By Michael Muchmore Though they may seem like a phenomenon of a decade ago, podcasts are more popular than ever: According to a recent USA Today article, Apple recently surpassed 1 billion subscriptions for podcasts via iTunes—and that's just one podcast client app. Newer players like TuneIn Radio are seeing heavy podcast engagement, too, so it's no wonder that Apple decided to beef up the podcasting feature in iTunes 11.2 (free) the latest iteration of Apple's killer media-player software.
The previous release of the Swiss army knife of desktop media playing software, iTunes 11.1, also got a feature that goes head to head with TuneIn Radio and the like—iTunes Radio, which also tries to emulate the success of Pandora while leveraging Apple's installed player software. Those are just what's new in this one-stop-shop for all you media enjoyment needs. Read on to learn about the many other ways iTunes can please not only your ears, but also your eyes.
New iTunes Podcast Features
iTunes was already a more-than-competent podcast finder, player, and subscription manager before this update. In iTunes 11.1, Apple added one podcast feature, Podcast Stations—really just a way to organize your podcasts into similar-themed material. You can decide which podcasts to include in a station, set the order of play, how many recent episodes to include, and whether to include video or just audio. It's a convenient, if not momentous feature.
The 11.2 update adds even more conveniences that make podcast consumption and organization that much better. Apple's support page for the iTunes 11.2 update summarizes these podcast improvements as follows:
Quickly find episodes you haven't listened to in the new Unplayed tabBrowse episodes that are available to download or stream in the Feed tabSave your favorite episodes to keep them on your computerEpisodes can now be automatically deleted after you play themIf you keep on top of your podcasts religiously, the All Unplayed tab is a worthwhile feature. But if, like me, you're not a constant podcast listener, you may not like how it dumps all your podcast subscriptions into one list with no way to filter them. The auto-delete feature is actually pretty useful. Why would you want the media file taking up space on your hard drive after you've already played it? You can always re-download it if you really want to listen again. I should note that another music player I've been using lately, MusicBee, has had most of these features for a while, in addition to a helpful podcast directory, but the old standby Windows Media Player and the geek favorite VLC have nowhere near this kind of control over podcast consumption.
At first I missed the new Feed tab in iTunes 11.2, since it's not a main tab of the Podcast view, but a sub-tab of the My Podcasts view. The real point of this new sub-tab is to separate all incoming podcast episodes from the also new Saved and My Episodes sub-tabs. Feed lists all episodes from the podcast, My Episodes omits those you've already played, and Saved, obviously, only includes those you've specifically marked for saving, either with a right-click option or by choosing Save Episode from the arrow menu up top next to the episode name. If all this puzzles you, it may be because you won't see Podcasts in your Library dropdown menu until you've actually found and added a podcast from the iTunes Store search. Give it a shot—podcast listening is better than ever with these new tools.
iTunes Radio
When you first take iTunes up on its offer to try Radio, you'll see featured DJ stations across the top, and a box with a big plus sign in the bottom where you can enter your own favorite artist to start a station a la Pandora. Apple's website claims more than 250 curated stations, but I only saw 24. I started by playing DJ @iTunes: Electronic. At first I was worried that there was no Skip button, but, thankfully, the Fast Forward button next to the Pause button in the player does in fact let you skip. It even tells you how many skips you have left when you start running low. After six skips (that's how many you're allowed within an hour), the Fast Forward button became grayed out.
If you have a $25-a-year iTunes Match subscription, you won't hear any ads interrupting your iTunes Radio listening; that compares well with the $47.88 a year you'd pay for an ad-free Pandora One subscription, which doesn't include the cloud-based music locker of iTunes Match (see below). After disconnecting my Match account from iTunes, I did hear one advertisement, for the iTunes Festival in London—far less obnoxious than Pandora's localized ads, but Apple's just starting in this game. Later, I saw a full-window video ad for a Nissan car.
Pressing the star button next to the pause button shows Radio that you'd like to hear more similar tunes, the skip and star buttons take the place of the explicit thumbs up and thumbs down buttons in Pandora and Rdio. There's no reminder that you've previously liked a song, as you get in Pandora's thumb icon, which turns blue. Of course, there's a priced Buy button right next to the song name in the song info panel. The scrubber appears here, too, but you can't use it to advance or rewind within a song, as you can in Rdio.
When you go to create a musician- or song-based station of your own, iTunes actually proposes more genres in a dropdown of thumbnails. Start typing, and you'll see a top hit, then artists, and then songs listed. Once you select the artist or song to base your station on, you'll see a larger album cover and a discreet "Allow Explicit" option button to the right, which you can enable or not, depending on your level of prudery. Clicking on the album cover drops down a colored panel similar to the one iTunes 11 introduced for albums in your library, but for Radio it shows listening history with track info, a buy button, and a share button that generates a link or email.
The dropdown that shows the Up Next list only shows history—you don't even get to see the next track in order, as you can in Pandora. I was impressed, though, that you could go back and re-play any song in your history. Most Internet radio services only show you the next track in line. Clicking the > that appears next to the song name at the top offers new, radio-relevant choices—New Station from Artist, and New Station from Song. What you don't get is artist information or lyrics, which other services like Slacker offer.
My custom station, based on British electronica group Orbital, cranked out the expected artists—Boards of Canada, Ulrich Schnauss, Aphex Twin. Less-mainstream options such as renaissance choral music and Bix Beiderbecke also engendered some relevant selections, but the library or algorithm played some romantic vocal music on the renaissance channel. I was only mildly impressed with the Apple DJ's electronica selections—they fell short of the excellent SOMAfm Internet radio stations. But the sound quality was all I could have hoped for. In all, iTunes Radio is a feather in iTunes' cap, though it's short of the full subscription service we've long been clamoring for. It's an especially appealing perk for existing Match subscribers.
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