This is going to be a very quick post because I'm working on edits for Phoenix Burning and I promised my editor they'd be in her inbox when she arrived at work on Thursday (today).
I finally caved in and downloaded iOS 7. One of the first things I did was try out the new radio station feature. I believe it's free with this latest version of iTunes too.
It's easy to setup. I just went with their pre-existing stations, but I believe you can create your own. I chose four stations.
Overall, I like it. For me, I consider it a plus that there's a buy button on the screen with the price. It's probably going to be bad for my budget, but if I hear a song I like, I don't want to mess around to buy it. Here, I don't have to. One touch shopping.
I like that it is like a radio station and that I didn't have to create a playlist and have it shuffle through it. Sometimes I get tired of some of my playlists and want new music, something I don't already own.
There are two minuses that I've noticed so far. The first, and the biggest one, is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of variety. I've played the same station three days in a row and all three days probably 80% of the songs are ones I' heard yesterday or the day before. That's never happened to me with Pandora.
The other thing I'm not wild about is that there are ads. So far, they've been few and far between, but I don't know if those will increase as Apple moves forward or not. I'd hope they could make enough money on music sales to lose the ads completely. Still, one ad over hours of listening is a satisfactory ratio and I can live with it.
I give it 3.5 stars out of 5. If they get a wider variety of music, I'll bump up my rating.
