Apple’s streaming music service iTunes Radio is now available in Australia. This marks the first country outside of the U.S. to gain access to iTunes radio, a free internet radio streaming service which features music from the iTunes Store and offers over 100 curated stations based on your listening preferences.
It has been rumored that Apple would roll out iTunes Radio in the U.K., New Zealand, Canada and Australia, and this move puts us one step closer to seeing iTunes Radio in the aforementioned countries, and perhaps others as well.
iTunes Radio parallels Google’s Play Music All Access a bit, offering syncing with iTunes libraries and streaming music and personalized music selection. Apple’s caveat here is that the service will be available for free, with the inclusion of iAds, which will take the form of audio announcements as well as visual ones. For $24.99 a year, users can forgo the ads by subscribing to Apple’s iTunes Match service. The service syncs a user’s library via iCloud, which allows users to access their music from virtually anywhere.
Press release follows below.
Apple Brings iTunes Radio to Australia
SYDNEY—February 11, 2014—Apple® today announced iTunes Radio™ is now available to music fans in Australia. iTunes Radio is a free Internet radio service featuring over 100 stations and an incredible catalog of music from the iTunes Store®, combined with features only iTunes® can deliver. When you tune into iTunes Radio on your iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch®, Mac®, PC or Apple TV®, you’ll have access to stations inspired by the music you already listen to, Featured Stations curated by Apple and genre-focused stations that are personalized just for you. iTunes Radio evolves based on the music you play and download. The more you use iTunes Radio and iTunes, the more it knows what you like to listen to and the more personalized your experience becomes. iTunes Radio also gives you access to exclusive “First Play” premieres from top selling artists, plus the ability to tag or buy anything you hear with just one click.
iTunes Radio offers music fans access to thousands of new songs every week, as well as serving up exclusive music from new and popular artists before you hear them anywhere else. Whether it’s an exclusive single from an up-and-coming band or a pre-release stream of an entire album, iTunes Radio has it all. iTunes Radio is home to special events including live streams direct from the iTunes Festival in London and other exclusive iTunes Sessions.
iTunes Radio is ad-supported and free for everyone. iTunes Match® users get iTunes Radio ad-free, so instead of hearing the occasional ad on iTunes Radio, iTunes Match makes your listening completely ad-free. With iTunes Match, all your music—even songs you’ve imported from CDs—are stored in iCloud®. iTunes Radio can use information about your entire music collection to make your stations even more personalized. iTunes Match costs AU$34.99 for a year.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.