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5 Reasons Why Apple Will Announce iRadio At Monday's WWDC Keynote

This article is more than 10 years old.

Apple 's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) is Cupertino's chance to reward the faithful of the faithful. This year, developers showed their love by scooping  up the 5,000 paid seats in a record 90 seconds. What will Apple give in return?

New versions of OSX and iOS seem a given, and there is reason to think the look and feel of the mobile OS has been thoroughly updated and that the desktop OS will partake of a good share of the mobile goodness. Developers will parse all of the minute changes as well, since this software is foundational to what they do everyday. But for consumers, the big story will be what it looks like—what will it be other than flat?

Frankly, what developers (and consumers) most need from Apple are substantial improvements to its iCloud services. The extent to which iCloud "just works" is a sore spot for many developers who have been burned trying to get it to behave as expected in their apps. iCloud's disfunctions are responsible for a lot of one star ratings in the App Store and many developers have pulled back from offering sync services or integrated with third parties, like Dropbox, instead.

So, with this as a background, it is surprising, perhaps, that Monday's most high-profile announcement is shaping up to be a new, free streaming music service dubbed "iRadio." [Vodaphone already has a service called iRadio in Ireland, so it is unclear if Apple will in fact be able to call its product "iRadio" or will have to go the Apple TV route and name it simply "Apple Radio."] It is not immediately apparent what exactly what this will do for developers. And as contributor Mark Rogowsky has discussed in these pages, "this whole entry into music streaming seems like me-too-ism by Apple."

And yet, there are some benefits for developers within this announcement, as well as auguries of things to come for Apple TV that may get consumers (and investors) excited as well. Here's a quick rundown of the whys and the what's beneath:

1. It's the Best They've Got: Sorry to be a downer, but another streaming music service is not the next iPhone or an iWatch. And given reports about the delays in iOS 7 and the high number of preliminary builds of OSX 10.9, it may be that what will be presented next week is less impressive than Tim Cook or Jony Ive have been aiming for. So the fact that Apple has made deals with the three big music companies for a streaming service is likely its biggest coup to crow about.

2. It's All About the iAds: Music has become the skeleton key to marketing in the internet era. Tell me what kind of music you like and I can probably predict all kinds of other kinds of products you will find appealing. "iRadio," which is rumored to be an ad-supported free service, would be an opportunity for Apple to ramp up its iAds platform. Apple started iAds to support its developers with in-app advertising, so an expansion of the program with even more relevant user data is certainly of interest to WWDC attendees. The expectation of higher-quality advertising metrics could have been part of the sweetener for Apple's deal with the record labels as well.

3. A New Kind of "Media" App: One of the other things Apple could announce Monday (but there has been zero buzz about recently) would be the long-anticipated opening up of Apple TV to developers and the addition of a TV App Store. Let's assume that this is not happening (once again), but could "iRadio" be setting the stage for a new kind of content-centric app of the type that will populate the eventual TV App Store? Two of the advantages that Apple has over Pandora, Spotify and Rdio are the size of its installed base and of its developer community. Leveraging those two together, it is not hard to imagine Apple allowing developers to create apps that are the equivalent of radio stations, but each with their own content sources or curation methods (partaking from some common APIs) and each with its own balance of built-in monetization methods. This would foster a far larger and more diverse ecosystem of "stations" than Apple (or its competitors) could conceive of in-house and yet more consolidated than Pandora's channel-based-on-anything approach.

4. More Glue for the iPhone: On a more general level, "iRadio" will be another way to keep users in Apple's ecosystem for more of their time. Almost a third of Smartphone users listen to music on their phones, and a compelling built-in app could make that percentage considerably higher for iPhone users. For developers, the high level of attachment to and engagement of users with their iOS devices, the iPhone in particular, as an important factor mitigating against Android's growing market share. Anything that continues to foster elevated engagement levels is good news for developers.

5. Another Use for Your Apple TV: Finally, even without a full refresh to the Apple TV or the opening of a TV App Store, Apple could easily make "iRadio" a default built-in app for the Apple TV homescreen. The TV is an even better medium for iAds than the phone, because people are more likely to glance at the big screen while listening to music (and doing other things) than the iPhone in their pocket. And again, this would position "iRadio" as a precursor of what the eventual "iTV" experience will be.

So, "iRadio" is not the most exciting thing that Apple could announce (and I am still hoping that there are some surprises on the iOS, iCloud and Apple TV fronts) but there is some cause of encourgement here for developers and the investors that follow them. The big surprise could be a celebrity station host or two (a Bono, a Bieber or a Yo-Yo Ma, perhaps?) and some working examples of why this will be cooler than we might think.

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