Apple is ready to add another war horse to the chessboard of music services.

Twelve years ago, Apple revolutionized the music industry by launching its popular music store/media player combination software, iTunes. The company, then helmed by 21st century tech leviathan Steve Jobs, was the first to offer a viable, legal, and profitable method that took advantage of the recent surge in digital music popularity, courtesy of the music piracy network, Napster.

Today, though, it looks like the age of digital music ownership–of listeners logging into the iTunes store, searching the database, and purchasing individual songs to play on their iPods–may be at an end. The new model is one of accessibility, driven by free, advertising-based streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora. And sensing a changing of the guard, Apple has retooled its music division to offer exactly what customers are looking for.

The California-based corporation is expected to introduce its new music streaming service–a still unnamed entity–to the world at their annual Worldwide Developers Conference later this month. But while Apple has more experience than just about anybody when it comes to securing music rights and preparing media for online distribution, a recent article from Bloomberg suggests that the company still has a way to go in another arena: advertising.

While Apple’s current advertising revenues come largely from their mobile app market, company insiders hint that a shift of strategy is in order for the new music service. Currently,  Apple distributes the ads it sells to third-party app developers, who bundle them with their software. Then, when a user purchases an app through the mobile store, specific ad campaigns are “selected” for them based on past purchases from Apple’s digital marketplaces.

Of course, such advertising strategies have their pros and cons. While specialized or targeted advertising takes into account the interests and past purchases of each customer, in turn increasing the chance that said advertisement has at success, it also limits the control that companies and brands have over their marketing.

Apple has struggled with this conundrum, losing notable advertisers due to its inability to guarantee consistent placement. That’s a model that will need to be revised prior to the launch of the new music service, which will reportedly mimic the customized radio station format of Pandora. Apple wants to offer the service to users for free, but in order to do that, they will need to boost their track record for maintaining marketer relationships.

Needless to say though, there could be good money in the service, and advertisers will likely be willing and ready to cash in. According to Bloomberg, Pandora generated $83.9 million in mobile revenue for the first quarter of 2013, and considering the well-established iTunes brand and the integration that Apple’s service will allow with its already-ubiquitous music store , it would be no stretch to see the company do similar–if not bigger–numbers once their service is established.