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iHeartMedia Inc., the nation's biggest radio broadcaster, is starting its own on-demand subscription music services, upping the competition in an already jam-packed market.

Like Spotify AB, Apple Inc.'s Apple Music, Alphabet Inc.'s Google Play Music and rap star Jay Z's Tidal, the broadcaster's iHeartRadio All Access service will offer subscribers unlimited, on-demand listening to about 30 million songs. A cheaper option called iHeartRadio Plus will give listeners the ability to instantly replay songs they hear on the radio through the company's eight-year-old iHeartRadio app, and to save those songs so they can listen to them offline.

Both services, slated for launch by January, will be integrated with the streaming of the company's live radio broadcasts—a feature that will set them apart from the pack. iHeartMedia, formerly known as Clear Channel Communications, has 858 stations that reach collectively reach 269 million people a month, Its digital iHeartRadio service, counts 90 million registered users, who can use an app or website to listen to what's being broadcast on the company's own radio stations and more than 1,000 others.

Most people in the U.S. still rely on FM radio to discover new music, according to research firm MusicWatch Inc., even those who pay for on-demand services that feature celebrity curators and algorithms aimed at catering to users' individual tastes.

IHeartRadio's president, Darren Davis, said his team hadn't determined how it would price its new offerings, but added that the subscription plans were aimed primarily at "keeping people listening to our stations."

iHeartMedia earns most of its revenue from advertising, and paying for the subscription services won't erase the ads that air on the 2,000 stations streamed on iHeartRadio. IHeartRadio's custom stations, though, which users can create based on an artist, genre or mood—similar to Pandora Media Inc.'s popular service—will remain ad-free.

The broadcaster's jump into the subscription game follows a similar move by Pandora, which counts nearly 80 million active monthly listeners to its free service and competes with iHeartMedia for advertising. Pandora this month launched an enhanced version of its $5-a-month ad-free service and plans to roll out a $10-a-month unlimited on-demand tier by the end of the year.

But Mr. Davis said his team had been considering its next move ever since launching iHeartRadio in 2008, and has been conducting surveys for the past two years to gauge its listeners' interest in subscription music.

For record companies, the planned services are a welcome new potential source of revenue from terrestrial radio, which isn't required by federal law to pay royalties to labels or performing artists when it plays their music on the airwaves. Broadcasters do pay digital performance royalties to labels and artists to stream their music online, but the subscription offerings could help labels eke even more out of radio listeners.

Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 23, 2016 14:55 ET (18:55 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.