iTunes Radio: Apple reveals Spotify rival - and says it will be free to iPhone and iPad users

Tech company trumpets new music service which will directly challenge Google, Spotify, Pandora and Last.fm.
Apple has unveiled iTunes Radio, an online streaming music radio service which could have up to 300 million users within a year, directly challenging a similar service from Google as well as smaller companies such as Sweden's Spotify, US-based Pandora and British-based Last.fm.
The company also showed off new iPhone software and new computers in a riposte to critics who have complained that its pace of innovation has slowed.
"Can't innovate any more my ass," said marketing chief Phil Schiller, announcing a forthcoming Mac Pro desktop computer which will be assembled in the US.
The new music service will be available free to hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users from this autumn when new software for the devices, called iOS 7, is released.
Chief executive Tim Cook was bullish over the position of the iPhone, amid complaints that the company has lost ground to Google's Android mobile software.
He pointed to Google statistics showing that the most-used version of Android dates from autumn 2010 to claim that iOS 6, released with the iPhone 5 last year, is the world's most-used mobile operating system.
He called the upcoming iOS 7 software "the biggest change to iOS [the software powering the iPhone] since the iPhone".
The software uses subtle 3D effects and adds elements such as wireless filesharing between phones as the feature race intensifies.
Cook also pointed out that there are already 300 million users of its iTunes service. That means it could steamroller its smaller rivals once it is released beyond the US.

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/10/apple-unveils-itunes-radio