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Sony is launching its subscription streaming service in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand on Thursday afternoon.
The service, which is called Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity, is Sony’s play at gaining more traction in the growing digital subscription space. Sony launched its service in the UK and Ireland in December 2010 and has since expanded the service to France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
The cloud-based music subscription marketplace already has a host of players, including Rdio, MOG, Rhapsody and Spotify. Sony’s approach with Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity is slightly different from its competitors.
Like other services, users can access a catalog of on-demand music for a monthly fee. Sony has two pricing tiers:
Basic – At $3.99 a month, this plan offers users access to an infinite number of ad-free radio stations. Users can also create personalized channels by genre, era and mood.
Premium – At $9.99 a month, this plan offers users unlimited access to every song in the catalog (currently 6 million songs), as well as the ability to create playlists, designate favorites and access special pre-programmed channels and stations.
The pricing plans and options are similar to the offerings from other services already on the market, but Sony’s service differs when it comes to access.
Right now, users can access Music Unlimited through the PlayStation 3, the PC and from 2010 and 2011 models of network-enabled BRAVIA TV and Blu-ray players. In the future, Sony will also offer access on Sony portable devices and on Android and iOS devices.
When we spoke to Sony at CES 2011, the company pointed out that it wanted to address the living room before entering the mobile space. This is in contrast to most other streaming services, many of which put a higher priority on mobile over web or connected device-based support.
While we understand this approach — and are at least interested in seeing a focus on music discovery in the connected device space — we hope Sony can roll out its mobile offerings sooner rather than later.
We’ll be giving Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity a hands-on look later this afternoon once the service goes live in the U.S..
What do you think of Sony’s living room-centric streaming subscription plan?
