Hidden Radio Icons in iOS 6.1 Suggest Music Streaming Service from Apple Coming Soon

ipad radio icon

ipad radio icon

Apple has been widely rumored to be working on subscription based music streaming service for iOS devices. When Apple purchased LaLa, many believed that the company would introduce a streaming service. However, the purchase turned out to be to acquire talent to develop iTunes Match service.

Evad3rs released their ‘evasi0n’ unthethered jailbreak for iPhone5 on Tuesday and now 9to5Mac points us to hidden radio icons in iOS 6.1 release. Jailbreaking the iPad with evasi0n and then going through the files in Music.app revealed references to “radio button” with icons bearing resemblance to radio streaming icon in iTunes. Further, it was found that the button files are labeled with “buy” in the filename.

Many news publications like Bloomberg and WSJ previously reported on rumors about Apple working on Pandora competitor and cited music label licensing deals as being one of the hurdles being faced by the company. If those rumors are to be believed and with the hidden radio icons being revealed in iOS 6.1 is any indication then we could be seeing Apple announcing a new music subscription service soon.

Apple could be looking at allowing users to stream music tailored to their taste using the genius data and then integrating it with the iTunes store to allow purchase of favourite tracks. iTunes music store was recently made available in 56 new countries and the Cupertino, Calif. based company could now be looking at launching a music streaming service.

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