Apple To Announce Streaming-Music Service
by Richard Tso
Audiophiles, this one’s for you. Pandora better take notice — Apple is getting into the streaming music business and has a monetization strategy to boot. Today at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), Apple is expected to announce its new music service that will offer highly-targeted ads in the form of interstitial audio clips to drive additional downloads. While the streaming music platform has yet to be named officially, many are already calling it iRadio, it is making quite a splash in the media the week before it is expected to be unveiled to the public.
According to AllThingsD, Sony Music has officially signed on for Apple’s “iRadio” service. This means that each of the three major music labels are now on board for the Pandora-like music discovery platform.
The ad industry has been waiting for a service like this that natively integrates audio advertisements seamlessly into the listening experience. These interstitial audio ads will play between songs, allowing Apple to offer the service for free to people around the globe. These types of ads are already offered on competing music streaming sites like Pandora and Spotify, but since it is Apple, marketers are excited about the click-to-download opportunities that will be more closely integrated into the flow of ad delivery towards conversion.
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