Review: Dialing in to iTunes Radio
- Some 11 million people have signed up for iTunes Radio
- Guest DJs include Katy Perry and Jared Leto
- Don%27t ditch Pandora yet
LOS ANGELES — 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.
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.
Follow Jefferson Graham on Twitter: @jeffersongraham.