stations

Two 'stations' stories August 2013 - December 2015

How-To: Find and create Christmas stations + playlists with Apple Music

Apple Music Christmas

While it undoubtedly drives the rest of my family crazy, I sure love Christmas music and don’t mind one bit that it takes over radio stations on November 1st. FM radio is okay in the car and I’ve used Pandora and iHeartRadio the last few years to find a variety of Christmas music, but ads and skip limits are no good when you’ve got access to a streaming music catalog everywhere you go. This year I’m all in with Apple Music and finding it terrific as my own personal Christmas music station.

Apple Music does a pretty good job of serving up a variety of ad-free Christmas music through stations and playlists … if you know where to look. Here are a few tips to set you in the right direction if you want to feel festive and spread the Christmas mood:

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Rdio apps get revamped Stations with personalized “You FM” feature

Subscription music service Rdio announced today that it’s completely overhauling how stations work through the service. While stations and the player get a refresh with new endless station types to pick from, the big new feature is something Rdio calls “You FM”:

You FM — A brand new, personalized, adjustable station that leverages Taste Profiling technology from The Echo Nest and incorporates all your listening history, track voting, Facebook likes, Twitter follows, and more to create a truly unique and individualized listening experience. As your tastes grow and evolve, so does You FM.

The new player will let users “vote on individual songs, tune stations towards familiar or adventurous sounds, and pivot stations based on favorite tracks” in order to fine tune stations. You’ll even be able to listen to others’ You FM stations. An endless station that’s automatically customized to the user’s listening habits seems like a must have feature for apps competing with Pandora and Spotify, and it’s something that Apple’s upcoming iTunes Radio app will take advantage of heavily.