Over the past few days, Apple's iTunes Radio feature has been showing up on iOS devices in Australia, Canada and the UK despite being officially limited to U.S. users, suggesting an international rollout of the service may be coming soon.
Update: Reader Phil from the UK sent in a few screenshots of iTunes Radio as seen on his iPhone connected to O2's 3G network. In addition, we are receiving reports of sporadic availability in Australia. The following article has been updated to reflect this new information.
Screenshot of iTunes Radio taken off a UK iPhone operating on O2's wireless network.
A number of AppleInsider readers in Australia, Canada and the UK have noted that iTunes Radio is now showing up in the Music App on both iPhones and iPads.
According to reports from Canadian users, the iTunes Radio pane is accessible but not usable. Graphical assets may be scrolled through and will pull up relevant artist or song information if tapped, but streaming is so far unavailable. One user from Australia saw the service appear briefly earlier this week, but it has since disappeared.
In the UK, iPhone and iPad owners are seeing a bit more luck and note iTunes Radio is active and streaming in the region. Graphical assets are non-functional in some cases, but the service is streaming music over cellular data networks.
First announced in June of 2013 as a cross-platform Internet streaming radio service, iTunes Radio was launched in September and has seen moderate success in the sector dominated by the likes of Pandora and Rdio. At the end of October, Apple announced iTunes Radio served over one billion songs to customers in the U.S.
Screenshot of iTunes Radio on iPad as currently seen in Canada.
While Apple has yet to give official word of an expansion, Bloomberg last year reported that Apple was looking to expand the service to Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand in "early 2014."
It should be noted that international users saw intermittent iTunes Radio accessibility late last year without the service coming fully online.