Skip to footer

iTunes 11.1 goes live, with Apple's new iTunes Radio in tow

iTunes 11.1 offers a range of new features, including the Pandora-like iTunes Radio. 

|
Apple
The new iTunes is here.
  • By Matthew Shaer

On Wednesday, Apple officially launched iTunes 11.1, the latest version of its venerable music player. iTunes 11.1, which arrives the same day as the new iOS 7, offers a range of new features.

Among them: Podcast Stations that allow you to order and more easily manage your podcast subscriptions; and a Genius Shuffle option that "finds songs with the same vibe and assembles a new playlist for you." 

But the feature that's drummed up the most interest is iTunes Radio, a new streaming-music service. Unlike Spotify, iTunes Radio doesn't allow you to pick and choose individual tracks to play. Think of iTunes Radio as a Pandora clone: You can create a "station" based around a mood (low-key guitar ballads, for instance) or an artist (The Rolling Stones, let's say) and Apple will pipe the tunes straight into your speakers. 

The Cupertino company also says that it will offer "curated" stations from top DJs and musicians. 

The whole thing, of course, is an effort to compete with the extremely popular Pandora, which has about 72 million active users. (Consider that in August alone, users listened to 1.35 billion hours of music on Pandora, an increase of 16 percent from the 1.16 billion hours logged in August of last year.) 

Over at CNET, Paul Sloan notes that an increasing amount of radio listeners are doing their listening online, whether on Pandora or FM/AM station websites.

"And if Apple can steal some of those people and inject new releases into the stations, it has a chance to also sell them more music," Mr. Sloan writes. "At least that's the bet. Sure, you can jump from Pandora to Google Play or iTunes to buy a song, but the process is clunky and, according to music execs, few people do it. With iTunes Radio, by contrast, there's a quick Buy button atop the track you're listening to." 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to iTunes 11.1 goes live, with Apple's new iTunes Radio in tow
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0918/iTunes-11.1-goes-live-with-Apple-s-new-iTunes-Radio-in-tow
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe