Get Ready for Online Radio From Apple

After a decade of iTunes, Apple looks poised to delve into another form of online music distribution: Internet radio. The service, likely to be unveiled today as the company's annual developers conference begins, could shepherd new consumers into the online-radio world, experts tell the New York Times. As it stands, iTunes is by far the biggest service in paid online music, holding 63% of the market to Amazon's 22%. The streaming service is expected to let customers stream songs for free, with revenue coming from ads.

But it'll have to be impressive to beat out Pandora and Spotify, says an analyst. "It’s going to have to innovate," he notes. "It can’t just be Pandora with an 'i' in front of it." The developers conference is also expected to herald a preliminary version of the next iOS, overseen by Apple's top hardware designer. The new version is set to have a simpler look: Expect solid backgrounds and more white space, the Wall Street Journal reports. Efforts to make apps look like actual objects—address books and notepads, for instance—will be dropped, while inter-iPhone video- and photo- sharing gets a boost. 9to5mac has an early look at what iOS7 will look like. (More Apple stories.)