Spotify and Pandora to FACE THE MUSIC as iRadio inks Sony deal

Apple has now struck deals with all three major record labels for use of their music on its new online "radio" service, set to launch next week. The fruity firm has reportedly inked an agreement with Sony, sparking furious speculation that a free iRadio service will be unveiled at next week's WWDC. Apple had already signed up …

[Big_Ted]

itunes........iRadio...........iYawn

Who is going to be bothered with this when there are thousands of free radio stations you can stream from web sites or apps......

iCant be bothered.....

[Quxy]

Re: itunes........iRadio...........iYawn

Indeed. Since this is Apple, the available tracks (as in iTunes) are going to be those "authorised for play in your country", which largely defeats the purpose of Internet radio. And advertising...?! Nope, iYawn it is.

[Jonathan 29]

Re: itunes........iRadio...........iYawn

You should at least try it. Creating a personal radio station based on your specific tastes can be very fun - especially when its choices are unusual. Pandora had a great algorithm and I discovered a lot of new music I liked. I have signed up to a sneaky demo of All Access which is also very good, but neither are available in the UK and may never be. Apple Radio could be a world beater if launched worldwide.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple lockdown

My Spotify account follows me across web, win8, wp8, virgin media and iPhone (as well as sonos when i can afford one!)-doubt any iRadio will do that.

[Tom 38]

Re: Apple lockdown

On the other hand, I only use Spotify from my phone and tablet, and the Spotify ios clients are "not great". I have absolutely no loyalty to Spotify, they don't have some of my favourite artists, if a competing service can offer me the same features with any of a) a better interface, b) more of my artists or c) cheaper monthly costs, then bye bye Spotify.

[mraak]

Bye bye Spotify (I mean Spotiface)

The day I see the viable alternative I'll junk this Zuck-balls-lickin' service. Apple or Google, or Samsung, or anyone else, I 'm just not giving my money to anything FB pwned.

[MissingSecurity]

Re: Bye bye Spotify (I mean Spotiface)

You'll be awhile I think...and you're mad because they have integration with FB? It's no different between Apple with iTunes or Google's Plus.

[mraak]

Re: Bye bye Spotify (I mean Spotiface)

Are you mad? Spotify *requires* FB account and there's no other way to open your account except with FB. Can't use your email. In other words, no FB account no Spotify account. This is not integration, this is called acquisition. Spotify is Zuck's b*tch. Obviously you don't have an account so why are you pulling things out of your arse?

[Mr Anonymous]

Agency agreements and most favored nation clauses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Music all the way here.

Don't want no iDevice service full of adverts for other designer items...

[W.O.Frobozz]

iWhat?

Sorry, can't hear a thing over my lovely Slacker Radio, which plays nicely across pretty much any device I have (even my old Logitech Squeezebox).

And being a subscriber I can hit the "skip" button as many damn times as I want. And the "Download Station" feature is killer given my data plan.

[Colin Ritchie]

Slacker what?

While I'm sure Slacker Radio is indeed lovely, it is only available in the USA and Canada.

The other 6.3 billion members of the human race cannot appreciate how lovely it is.....

[hendersj]

Slacker

I have subscriptions to both Spotify and Slacker, and am about to drop the subscription to Slacker.

The "download station" feature is great *when it works*. It hasn't worked on my phone for over a year, and when I contacted them, they asked if I was running my provider's firmware. When I told them I was using CyanogenMod, they said "sorry, we don't support that", even though they officially support the Android version that CM7 is.

Spotify has no such issue, so I find myself using it every day, where with Slacker, it's less than once a month any more. It used to be that if I couldn't find something on Spotify, I'd find it on Slacker. Lately, though, there hasn't been much I couldn't find on Spotify, and when I couldn't find it there, it generally wasn't on Slacker anyways.

[David Simpson 1]

Didn't Google beat them to it a month ago ?

[Mr.Mischief]

But they didnt patent it. Apple will. And then say they invented internet radio..

[Jonathan 29]

invention or popularisation

You know they weren't the first to sell music online either. I will give you a thumbs up if you can name (without searching for it) any one of the fully legal music stores that existed before iTunes.