One of the highlights of this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference was the launch of the long-rumoured iTunes Radio, a streaming music service that takes your tastes into account in order to play tracks that are likely to be in line with your tastes.

With iTunes Radio, Apple has essentially upgraded its Genius jukebox-style feature, which combs your library and builds genre-based playlists, or suggests recommended artists and tracks based on what you’re currently listening to.

The difference with the new service is that it can access the entire iTunes catalogue, which currently includes well over 26 million tracks. Sony, Universal and Warner are all on board.

The service will be free for users in the US (still no word about international users) and will use both text and audio ads to support the free streaming. iTunes Match subscribers won’t receive ads, making the subscription service a bit more compelling.

What is striking is that iTunes Radio looks a lot like Pandora. On iOS, you create your custom stations and give a thumb up if you like a song. In the corner of every song, iOS shows a buy button to allow you to buy it via iTunes.

Apple’s iTunes Radio will arrive sometime in autumn and should coincide with the release of iOS 7. In Addition to iOS devices, Apple TV will get iTunes Radio too.