Is Apple Radio Free?
The simple answer to this would be that apple radio is free. However, it should be kept in mind that apple services are not available in every country or region, so wherever it is available, the music will need subscription but the broadcast radio wouldn’t have any fee charges.
Apple Radio is one of many services offered to customers, and is a great way to hear your favorite tunes. Pandora Radio is another great option to listen to your favorite tunes, but it is again restricted to selected markets. It also appears that users may be able to listen to AM radio stations via Apple Music too.
At the moment, listening is not available in every country or area, and not every station is able to stream via the app. When Apple launched its Apple Music streaming service back in 2015, it also founded Beats 1, an Internet radio station you can listen to for free within the Music app, which comes with the iPhone.
In December 2015, there were rumors that Apple Inc. was going to extend the Beats 1 branding and bring a sister station to the streaming music service, after Apple registered the trademarks of four more audio hardware manufacturers, which are all beating the Beats stations. After Apple Musics head of programming Larry Jackson claimed the streaming music service was the worlds #1 music station, Media.info warned readers not to trust claims by Apple Inc that do not have listening numbers. In March 2017, Apple claimed that the streaming music service is the biggest radio station in the world, beating out every other music station for simultaneous listeners.
Unlike iTunes Radios stations playlists, The Next Web says Beats 1s overall goal is to curate interesting new music, be it new talent or fresh music from established artists. You can also listen to Beats 1, the stations free Apple Music radio, or radio shows that are streamed as podcasts on your iPhone. You can also listen to free Apple Music Radio on a WatchOS device, no iPhone required, if you pair the Watch with your AirPods or any other Bluetooth headphones.
| Apple Radio Service | Description |
|---|---|
| Apple Music Radio | Includes free ad-supported stations, such as Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country. However, Apple Music itself is a paid subscription service. |
| iTunes Radio | This service was previously available and offered ad-supported free radio stations. However, it was discontinued in 2016 and is no longer available. |
With the Apple Watch, you are a lot more limited in Apple Radio stations, so you are better off listening on an iPhone or iPad for full free-play capabilities. You can listen to Apple Music 1 live free, but you cannot stream past shows on-demand until you sign up for Apple Music (or grab Apple Music for free to see if it is worth it). If you do not have a paid subscription, Apple Music will still let you listen to music that you bought, ripped, or downloaded onto your device, but you will not have access to all of the features that Apple Music offers, such as offline listening.
Spotifys Every is not just about streaming music, it is about keeping it available for you when offline, although you will need to subscribe to it in order to access offline listening, along with other premium features. Billed as the one-stop shop for all of your streaming music needs, Apple Music allows you to access both a vast library of songs, and your personal library of purchased music from iTunes, through its integration with iCloud. The streaming service also offers personalized recommendations tailored to your interests, Internet radio (in the form of the Apple Music 1 radio station (formerly Beats 1), among others), the ability to save music to a device for offline listening, expertly-curated playlists, Siri Assistant integration on iOS devices, and features such as lyrics viewing.
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Spotify has also built a set of features Apple Music cannot match just yet, such as collaborative playlists and the ability to engage with friends in addition to sharing a playlist. Both Spotify Premium and Apple Music have features to discover music, but Spotify seems to have built in music recommendations from algorithms built into all its features, along with curated playlists created for nearly every mood or situation. Using algorithms, Apple Music suggests similar artists, songs, or curated playlists, based on a combination of your past listening habits and new artists Apple Music thinks you may enjoy.
Instead of using algorithms to try and figure out what people like, an approach used by Pandora and Spotify (among others), Apple hired music experts and used their knowledge and tastes to create playlists and streaming stations. Browse is another way of finding new music, but Browse relies on top-100 lists, new releases, and featured playlists instead of your listening history.
MyTuner Radio gives you an enormous amount of live stations from across India that you can listen to. There are a few 24 hour Internet radio shows, featuring live DJs, that are aired all over the world, and you can jump on a live stream or listen to past recordings. If you are looking to listen to regular FM radio, there is arguably no better option than iHeart Radio, which gives you free access to over 850 stations around the country (as well as an enormous podcast library) that you can search or browse.
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Since you can stream live radio as well as selected Apple Music stations for free, and if you are satisfied with your selection, paying is not really necessary. If you would like to listen to Apple Radio, you will have to first open up the Apple Music app on your device, find the radio icon, and tap on it to begin listening to radio.
The best part about TuneIn Radio is that you can select what you want to listen to according to your area and your local language. You can either stream whatever is on Beats 1, or you can choose radio stations to view different genres from which to choose, like News and Sports, Alternative and Indie, Workout, Holiday, and many others.
Having a wide variety of music services to choose from online — including an increasing number of premium, ad-free services by conventional radio stations — is good news for subscribers, because it means that they have to continue innovating in order to reach and keep their audiences.
YouTube Music is included with the YouTube Premium subscription, which also removes ads on YouTube videos, at $12 per month. Apple Music is free on Verizon, and if you are on a 5G Get More plan, Apple Music is free the whole time you are on that plan, which is nice because then you have got Apple Radio and Apple Music. MyTuner Radio is simple to use, and is available free in Apples app store, but with a paid subscription ($249 per month), you will get to cut out ads, enjoy music equalizers, and you can use Car Mode, which makes the user interface easier to navigate when driving.
What are Apple Music stations free?
Anyone with an Apple ID can access Apple Music 1, as well as its radio stations, for free. However, the genre- and artist-based radio stations will contain advertisements and have a song skip restriction. You can find your own stations that you made in the Radio tab after they sync over.
Is Apple radio any good?
This platform’s music offerings are comparable to those of its competitors in terms of price and volume. It boasts great sound quality and a huge selection of supplementary material, such as radio and movies. They do, however, need to iron out a few kinks, including their awful music discovery mechanism.
Why isn’t Apple Music free?
According to reports, Segal claimed that it wouldn’t be economically sustainable, and Apple is adamantly against ad-supported services. We believe that a commercial service won’t necessarily generate enough revenue to support a healthy ecology as a whole. Furthermore, it would be in direct opposition to our fundamental privacy convictions.