At this point, the magic 8-ball is turning up “Yes” to the question whether or not Apple will announce their new streaming music service, iRadio, at next week’s WWDC keynote at a rate of almost 100%. A new report not only confirms the magic 8-ball’s whisperings, it says Apple is restructuring the iAds team to help support the new product. But don’t expect iRadio to launch at WWDC: you’ll have to wait until iOS 7 lands in September.
According to BusinessWeek, Apple is reportedly restructuring and redirecting talent from its iAd business to support iRadio. The reason Apple is doing this is because iRadio is a Pandora-style service, supported largely by ads for free music listening (although, of course, iTunes downloads of the songs being played are only a tap away). By using their own iAd team, Apple will be able to help businesses build campaigns around the iRadio service.
While iRadio looks like a certainty for WWDC, though, it won’t launch there. Not only are not all of the deals in place, but iRadio will require deeper integration than Apple just throwing up a new app on the App Store, so it’s widescale release will have to wait until the launch of iOS 7 in the fall. Fingers crossed that developers with access to the iOS 7 beta will get to play with it a little earlier.
Source: Businessweek
