Don't quit on Pandora yet.
iTunes Radio — Apple's
answer to the hugely popular Pandora personalized music service and
others like it — is fun to use and has lots to offer. But in creating
stations based on my musical tastes, so far Pandora still does it
better. Yet iTunes Radio isn't just a Pandora clone. It has musical
genre and chart stations, guest DJs and stations devoted to specific
artists, like the Beatles, Drake and Arcade Fire.
For
years, Apple only sold downloads and offered low-resolution song
snippets as previews, so the ability to hear thousands of songs in their
entirety in iTunes is a huge change.
Apple on Monday said it has
already picked up 11 million listeners for iTunes Radio, which debuted
last week as part of Apple's iOS7 operating system upgrade. Apple's
upbeat report about early adoption was bad news for Pandora, whose
shares were trading down around 10% in the $24 range Monday afternoon.
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A screen grab from iTunes Radio. (Photo: USA TODAY)
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So far, iTunes Radio is only available in the United States.
(Note:
if you own a mobile device that isn't made by Apple, you won't be
taking iTunes Radio with you on the go. You can use it in iTunes on
computers, but for mobile, it's iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad only.)
Let's take a close look at iTunes Radio:
HOW SONGS ARE CHOSEN
—
iTunes looks at the songs in your music library, both those copied from
CDs and purchased from the iTunes store. (This is different from
Pandora, which chooses songs based on a computerized model that compares
lyrics, beats, and other data.)
HOW TO SET UP ITUNES RADIO
—
To "create" a personalized station, you select an artist, genre or
song, and up comes the choice. Once the station starts playing, click
the star button next to pause and fast forward in iTunes to let iTunes
know to "play more like this," or never play it again.
Since funk
supergroup Earth, Wind and Fire has a new album and the band is making
the rounds, I selected an EWF station. In return, I got songs from EWF,
Fat Larry's Band (no thanks), Bill Withers (good), more EWF, The O'Jays
(okay), The Brothers Johnson (perfect,) and Con Funk Shun (not a
favorite).
My overall reaction is that iTunes didn't pick well here.
The
same station on Pandora brought me EWF, Marvin Gaye (right on), Kool
& the Gang (no thanks), Stevie Wonder (perfect), more EWF, the Ohio
Players (no thanks), and Michael Jackson (great). Better choices.
Further
experimenting showed iTunes predictions working perfectly (in the case
of hip hop's Black-Eyed Peas and country artist Keith Urban) or not at
all with artists Paul Simon (poor song and artist choices) and the great
jazz stride pianist Judy Carmichael (how does Jane Monheit get in
there?)
ADVERTISING
Like Pandora, there are plenty of
audio ads. What's different are announcers who come in in-between songs
and tell stories about who you're listening to. At first, they're fun
to listen to, until you hear, as I did, the same rap about Miles Davis
and the making of his Kind of Blue album for the 10th time. (For
$25 and a subscription to iTunes Match, which posts your iTunes library
in the cloud, you can use iTunes Radio ad-free.)
Beyond personalized stations, iTunes Radio has some really nice pre-programmed stations.
Using
its clout with record companies (iTunes is the No. 1 retailer of music)
there are guest DJ stations from the likes of Katy Perry and actor
Jared Leto, which are terrific, and stations devoted to the Beatles,
Drake, Arcade Fire and songs from The Voice TV show.
Let's
face it — it's really hard to figure out who to listen to. That's why
radio is so popular, and why Pandora has over 200 million listeners.
It's just too easy to click the play button, and let it do the
entertaining.
Apple's stations have a lot to offer. And now for
the first time in iTunes you can listen to the complete song and more.
That's a reason to listen.
Published on: USAtoday
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