The American corporation Apple announced the creation of an online radio that will be able to select music in accordance with the preferences of users. Now the company is negotiating with the copyright holders of music content to fill the new service.
Currently, there are similar services on the market, in particular Pandora and Spotify, which have become very popular. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that listeners have the opportunity to declare their musical preferences, in accordance with which the online service plays songs for each specific user.
Apple's service will also be able to connect to the iTunes media library and, based on the songs contained there, form a playlist for radio broadcasting.
Listening to Apple's online radio will be possible on iPhones, iPads, Macs, and possibly Microsoft's Windows computers. However, the service will not be available on devices with the Android operating system from Google.
It is not yet known whether listeners will be charged for using the new online service. As a rule, similar services make radio broadcasting free, accompanied by advertisements, for which they receive money. In addition, users will be able to opt out of pre-listening to advertisements for a certain monthly fee.
Since negotiations with record companies have just begun, if successful, the new project will enter the market only in a few months.
I would also like to note that the company wants to achieve special licensing conditions, including the absence of restrictions on the frequency of listening to a particular song, which can become a competitive advantage of its service.
The corporation has previously undertaken some additional initiatives in this market. For example, in 2010, she created a social network with a musical direction Ping, within which listeners could add friends and view recently downloaded and listened to songs. However, the current project is a more serious business undertaking by Apple than previous ones in this area.
