According to Bloomberg, the launch will occur during the first quarter of 2013, and currently Intensive negotiations with record labels are under way. The subject of discussion at the moment is a division of advertising revenue, sources said. The service, besides generating virtual radio stations based on an artist or genre will also offer the option to purchase songs without necessity to download the songs onto a local device. Music stored in the cloud in this case would be reached via the Internet.

Although iTunes was a revolution in online music purchases, services where the music is not purchased, but rented are becoming increasingly popular. Recently, Microsoft [re]introduced the Xbox Music service with interesting abilities, like direct streaming of music and purchase of the same [The Zune music service also had this option, but Microsoft has decided to get away from the Zune band and name - Ed]. The future of Internet radio could be defined by this Apple project as Pandora's shares are already falling rapidly. This could get worse once Apple launches their service. Looks like this will be the playground for the big guys, Microsoft's Xbox Music service and Apple's products with an “innovative” name like iRadio.

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