Sony is launching a cloud-based music service that plays on its Bravia HDTVs, Blu-ray DVD players, and PlayStation 3 consoles. The service, called Music Unlimited Powered by Qriocity, is available for those networked Sony devices and is launching in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
The service, already available in Europe and Canada, costs $3.99 monthly for the basic version, streaming radio-like music in channels, along with “like” or “dislike” feedback so the service can tailor itself to your preferences.
Premium Service
A premium service, at $9.99 monthly, gives access to additional channels, plus the ability to search through the six-million-song database, available on demand and configurable by customizable playlists. The music has been licensed from the libraries of the big four record companies as well as from independent labels. A 30-day free trial is also available.
A cloud-based service means a customer can listen to the streams from any supported and networked device, compared to downloading the music to a specific device. Other cloud-based services, including Pandora, Rhapsody and Spotify in Europe, have had varying degrees of success. Pandora, expected to go public in the near future, boasts about 80 million listeners.
Qriocity is expected to become available at some point for mobile devices, but Sony has said TV-based entertainment systems, game consoles, and Blu-ray players are the initial targets because they are a less-saturated market.
A web site, music.qriocity.com, offers a music sync feature for the service. It searches a user’s personal music library and will sync playlists to the cloud’s library, so the same titles can be accessed from the service — and from any supported device. Music can be added to a user’s online library either by using the search function on a PC and syncing, or by searching in the cloud.
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Qriocity first rolled out to…