Sony Announces iTunes Competitor 'Music Unlimited'
Though the Sony Walkman used to be the king of portable music, the company hasn't lead in that industry for years. In an effort to change all that, the company announced a new service to rival Apple's music behemoth, iTunes.
Music Unlimited, Sony's new music service, is a bit different than iTunes, though. Instead of purchasing and downloading music, Sony has opted to let you stream your music from anywhere. This relieves users of the burden of managing hundreds, even thousands of music files and transferring them between devices.
"We are excited to offer our customers high quality, cloud-based entertainment experiences across many of Sony’s network-enabled devices," said Kazuo Hirai, President of Networked Products & Services Group, Sony Corporation. "Services 'powered by Qriocity' will revolutionize the way that users play, listen, watch, share, communicate, learn, discover and create their digital entertainment content."
Music Unlimited is powered by Qriocity (pronounced "curiosity"), which allows Sony to stream music to users . Qriocity is able to stream to more than just computers; it can stream music to just about anything that connects to the internet. That includes internet-connected TVs, Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console and even some Blu-ray players. Sony plans to have it built in to its 2010 line of BRAVIA TVs, Blu-ray players and home theater systems this year.
Obviously the service will cost money, but Sony is being coy about the price and how much music people will have access to for that price. Music Unlimited is supposed to be available "by year's end."
