Last night, Apple pulled the plug on iTunes Radio. I was up late working on my server and the stream just stopped. I keep iTunes in mini-player mode while working and had a Bright Eyes iTunes Radio station going when an Apple-logo showed and that was it…gone.
I’ve stopped using iTunes Match for its core-service. Earlier in 2015, I realized that iTunes Match was really a bad experience for me. I think it’s built for people with very small music libraries who live in cities and spend 80% of their time on WiFi. My iPad and iPhone stopped being synced with iTunes Match…it was eating 2.5 gigabytes a month of data ($20 cost to me on my cell phone plan) and I was streaming music from Match that I owned, that I had CDs for. At work, I turned it off because I had iTunes Radio. I could plug in a favorite artist and listen. It was commercial free because I was an iTunes Match subscriber. In 2014 and 2015, I re-subscribed to Match because of Radio, not the music syncing. I have an iPod Classic with 160 gigabytes of data and I have a 128GB SD Card that’s full-time job is being plugged into my Volkswagen Golf infotainment system. All 22K songs I own are available to me at all times without hitting a Verizon tower. On my iPhone are my core 30 playlists that I “shuffle” every once in a while with new Genius recommended tracks based on my top listened songs. The iPad doesn’t have music on it because I’ve never used iPad as a music machine. I read on it. That’s all.
iTunes Radio was great. Sure, it was free for a lot of people but $25 a year is what Pandora cost or at least what it used to cost..it might be more now. I like supporting Apple and I like using things that are built in to my phone, iMac, MacBook and now, CarPlay. yeah, I can open CarPlay’s music application and click the radio tab and see things I was listening to like a David Bowie radio station and it starts streaming. If I don’t feel like listening to my 21K songs, I have iTunes Radio in my car natively…it’s awesome! Well, I don’t have it anymore.
I pay for services so I don’t have to deal with advertisements.
I was going to write that I’m going to join Pandora and pay them to listen to music without ads but look at that. I can’t. Because I don’t have Adobe Flash.
I can’t afford more than $50 a year and I assume Pandora is less than that but I know Spotify is not so it would appear that we’re back to a life where I just listen to the music I already own which is fine with me. As you can see from the image below, I’ve checked out of ‘new music’. Unless an artist I love releases a new album, I don’t discover new music anymore. I liked iTunes because if I picked an artist from the 80s, it wouldn’t try to introduce me to an 80s-esque Hipster Band out of Brooklyn that doesn’t use any instrument that requires a power-outlet and other weird stuff. It plays music that I know. I’m afraid that Spotify or Pandora are going to try and push me into the modern age. Maybe not? I haven’t heard an Adele song or a Drake song and don’t plan on starting. I know who they are because they are mentioned on reddit sometimes. I like my own little world away from new music and Apple with their move of $10 a month Apple Music or not in order to use their radio service and with Pandora requiring I install Flash, I’m just going to stick with the music I own.
Besides, renting music or borrowing music for a fee just feels weird. I like to own my stuff or at least pay into something I’ll eventually own. You can’t take away the music on my NAS down in the basement. That’s mine forever.
Thanks Apple. I’m pretty disappointed in you guys on this one. I wasn’t a moocher getting radio for free. I was paying for it. I have to see on the way home how CarPlay’s Radio tab works now that it’s an Apple Music only feature.