IHEARTRADIO LAUNCHES BETA OF TWO NEW SERVICES TODAY

Beginning today, listeners will be able to sample iHeartRadio’s two upcoming on-demand services: iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access. These services will be officially available in January, but the company launched the beta today for the next 30 days. iHeartMedia also announced that it is collaborating with Napster to power the services, and revealed what the monthly fee will be for both of them.

iHeartRadio Plus will cost $4.99 a month, and its features include:

Replay: Giving subscribers the ability to instantly replay songs from the radio and then return to the live radio station in progress;

Live and custom Artist Radio stations: now equipped with a save button, allowing subscribers to instantly save songs from the radio directly to their My Music playlist for playback any time;

Search: Search and play any song from a library of millions of tracks;

Unlimited skips: Subscribers listening to custom Artist Radio stations will no longer have a limit on the number of songs they can skip.

With Plus, listeners will be able to save up to 40 songs on a single playlist. After reaching that limit, users will be asked if they’d like to upgrade to All Access. All Access subscribers can save as many songs as they’d like on as many playlists as they create.

iHeartRadio All Access will cost $9.99 a month, and its features include:

Build subscribers’ personal music libraries: Completely create, control, and curate playlists from a library of millions of tracks;

Give subscribers total flexibility to listen to their music the way they want, when they want: With no playback cap and the ability to reorder, delete, and sequence their playlist experience as well as manage unlimited playlists;

Access offline listening: Subscribers can enjoy offline listening and take their music and playlists with them everywhere they go, even when they don’t have a data connection.

“10 times more Americans listen to radio every month than use a subscription service – so the debut of iHearRadio Plus and iHearRadio All Access powered by Napster is a unique opportunity to capture these non-music subscribers with an on demand service built around radio,” said iHeartMedia Chairman and CEO, Bob Pittman. “Whereas the LP, CD and music downloads are the ancestors of all current on demand services, the ancestor for our new on demand offerings is broadcast radio. By combining radio’s popularity and reach with interactive on demand functionality, we have created the first fully differentiated streaming music service for consumers.”

President of iHeartRadio, Darren Davis, also said “We are introducing a service like no other to tens of millions of consumers across dozens of devices, and also driving massive awareness of the new service to more than a quarter of a billion Americans a month through our broadcast stations alone, which presents a major revenue growth opportunity for our very important strategic partners — artists and the music industry.“