The rumor mill is always loaded with potential Apple products, from iPhone and iPad rumors, to crazy things like buying Twitter. Sometimes these rumors pan out, other times they are simply someone trying to grab as many page views as possible.

With the iPhone announcement days away, most rumors would tend to be pointing towards various aspects of said release, but one happens to be something totally different…and that is that Apple may be putting together the licenses needed to release a Pandora-style Internet radio through iTunes.

This isn’t a Spotify type streaming service, the rumors say, where users pay a subscription fee and get all the music their ears can handle. Instead, it’s supposedly going to be ad based, using iAds of course, and will be more in line with Pandora in that it will use your existing likes (purchases through iTunes one assumes) to tailor stations to you.

At first glance this seems odd. However after mulling it over I’ve decided it really could be interesting. Pandora is an app so many people I know use. They have no desire for a Spotify or Rdio subscription, and just want free radio tailored to their likes. So why would Apple just sit back and let Pandora have all these users?! If Apple does release such a service it immediately gets put on hundreds of millions of devices…from Macs, to iPhones, iPads, iPods, and possibly Windows PC’s (if it’s through the iTunes software). That’s a good number of ears and eyes. Even Pandora’s stock took a hit when the mere rumor of Apple looking to compete surfaced.

Again, right now this is just a rumor, who knows if they’ll actually go through with it. Chances are they have looked at this idea in the past, chances are they’re looking at it now…whether it sees the light of day, well that’s another story.

Would you be interested in such a service? If you use Pandora would you ditch it for an Apple alternative that’s built-in to all Apple products? Could they co-exist?

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