Apple is planning to bring iTunes Radio to the UK by early 2014, according to a recent report.
The service was announced in its native US back on June 10 at Apple’s WWDC 2013 event. While it was made available to American customers on September 18 alongside iOS 7, UK customers (as well as the rest of the world) have had to wait.
Now Bloomberg is reporting on Apple’s plans to bring iTunes Radio to the wider English-speaking world. Citing people with knowledge of the situation, the report claims that early 2014 will see the free personalised radio service coming to the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
In addition, the Nordic countries will be targeted within a similar time frame.
The report points out that Apple would beat US-based music recommendation service Pandora to market in the UK and Canada if it followed through with these plans. It’s suggested that Apple has been able to move faster because it has managed to sign up international rights for Universal and a number of other record companies, which Pandora doesn’t have in place.
Unlike Spotify, iTunes Radio is a free, ad-supported music service that provides intelligent playlists rather than direct track selection capabilities. It’s geared towards getting you to buy the tracks that you discover through the service on iTunes.
If you have a £21.99 per year iTunes Match account, you’ll be able to lose the adverts as well as being able to stream any music you already own through the cloud.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
