Sony Debuts Music Unlimited Subscription Service

Music Unlimited Launches

SONY has just launched a digital music subscription service, called MUSIC UNLIMITED, which boasts a catalog of six million songs from all the major labels. The L.A. TIMES reports that the service is only available in the U.K. and Ireland for the current holiday season; it launches in the U.S., CANADA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, ITALY and SPAIN next year.

MUSIC UNLIMITED costs 3.99 euros a month for the basic version, which streams ad-free radio much like PANDORA. A premium version that lets listeners play songs on demand costs 9.99 euros a month. Subscribers can listen via SONY devices that are connected to the Internet, including the PLAYSTATION 3 game console, Blu-ray players, VAIO computers and smart phones. While the service can work on cellphones that use GOOGLE's ANDROID operating system, it is currently not compatible with APPLE's iPHONES.

SONY's main competition for this service will be SPOTIFY, a music streaming service based that's established in EUROPE and about to launch in the U.S. next year, and PANDORA, largely because the latter's ad-supported version is free. In fact, subscription services have yet to really take hold in the U.S., where on-demand subscription services are said to be fewer than two million subscribers.

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