Apple To Charge For iTunes Radio

I you like listening to iTunes Radio, it's going to cost you soon. Apple just announced that as of January 28th, the service will become part of Apple Music and will no longer be free.

The upside to this is that it will also become commercial-free, even though it didn't run many commercials in its free form at only 1 per 30 minutes or so.

This makes sense for Apple for a couple of reasons. First, it consolidates almost all of its programming under one a single Apple Music banner. Secondly, since the platform is beginning to gain some traction with paid subscribers, why give it away for free if people are willing to pay?

Of course this might have been the plan all along, with a merge of the free and paid services 6 months or so after Apple Music's launch (iTunes Radio has been around for a couple of years).

And artists, bands, songwriters, labels and publishers will rejoice as another free service bits the dust.

All that being said, Beats 1, it's ambitious world-wide radio station, will still remain free of charge.

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