With Spotify hot on its heels, Sony has joined the busy, cloud-based music market with Music Unlimited (powered by Qriocity). The service has a substantial 7-million song library from the big four labels, two competitively priced monthly plans ($4/month and $10/month), and plenty of ways to listen, including Sony PSPs and PS3s, Bravia HDTVs, home theater systems, and even an Android app. Whether these assets will be enough to overcome the service's glitches, limitations, and late-arrival is unclear.
Music Unlimited faces daunting competition. There's the iTunes pay-per-song juggernaut, which looks even stronger with cloud-based availability and the forthcoming iTunes Match service for $25 a year. The now-public Pandora Radio is flush with cash and owns streaming Internet radio and some killer tech, namely the Music Genome Project, an in-depth taxonomy and complex algorithm that reads hundreds of musical "genes" and like-sounding songs. And, when it comes to paid subscription services, Sony will have to challenge comparably priced but device-agnostic services Napster and Rhapsody.
With no shortage of competitors, Music Unlimited needs a double-platinum debut to stay on the air. What has today is a good start, but hardly number one with a bullet. The web-based interface is impressive, as are the ways to experience the content. That may not be enough to persuade consumers to stray from established services, but, paired with Sony's brand in consumer electronics and gaming, Music Unlimited has a shot.
The Setup
Sony offers two plans: the Basic, $4 per month plan, and the Premium, $10 per month plan. Both plans allow you listen to music on multiple devices (see my review of Music Unlimited Android App), transfer existing music into the cloud, and create your own mood-based channels; however, the $10 plan is the play you want because it offers customizable playlists, your own personal library, and unlimited playback (a must-have for a subscription service). I began testing Music Unlimited using the 30-day free trial of the Premium account. The sign-up process was straightforward, though I was a bit annoyed that I had to submit billing information to begin the trial; this is something to watch if you decide not to embrace the service.
The Sync
While Music Unlimited is browser-based, some functionality is Windows-specific. For example, I wanted to use Music Sync to transfer my existing library into the cloud, but the feature requires a Windows-only plugin that you can only install for one computer per account (an issue if you have music scattered across several desktops). I transferred one album (Beck's Modern Guilt) onto my Windows desktop and installed the plugin. While Music Sync identified all thirteen tracks in my iTunes library, it only transferred the first two. I have tried pausing and restarting the transfer, rebooting my machine, and reinstalling the plugin, to no avail. Compared to Amazon's Cloud Drive, Music Sync needs work. I would love to see Sony take a page from Amazon and make transferring music into their cloud simpler, more reliable, and browser-based.
The Library
Despite the trouble I had getting my music into Sony's cloud, I found most of what I wanted in Sony's library. Sony claims 7 million songs from all four major labels, much more than Pandora (800,000 songs), though a far cry from Apple (18 million songs), Amazon (16 million), Napster (12 million), Rhapsody (11 million). Using market and library leader Apple has the baseline, I searched for the top 10 singles and albums on iTunes, and I found them using Music Unlimited. Less mainstream choices were hit and miss: For example, I found Beirut's just-released East Harlem, but I could only locate six songs from Sufjan Stevens—a small fraction of his ten albums worth of material.
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