Apple just released iTunes Radio for iTunes 11.1 and iOS 7, and already there are 11 million listeners giving it a chance, according to Apple. Pandora, meanwhile, is already in trouble (despite being better), as its stock dipped down 10 percent at the end of trading today.
Apple launched its radio service built into iOS 7, along with the iPhone 5c and 5s, which run the new operating system natively, last week. After just 24 hours of being available for download, iOS 7 had already had an adoption rate of over 40 percent. More than 200 million devices now have iOS 7, and, according to ABI Research (via AdWeek), Apple's mobile operating system is expected to eventually pick up 294 million users by the end of 2013.
Even if only a quarter of those iOS 7 users find iTunes Radio compelling, the streaming service would still automatically pick up more listeners than Pandora's 72 million active users, which it has built over the last 13 years. And that doesn't even count desktop listeners.
As we reviewed at Latinos Post Tech last week, Apple's new streaming radio service has a lot to offer - more than just the "Apple" name. The Cupertino giant's answer to Pandora and Rdio offers many of the same features as its competitors.
On iTunes Radio, you can create a station off of a track, artist or genre selection, and, like Pandora's thumbs up or thumbs down system, iTunes Radio gives you a "Play more like this" and "Never play this song" option (along with an option to add the track to your iTunes wishlist).
In addition to that feature - and the assuredly large library of songs - iTunes Radio lets you customize how strict you want custom stations to adhere to your choices, with a "tune this station" option that slides from Hits to Variety to Discovery (if you're feeling adventurous).
So Apple iTunes Radio is poised to overtake Pandora in popularity, and offers some new features, all tied into Apple's user-friendly environment.
But does that mean iTunes Radio is better?
After positively reviewing the streaming radio service and finally exploring the "vast and untapped musical territory" I looked forward to surveying over the weekend, I have to say it's not.
At least from a musical taste-matching perspective - which is arguably the most important aspect of a customizable streaming music service -iTunes Radio is far from being a prime competitor to Pandora. iTunes Radio plays so many tracks outside of the clear musical style of my custom radio selections that I frustrated myself by running out of skips and "Never play that track again" clicks.
There are a couple reasons why my personalized radio stations didn't offer what I wanted. One is that iTunes Radio analyzes your iTunes song collection and tries to reflect what your presumed tastes are in the songs it chooses. If you have an unmanageably large library with songs you'd never listen to again, guess what: iTunes Radio is going to think you want to listen to those songs (or something like it) again.
The other thing going against iTunes Radio is not really Apple's fault, and one would assume that it will get better with time: iTunes Radio is a big dumb baby.
The radio service has a huge selection of music, but it doesn't have the intelligence that Pandora's music genome project - and the decade of crowd-sourced musical connections and evaluations it has "experienced" - has built into Pandora's radio stations. And like a baby, it has to experience and learn.
So hopefully iTunes Radio will get better: especially if it runs the best other option, Pandora, into the ground.
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