Apple Music Radio Comes to TuneIn
Apple
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As much as Apple is known for its relatively closed ecosystem, its services have long been an exception to that traditional “walled garden” approach. After all, as much as paid services like Apple Music and Apple TV+ exist to enhance the lives of iPhone and iPad fans, it’s also in the company’s best financial interests to offer them to as broad an audience as possible.
It was Apple Music that first broke the wall. Only six months after launching its streaming music service as part of iOS 8.4 in the summer of 2015, it unleashed Apple Music for Android as the first mainstream Apple app to grace the pages of the Google Play Store. While it was technically a beta, it wasn’t just a simplistic port of the iOS version. By the following year, it had added support for storing music on SD cards and a five-band equalizer, and it continued to forge its own path, introducing features such as a built-in sleep timer and crossfade support, the latter of which wouldn’t come to the iPhone Music app until years later.
When Apple unveiled Apple TV+ in 2019, it was similarly quick to embrace smart TVs, beginning with those made by its biggest smartphone rival: Samsung. Since then, it’s been added to more smart TVs, cable boxes, competing set-top streaming boxes, and even game consoles. While Android smartphones were conspicuously left out of this party for far longer than expected (especially considering Android TVs had access to the Apple TV app), Apple rectified that with a native Android smartphone app earlier this year.
Apple has also often expanded the reach of Apple Music even at the expense of its own ecosystem. When it debuted Apple Music Classical in March 2023, it was an iPhone-only affair. However, the next device to get the Classical music app wasn’t the iPad or Mac; Apple released Apple Music Classical for Android in May, six months before the iPad got its own native version.
Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is extending Apple Music in yet another new direction: bringing its radio stations to “a global network of home speakers and connected cars” via the TuneIn digital radio platform.
Although Apple partnered with Amazon in 2018 to bring Apple Music to Echo speakers, including access to its radio stations, this still technically ran through Apple’s own “app” in the form of an Alexa skill, developed using the Music Skill API that Amazon had launched that same year.
By contrast, this new TuneIn deal will mark the first time Apple Music’s radio stations will be available independently on another service. The deal will include all six stations, including the original Apple Music 1 (formerly Beats 1), plus Apple Music Hits, Apple Music Country, Apple Music Club, Apple Music Chill, and Apple Música Uno, the last three of which debuted in December.
However, much like its Android app, Apple’s move to embrace and extend Apple Music Radio isn’t merely a case of the company being generous with its offerings. Apple has been losing more ground than usual to Spotify lately, and it hopes that bringing its curated radio stations to TuneIn’s 75 million listeners will help to encourage more subscriptions.
Citing an analysis by MIDiA research, the WSJ notes that Apple’s market share among digital music streaming services has dropped to 25 percent, down from 30 percent in 2020, while Spotify has grown by nearly the same amount, from 31 percent to 37 percent during the same period. Apple is also said to be losing similar ground globally, now holding 12 percent of the worldwide market share.
Amazon Music is in third place, but it has been holding relatively steady over the past five years at around 21–23 percent. Meanwhile, YouTube Music, in fourth place, has grown slightly, from 9 to 12 percent.
Apple has offered generous free trials of Apple Music, especially for new Apple device owners, but it also faces the challenge of having no ad-supported option. Spotify can draw people into Premium subscriptions by starting them off with a free, ad-supported experience, and many find it’s easier to upgrade to Spotify Premium than switch to another service.
Instead, Apple uses its radio stations as a way to boost awareness of Apple Music. The digital stations offer human curation of songs, just like traditional radio, while Apple Music 1 also often has exclusive interviews with top artists, shows hosted by a wide array of musicians, plus exclusive “World Premieres” where artists debut their latest singles and participate in in-depth conversations about their creative process, upcoming projects, and more.
The WSJ notes that Apple approached TuneIn late last year to discuss the partnership. TuneIn’s Chief Executive, Richard Stern, was enthusiastic about bringing Apple Music Radio to his platform as it’s commercial-free and delivers a good listener experience. As part of the deal, TuneIn will provide a link inside its app and on its website, allowing users to sign up for a subscription directly on Apple Music.
