- Europe Now, US Soon
- Potentially Most Powerful iTunes Rival
- Rolling Out to Smartphones, Smart TVs, Game Consoles, STBs and Blu-ray Players
Get the adrenaline and smelling salts ready for this one: the record labels have successfully launched their own streaming music subscription service, and they’re soon extending to battle in one of the toughest markets around — the US.
And the kicker is that it looks good.
Along with most of the world’s major record labels, Sony started its own music streaming service, “Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity,” which launched in the UK and Ireland in December and in France, Germany, Italy and Spain over the weekend. It is currently available on Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console, Blu-ray players, Bravia TVs, PCs and soon smartphones running Google’s Android.
Qriocity is Sony’s existing platform for video distribution to its devices, and at CES the company said that Qriocity would extend its reach to most older Bravia TVs and the entire installed base of PlayStation 3s, but support on Blu-ray players will vary because of the hardware requirements involved.
Sony and the other labels have largely relied on start-ups and third-parties to license their content and distribute it to users in a way users found engaging, a model we never quite understood here at The Online and Internet TV Reporter.
It’s about time the labels leverage their own content with their own offering.
At least partially acknowledging this time delay, Tim Schaaff — the chief executive officer of Sony Network Entertainment, the division of Sony overseeing Music Unlimited — said “We took a long time looking at music before jumping in,” at MIDEM over the weekend.
Music Unlimited currently counts more than six million songs from Sony Music, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music and others, giving these labels the ability to offer their own content in their own fashion, no middlemen involved. It’s a model that’s desperately needed as CD and other physical revenue continue to drop.
The service also helps the labels take control back from other digital music stores, namely Apple’s iTunes. Apple, according to the labels, has too much control over the market. In September, Apple said it had delivered 11.7 billion song downloads, and over the weekend it delivered its 10 billionth app download.
The Quick and Dirty
Music Unlimited costs €9.99 ($13.67) per month for a premium service and €3.99 ($5.46) for a basic plan.
It won’t be going the free ad-supported route because “free doesn’t make any money.”
The basic plan will give users the ability to skip an unlimited number of songs so they can discover and listen to the music they want to hear. The basic plan serves mainly as an “infinite ad-free radio station” where users can listen to “dozens of personalized channels” categorized by things like genre, era, user mood and tastes.
The premium subscription plan — the service offers a one-time, 30-day free premium trial — lets users listen to every song in the catalog on demand, create personalized playlists and access the continually updated Top 100 channels that also serve similar to music charts.
The service has its own recommendation engine and tailoring options, allowing more personalization as users listen longer.
Playlists, preferences, radio stations and other information can be synched across any device supporting the service. Users can also synch playlists and media from other services, such as iTunes, giving them access to their existing music collection across any compatible device.
A Bloody Legacy
Music Unlimited will require users to pay to access songs and add them to personal libraries, restricting access to devices connected to the Net.
Unlike its big competition in the space, Music Unlimited will not feature two very popular features: a free version or song downloads.
Taking this road means walking down a bloody path, strewn with the bodies of streaming services like BSkyB’s Sky Songs, Lala, Spiralfrog and many others. “There have been a lot of dead bodies along the way,” Schaaff said.
Looking at that legacy and the existing competition — from iTunes and Amazon MP3 to Spotify and Pandora — Sony says it has one key leg up in the situation: an estimated 350 million connected Sony devices in the marketplace by the next two years.
The other trick up its sleeve is the Sony unit Gracenote, which has an extensive and powerful database for recognizing and recommended music based on a user’s tastes and listening habits. At CES, Gracenote also demonstrated a feature that could tailor music within a user-specified genre to their mood and it is being incorporated into the offering under the SensMe brand.
Gracenote had one of the best booths and presentations we saw at CES, and if Sony fully leverages what exists there, Qriocity and Music Unlimited could be destined for great things.
Benefits of Being a Brand
While users may not always be able to name their favorite Sony or Universal artist, they recognize what it means when a venture is backed by, or comes from, all of the major music labels.
Just look at the 2009 effort for online music videos, Vevo. The Vevo site was a reaction to two major trends: 1) music videos were popping up online and gathering massive views on YouTube, a partner on Vevo; and 2) TV channels like VH1 and MTV laid most of the groundwork in making music videos a cultural phenomenon but had failed to successfully transition their younger users to these models or keep up with them on the Web.
Vevo reached 50.6 million viewers in December according to comScore. Jean-Bernard Levy, the CEO at Vivendi SA, which owns Universal Music, said that its total number of unique users is closer to 60 million and that Vevo has secured premium advertising for the majority of its slots.
Sony’s clout also helps because of its knowledge of the cloud. Sony has successfully delivered Web-based content to a wide variety of its devices, from Blu-ray players and TVs to smartphones and game consoles, so the service won’t have many of the start-up jitters.
Money Matters
According to the IFPI’s latest annual report, piracy is rising, as are Web sites and forums that link to content accessible by pirating technology. The report also said that the hundreds of digital music services licensing content from the major labels have done little to stem piracy.
That being said, global sales of music via the Web and mobile phones grew 6% in 2010 to $4.6 billion. It is unclear if this slowing growth — when compared to 2009’s 12% growth and years before — is due to an increase in piracy or if the market is simply maturing.
Taking both views into consideration, the labels have said that Music Unlimited is targeting the 85% to 90% of consumers who have not yet participated in digital music services. Western Europe seemed to be one of the easier markets to gain a foothold in, and Omnifone, which powers the service’s technology, is based in the UK, making the initial launch market an easy pick.
Sony said that it wanted a broad test market where its brands were well known enough that it had a chance to make sure the service was feasible and potentially successful before it begins a multi-million dollar marketing effort.
It appears that Sony was pleased with its first markets and feels like the service has what it takes to compete in some of the toughest and most crowded markets around.
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