iTunes Radio officially launches today in Australia, which is the first country outside of the United States to receive the free streaming service. The free ad-supported streaming service allows users to listen to and create their own streaming radio stations that pull songs from the entire iTunes library.
The service features pre-created radio stations for popular artists such as The Beatles, or for popular genres like Dance and Hip Hop. Users can also create their own radio stations based on a song, an artist or a genre. You can customize the created station to focus on playing hits, variety, or to discover new music. Customization will continue while you listen, as skipping a song will mean similar songs will be avoided as iTunes Radio learns more about your music tastes.
iTunes Radio is free to all iTunes users, and is supported by ads that are infrequently added to the stream. Users can also pay for an annual subscription to iTunes Match for $34.99, which removes the ads.
The free service does however come with several restrictions. Being an online streaming radio service, there is no ability to pick and choose the exact track you want to play. For the same reason, there is also no offline playback mode. And due to licensing restrictions, users are limited to 6 skips per hour.
iTunes Radio is now available on all devices that currently support iOS 7 and the iTunes software, including the iPhone, iPad and computing devices.
