consumers. Apparently- per your feedback- it's to lighten the heavy load of cash in our wallets by linking the radio to which we're listening to an immediate opportunity to buy the song on iTunes in one click. I do sometimes get tired of carrying around spare cash. And between Apple making it even easier to buy more stuff from iTunes and AT&T, etc pinching tiers so that streaming radio gets us to our tier limits quicker, this incredible innovation should solve that problem faster than ever before. Bravo!