Sony launches streaming music service

Yesterday Sony fired a shot across the bow of Apple Inc. Sony Corp. launched a streaming music service, with the non-catchy name of Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity.

Apple’s iTunes Store, the world’s largest legal music retailer, sells music on a pay-per-download basic. Users download songs to their personal computers, from which they can then synch the music to their portable players such as iPods.

Sony’s new service uses more of a broadcast radio model, streaming music from their servers to end users. Users will access Sony’s music over the Internet for a monthly fee. While you won’t be able to own and save a copy of the songs to your computer or player, the service offers the advantage of a much larger library of music than is available at iTunes. Sony offers about 6 million songs, so far.

Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity launched this week in the UK and Ireland. Canada will be next, then the U.S., Australia and some European countries. Unlimited use of the service is GBP £9.99/month (about US $15). Theres also a cheaper service for GBP £3.99 which does not allow users to choose specific songs, though they may select a genre.

It will be interesting to see how this new service fares. I think the price may be a little high, but I like the idea. I’ve used many free streaming services, such as Pandora and Live365. I find that they expose me to music that I otherwise would not hear, because I would not have chosen it. I’ve discovered some new favourites through streaming.

However it does, I think this is a positive development for consumers. iTunes is becoming so dominant that it needs more competition. I hope Sony does well.