Report: iHeartRadio Not Fearful of Apple Music

Today iHeartMedia is announcing a new partnership with Virgin America that will put iHeartRadio-curated music streams in the ears of Virgin passengers.

Virgin will add streams titled Atmospheres, Dub & Dubber, Dyna-Mic Flows, Pop, Skip & A Jump, Lat-Indie, and Soul-igarchy to its inflight entertainment line-up. The streams were designed as a collaboration between iHeart and Virgin’s film and television development team, Virgin Produced. Virgin passengers can listen to the streams for free.

The launch comes as Apple rolls out its own music streaming service, Apple Music. iHeartRadio’s executive teams said it isn’t concerned about the launch of a new competitor.

“They sell music the way that people used to sell CDs and we curate it. There’s definitely a place for both of us,” said Michele Laven, president of business development and partnerships at iHeart.

According to VentureBeat, Laven is saying that iHeart, like Pandora, is predominantly a curation tool. Rather than giving consumers access to a broad library of songs that they can pick and choose from, iHeart curates for users. Other music streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, Tidal, and now Apple Music have made curation a feature of their main music library service.

But iHeart’s argument is it has access to more curators, because it leverages content from a network of 850 radio stations.

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