Apple on Thursday activated a number of curated iTunes Radio stations playing nothing but Christmas tunes for the holidays, including tailored genre-specific track lists ranging from children's sing-alongs to Latin.
In time for the holidays, Apple's holiday iTunes Radio stations offer a wide selection of Christmas standards, pop releases and even songs for children. The feature went live earlier today.
This year, Apple has split holiday tunes into ten stations: Children's Christmas Holiday Sing-Along, Country Holiday, Classical Holiday, Holiday Classics, Holiday Hits, Latin Holiday, Rockin' Holiday, Soulful Holiday, Swingin' Holiday and The Sounds of Christmas.
While only a few stations are included in the iTunes Radio featured list, searching for the term "holiday" or "christmas" brings up links to the above stations, which can then be added to users' My Stations selections.
For users currently not subscribed to Apple's $24.99 per year iTunes Match service, iTunes Radio's holiday categories contain interstitial advertisements, most of which are correctly themed for the season.
Holiday stations for iTunes Radio are available in the Music app for iOS and iTunes for Mac and PC.
45 Comments
Oh man, I live in the city. If I want to hear Christmas songs all I have to do is open my window and something will drift in from the mall or the town square.
Cool. News stations for a service that hardly exists outside the US. Anyone else feels this radio is still born like ping?
It's quite popular here is Australia.. Plus. Every Apple Store plays music from iTunes Radio to promote it.
Yes, but still no iTunes Radio outside of AUS or USA - what on earth is taking so long?
The fact that iTunes Radio is not still not available for nearly all of the world after all this time suggests to me that it will not happen now. Let's hope that the same situation does not apply to the roll out of Apple pay to countries other than the USA.