Apple’s iTunes Radio is now available

Apple is officially stepping into the online radio game today with the proper launch of iTunes Radio. The radio service is included inside of a new version of iTunes, 11.1, which is now available through Apple’s website. Like Pandora, iTunes Radio allows users to choose an artist to base a station off of, and will then intelligent play similar music that it thinks they might like. Ads are interspersed for non-paying users, but anyone with the $25 per year iTunes Match subscription will get to stream the music ad-free.

While the radio station lives exclusively in an iTunes tab for this brief moment, it’s also set to be released to Apple’s mobile devices later today through iOS 7. The iTunes update will actually be a necessary download for all iOS users looking to sync their devices, as it’ll be the only release that supports the new operating system. Alongside the radio station, iTunes is also getting a new feature called Genius Shuffle, a smart auto-shuffle that plays similar songs together based off of a user’s selection — though it can’t do much that iTunes’ Genius feature hasn’t already been capable of.