Christmas music

Two 'Christmas music' stories December 2014 - December 2015

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

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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The holidays arrive on iTunes Radio, with ten Holiday radio stations

For those worried that they might not get quite enough Christmas music this month from coffee shops, stores, bars and just about everywhere else in existence, iTunes Radio has you covered. Apple yesterday added a whole collection of new stations to its streaming music service, each of them playing Christmas music and nothing but Christmas music – mirroring the holiday movie section added to iTunes.

The ten (yes, ten) stations range from Classical Holiday to Country Holiday. As ever with iTunes Radio, the stations play ad-free for iTunes Match subscribers, while others get ads (including visual ads) every few tracks after an earlier ad-free day courtesy of Verizon.

If you’re keen on minimizing your exposure to holiday music, however, you can stay out of the stores and do most of your shopping online thanks to the links in our holiday gift guides – with additional gift ideas over on 9to5Toys.