iTunes Radio, Apple’s first real foray into streaming music, made its public debut back in June 2013, where it was announced alongside iOS 7. Over a year since its release, the service hasn’t exactly taken over the world, quite literally. It’s still only available in the United States and Australia. If you compared iTunes Radio today with iTunes Radio as it existed the day it was first available to use, you’ll notice that not much has really changed.
Of course, just last May, Apple announced its acquisition of Beats Electronics, which brought along with it Beats Music, a robust and almost entirely different approach to streaming music. While Apple may seek to integrate Beats Music more tightly with iTunes in the future, at this time it hasn’t.
So in the meantime, what could Apple do to make iTunes Radio more appealing to customers? Some might say the music selection is limited, or that streaming doesn’t always work correctly. However, focusing on the service strictly from a feature standpoint, there are many small changes and additions Apple could implement that would have a huge impact on the usefulness and utility of iTunes Radio. Let’s take a look.
Now Playing
Playing music is obviously the most important part of any music service, and therefore deserves the most attention. A refresh to the user interface of iTunes Radio could put your music front and center. As can be seen in the mockup above, saved stations are laid out in a horizontal scrolling list below a brand new immersive now playing panel. Featured stations have been moved to an all new “Explore” tab, which we’ll take a look at later. iTunes Radio itself has been separated from the music grouping on the Mac, and given its own button in the top left corner. The new now playing panel lists a wide variety of information about the currently playing track. Full lyrics, an artist biography, and related artists could all be included here, which makes discovering new artists as well as exploring more music by the same artist simple. Buying the current track is easy in the new now playing panel.
This same information could easily be made available on iOS, simply by tapping the info button on the now playing screen in the Music app.
Explore
The current system for finding new stations and artists in iTunes Radio is unorganized and hard to discover in some cases. With a totally new “Explore” section on both the Mac and in iOS, finding new music could be much more intuitive.
The imagined new Explore section separates different types of stations into different sections. Right now, the featured stations listing in iTunes Radio is simply a conglomerate of popular stations, like “iTunes Pure Pop”, top stations, like “iTunes Weekly Top 50 Hip-Hop”, and limited time stations, like “The 57th Grammy Awards.” With a more in-depth Explore panel, there is room to separate these stations into organized categories, as well as include sections listing stations by Genre, the most popular stations right now, as even Genius recommended stations based on your listening history.
Wish List
Last but not least is the wish list. Apple’s implementation of the wish list on iOS is already pretty well done, but I think that the Mac could use some attention. Currently, you can access your wish list through the account button on the iTunes title bar, but bringing it directly into the iTunes Radio interface makes it easier to go back to previously bookmarked songs and purchase them. Along with the standard wish list, preview history, and Siri history, your iTunes Radio play history, which is currently bundled into the Up Next menu, could also fit here easily.
iTunes Radio as it exists today is a sparse, but solid platform to build off of. With some relatively minor functionality and user interface changes, it can become a much more modern and full featured streaming service that appeals to a much wider variety of users through better music discovery and easier purchasing. It’ll be interesting to see how Apple integrates the Beats brand into their existing music services over the coming months and years in pursuit of a better streaming platform.
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I’ve tried out iTunes radio a few times. I stopped using it for several reasons. The selection of songs is pretty limited which means you’ll cycle through all the songs in about an hours time. I found the same song would repeating back to back 2 or 3 times in a row often. The ads come too often compared to Pandora. More than anything, the algorithm was not helping me discover new artists or songs like some of the other streaming services do.
The UX of this app is not intuitive and all that blinding light hurts my eyes. Also the music selection is limited Spotify is the way to go.
Apple is everywhere and I’ll rather see them focus on more important things like getting rid of the bugs that plagues iOS8 or bring Apple Maps to the same level as Google. Oh and Siri also needs improvements in voice recognition since is lagging behind Google’s.
Consumers will benefit in the long run with a diverse choice of companies as oppose to Apple doing and knowing everything in our lives.
iTunes Radio does not seem to be designed or programmed by anyone who knows anything about music or even listens to the radio. This is particularly evident for classical music or opera. The station will play half an aria or the middle of a longer work because they happen to correspond to a single track on a disc. Real radio stations don’t do this except under very limited circumstances.
The algorithm for creating a radio station based on an artist you like is also broken. I’ve created several of these and iTunes Radio never seems to play any songs by the artist that I liked in the first place. What’s the point of a “Beatles Radio station if it never plays anything by the Beatles?
Beats Music is much better. I’m eagerly awaiting the Beats Music approach to surface in iTunes Radio.
Kill the iTunes brand – it’s toxic
How about we roll this service out to the uk ? Its okay for them to take our money for the products but its pretty obvious we get left behind. Look at the iTunes store.. we get hardly and iTunes extras on movies compared to our brothers across the pond, our prices are higher, and no iTunes radio over a year later. I purchased iTunes Match in order to secure my library and to get the add free version of iTunes Radio but it never came. How come Australia is so easy to get music rights for? I appreciate its also the content distributors utter need for greed but come on we need to adapt business models to work alongside buyer trends nowadays…..
I subscribe to iTunes Match since it was first available. I tried using iTunes Radio several times, since I wasn’t suppoose to get any commecials. But happens that everytime I try to listen to iTunes Radio I get hit with commercials left and right. I also suscribe to Spotify (no commercials at all) since becore iTune Radio was lunched, I’ve always supported Apple, but in this case there’s no comparison, Spotify is a much better service hands down. Should Apple condider buying Spotify? Maybe
I use iTunes Radio on my runs and I’ve been somewhat happy with it. I find their featured stations have more commercials than a created station. I’ve discovered a few good artist here and there, but I’d agree that the variety isn’t close to other options in the space.
Some interesting thoughts here. I could see some of these suggestions being implemented, but it’s also likely that Beats Music will also be reconfigured and whatever they choose to do with it will affect iTunes Radio. I doubt they will allow the two to continue to co-exist for much longer unless they relaunch them both – perhaps current iTunes Radio and a paid tier that does away with ads and features better curation (aka Beats Music). Perhaps they will keep both as they currently are (and make some improvements) – however, given their history, it seems likelier they will move toward a tighter integration.
I would love to see what Beats Music can do with iTunes Radio. I love the service. No commercials with iTunes Match. The only complaint is how limited the song selection is.
It would be great if Apple could give us back the iTunes radio found on the desktop iTunes version (Internet Radio)