@Eric: Thanks for pointing that out. I guess my point was less about the actual codecs and more about the openness of the ecosystem: i.e. there are ways to get downloaded music into iTunes and onto an iPod without going through the iTunes Music store. If everything is streamed, there is no necessity for Apple to open up the native device player to other streaming providers. So while there may be competing streaming services apps, it will be much harder for an artist to go direct-to-fan with their own offering.

It may be possible to enslave iTunes as a Playdar content provider, which would allow any stream that it can do to be controlled by any web site, and to be interleaved with streams from other providers.