Apple To Charge For iTunes Radio

I you like listening to iTunes Radio, it's going to cost you soon. Apple just announced that as of January 28th, the service will become part of Apple Music and will no longer be free.

The upside to this is that it will also become commercial-free, even though it didn't run many commercials in its free form at only 1 per 30 minutes or so.

This makes sense for Apple for a couple of reasons. First, it consolidates almost all of its programming under one a single Apple Music banner. Secondly, since the platform is beginning to gain some traction with paid subscribers, why give it away for free if people are willing to pay?

Of course this might have been the plan all along, with a merge of the free and paid services 6 months or so after Apple Music's launch (iTunes Radio has been around for a couple of years).

And artists, bands, songwriters, labels and publishers will rejoice as another free service bits the dust.

All that being said, Beats 1, it's ambitious world-wide radio station, will still remain free of charge.

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Hip-Hop Listeners Embrace Streaming More Than Other Genres

Hip-hop listeners have embraced streaming more than listeners of other genres, according to the numbers from the various streaming services. It appears that hip-hop and R&B artists have far more total monthly streams than any other type of music, including rock, which was previously thought to be the genre of choice for streamers.

For instance, Drake's “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” had 48 million streams in one week, according to Nielsen, while Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” opened with 38 million and The Weekend’s “Beauty Behind the Madness” started with 57 million one week and 52 million the next.

Compare that with the top non-hip-hop artist, Mumford & Sons "Wilder Mind" at 15.4 million one week back in May, and it looks like streaming has a much different demographic than was previously thought.

No one has a good answer for why this is occurring, although many feel it has to do with increase in social presence from the major R&B artists. Some feel that Apple Music's Beats 1 radio service may be an influence, as an analysis of its playlists indicate that it skews towards hip-hop and R&B.

Whatever the reason, the numbers are a surprise and will warrant closer watching in the future.

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Most Played Artists On Beats 1 During Its First Month

There's been some grumbling about the music being played on Apple Music's vaunted Beats 1 global radio station after the first month. For one thing, it appears that the music is repeated in 12 hour blocks so it's not truly a 24 hour station.

Secondly, it's hardly global in that almost all of the songs played are from English speaking countries. Finally, the tastes of the DJs seem to lean heavily towards hip-hop and alternative.

Here's a list of the top Beats 1 artists and how many times they were played in the first month of the station.

You can find a lot more interesting data about the Beats 1 playlist in the Quartz article.

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Apple Music Up To 11 Million Users

The initial figures are in and after about a month, the number of Apple Music subscribers is up to 11 million, according to Apple.

While this may seem like a prodigious start to the service, that figure may be moot since all users are still within the 90 day trial period. The number that actually sign up for service after the trial ends will determine its success.

That said, industry insiders predict that the service will end up with around 20 million paying customers by the end of the year by virtue of the fact that iTunes already has 850 million accounts, complete with credit cards, and many of these are fans that automatically sign on to the latest offerings from the company.

Another reason is that Apple makes the service difficult to miss, as it's registration is front and center upon an operating system update if you've not already subscribed.

Apple Music's $15 a month Family Plan may be its greatest feature however, and while no official figures have been given, it's been reported that around 2 million have already signed up. The Family Plan provides separate accounts for up to 6 family members under the same $15 per month fee.

All that being said, Spotify continues to roll along with 75 million users, 20 million of which subscribe to the $9.95 per month premium tier.

Can Apple Music get people to change from Spotify or any of the other services? Industry pundits say that's difficult, as once a user has made a choice of services they're not likely to try another. Apple Music offers features the like Beats 1 global radio station that other services don't have though, so the logic of the past doesn't necessarily apply going forward.

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Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio Pros And Cons

Now that Apple’s new streaming music service Apple Music has officially launched, perhaps the biggest question remaining is how much the Beats 1 global radio station will add to it. If you haven’t checked it out yet (and you probably haven’t since it just live yesterday), Beats 1 operates 24/7 from Los Angeles, New York and London and is said to eschew the commonly used radio consultant data used by just about every terrestrial radio station these days in favor of the tastes of the DJs playing the music.

So what does that mean exactly? If we look at the big picture for the success of the station there are a number of possible pros and cons.

Beats 1 Pros

• Both terrestrial and online playlists are so tightly controlled today that you basically hear the same songs anywhere you go. Beats 1 can break this logjam with some fresh new music that can make listening to radio an adventure again as it was before consultants ruled.

• Beats 1 is free and available to everyone. You don’t have to be an Apple Music “member” to access the station, which is great for both exposure and an introduction to potential new customers for the service.

• It differentiates Music from the rest of the streaming pack. At least at the moment, there is no other streaming service that offers a similar feature.

Beats 1 Cons

• The big one is actually more of question as it’s the great unknown - Do people really care about curated content and music discovery from a non-interactive stream? And, do they care enough about it to make a difference? Read more on Forbes.

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