Apple's iTunes Radio to launch next month with abundant ads With the formal launch of iTunes Radio fast approaching, more details have emerged about how Apple plans to make money from its new streaming audio service. The answer, in a nutshell, is advertising. But according to a report in AdAge on Tuesday, Cupertino has planned a multi-pronged approach that could easily give competitors …
Did you even read the article? A precis:
Cupertino plans to serve up an audio ad about once every 15 minutes and no more than one video ad per hour.
By comparison, Pandora now serves [...] eight to 12 ads per hour [...]"
Traditional commercial radio stations [...] around 13 minutes per hour
Let alone US TV stations, which are unwatchable without use of a DVR to skip the 20 minutes or so of advertising per hour. Speaking as an American, you couldn't have shocked me unless you said Apple was going to have more than one minute of advertising per minute of songs. Well, no, even that couldn't shock me, Americans are pretty much used to being bombarded with advertising every waking moment, and I'm sure somewhere there are mad scientists trying to work out how to beam ads into our dreams.
iTunes Match is only $25/yr, and many iTunes users will have already subscribed to it anyway. The ad filled version will be a teaser, anyone who wants to use it very much would pay for it as with even a half hour listening a day you're paying less than a penny per ad free song. Those who don't like it can use Pandora, Spotify, etc. as those aren't going away even if iTunes Radio is used by 99% of iPhone owners.
No - really I am!
I use iTunes Match to keep my home server and devices upto date, and it means I have my entire collection with me when I am in a place with wifi (my choice not to use 3G for this). This is ideal when my girlfriend suddenly decides she wants to listen to Keane's back catalogue whilst driving back from somewhere...
What I like about the iTunes Radio (from the reports) is that I can choose a channel to listen to - in my case probably 80s / Electronica. So with iTunes Match there will be no ads, and you don't have to listen to 'second rate so called music' if you don't want to!
I see you've already been down voted for daring to express like for an Apple product.
I use iTunes Match too and as you say it's fantastic for giving you access any old bit of random music in your collection. It took an ice age for all my custom ripped MP3s to upload to their servers but now it's all there I can get at it whenever/wherever I want (especially with Three's all-you-can-eat data plan!)
It will definitely be interesting to see what sort of selection Apple have on their radio stations, I'll definitely be hitting the '80s channel too!
"Apple does have one major advantage over Pandora, however. Its iTunes Store gives iTunes Radio listeners the option of buying copies of songs or albums so that they can listen to them whenever they want. In fact, music sales are thought to be the biggest revenue opportunity for Apple's streaming service "
I forget where we left the story...does the 'music industry' now believe free music generates sales or not?
"Each of these partners has reportedly been granted exclusivity within their respective industries through the end of 2013 – so don't expect to hear any ads for Coke products on iTunes Radio before next year. Ad industry snoops say the minimum buy-in for one of these coveted slots was around $1m."
Wait! What? They paid $1m for exclusivity for the period from somewhere at the end of December until midnight on the 31st, possibly into the start of January?
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