Apple Developing Custom Online Radio To Rival Pandora
posted in: Music News
In an aim to increase its Buy ‘N’ Large-like dominance of the online music marketplace, Apple Inc. is reportedly developing a streaming customized online radio service similar to Pandora. Like Pandora, Apple’s custom radio will stream music suggestions generated by a specific artist or song of the user’s choosing. While Apple isn’t the first company to chip away at Pandora’s preeminent status “ both Spotify and iHeartRadio sport similar services “ its plan to deliver a seamless experience across all of its devices, and its custom radio, through a similar user interface indicates that the service may become a serious contender in the marketplace.
For online streaming music services, however, profit has always been the problem. Despite Pandora’s success among online music listeners, the company has yet to post a profit as a result of the escalating government-defined royalty fees that it must negotiate. Apple plans to circumvent this issue by dealing directly with record companies as well as punctuating user streaming intermittently with advertisements channeled through its iAd service. If Apple’s streaming custom radio service comes to fruition, it is not likely to be the death knell for Pandora, but it will certainly result in more options and a greater freedom of choice for the hundreds of thousands of online radio listeners who flock to such services every day.
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