Apple is quite evidently trying to improve its Pandora competitor, which hasn’t exactly proven to be the “Pandora Killer” everybody thought it would be. Still, iTunes Radio has established itself as a bona fide music streaming service. Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed in October last year that over 1 billion songs had been streamed through the service. Since then the company hasn’t given an update about iTunes Radio’s performance. To expand its horizons beyond music, iTunes Radio will now feature content from NPR.
The NPR station on iTunes Radio will be available 24 hours a day. It will feature live news as well as pre-recorded segments of various NPR shows, such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered. NPR is also going to add streams of its member stations from across the country in the coming weeks.
iTunes Radio isn’t showing the NPR station in search results just yet, given that the announcement was just made, it may take a few hours for it to come up. This could be mutually beneficial for both iTunes Radio and NPR. The latter gets access to digital savvy listeners, while iTunes Radio can now offer something other than music.
Apple is reportedly focusing on improving its music services. The company is rumored to be mulling a Spotify like on-demand music service, and it may also launch an iTunes app for Android. Though none of the rumors have been confirmed up till now.
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