Australia gets to dive into streaming music on Apple’s iTunes Radio

Nearly five months after Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) launched iTunes Radio in the US, the music streaming service has finally rolled out to a second country: Australia. The new homepage for the service is here.

iTunes Radio is free with adverts and features 100 DJ-curated and genre-focused stations. If you’ve subscribed to the iTunes Match service – which costs AU$34.99 (US$31) for a year – the ads are removed from the music stream. It’s now accessible to all Australians in the iTunes/Music app on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, PC, and Apple TV.

As noted by the Delimiter tech blog, iTunes Radio arrives very late to Australia, way behind global online music services like Rdio, Spotify, Deezer, and Pandora, as well as homegrown Guvera. iTunes Radio seems cheap compared to Spotify (AU$6.99 to banish the ads, or AU$11.99 per month if you go premium) and other rivals, but remember that Apple’s offering is much more limited and oriented towards casual listening rather than full access to a vast library.

(Editing by Josh Horwitz)