“The Japanese electronics and entertainment conglomerate said the Music Unlimited service, which debuted in the U.K. and Ireland on Tuesday, will be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other European countries in 2011, though it didn’t offer details,” Wakabayashi reports. “The company will offer both basic and premium subscriptions to a library of six million songs.”
MacDailyNews Note: It’s a different model (for now), of course, but for reference, Apple’s iTunes Store’s music library currently exceeds 14 million songs.
“Sony has long sought to replicate Apple’s ability to use iTunes to be the common software library and conduit for delivering music, videos, games and other content for its entire range of products,” Wakabayashi reports. “Sony software scans a user’s music library and collects the basic song and album data. Once that information is collected, Sony matches those songs with its online music database so users can stream music… However, users can’t play songs that are rights-protected Also, it won’t work for titles not found within Sony’s six million song database, which the company says includes songs from non-Sony labels. The service will work on only Sony products for the next few years.”
Wakabayashi reports, “The basic [monthly] service costs €3.99 (US$5.25) in Ireland and £3.99 ($6.18) in the U.K. The premium service, which includes the ability to call up songs on demand and gain access to regularly updated top 100 lists, costs €9.99 ($13.10) and £9.99 ($15.43) respectively.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Remember that poor kid with the vacant eyes in preschool who kept trying to jam that square block into the round hole?