Jailbroken iPad reveals Radio Buy buttons, could reveal plans for streaming music service

Yesterday, hacker group evad3rs released an untethered jailbreak for iOS 6.1, finally freeing iDevice operating systems from the limiting chains of Big Apple. The jailbreak is fairly easy to apply, and only takes a few minutes. After the jailbreak spread around and people had time to play with their newly liberated operating system, a potentially new, seemingly unused feature was unearthed. Spotted over at 9to5Mac, a new radio button labeled as “buy” was discovered in the iPad Music app.

Using i-Funbox, a file manager and browser for iOS, some buttons appear (the green icon seen in the above image toward the bottom left) with an icon that depicts a radio tower emanating radio waves from the top. The iPad Music app doesn’t currently have radio functions, so the existence of these icons could mean that radio functionality is in the iPad’s future. However, 9to5Mac noticed that the radio buttons are labeled with the word “buy” in the filenames, which could point to Apple planning some sort of premium radio service.

Now, in 2013, a “radio” service on a mobile device usually isn’t just standard AM and FM stations featuring local sports or Howard Stern, but rather a service like Spotify or Pandora — something more like intelligent playlists. So, these “radio buy” buttons could point toward Apple’s own music streaming service, something that wouldn’t be too surprising considering Apple has always had an affinity toward music (the iPod, iTunes, the failed Ping experiment, etc.), and c’mon, do you know anyone who doesn’t use Spotify or Pandora at this point?

In October of last year, we learned that Apple was planning their own music streaming service, set to release in Q1 of this year. Now, with these radio buttons surfacing, it would seem that report’s “early 2013″ prediction could hold some weight.