Sony Online Service to Take on iTunes
Sony is planning to launch their answer to iTunes, offering music, movies, books, mobile apps, and more… sometime in the future. No, they haven’t announced a date yet, but given their portfolio of PS3, PSP, Sony Reader, and how more and more is being integrated into their Bravia televisions, while the MP3 player market is dwindling, convergent devices are on the rise. (Of course, they’ll need to fix their smartphone offerings and get them integrated into their own platform as well –hello PSPhone, can you get to that already?)
It sounds like a great idea, and makes perfect sense for Sony to evolve as a media giant. The only problem we see? Yeah, sony. At every turn, they’ve gone for closed and consumer-hostile, and while you can succeed with one of those, you can never succeed with both. ATAC auto-DRM’ing your music, Sony CDs installing Root Kits, UMD’s on PSP, it’s a miracle (of money and will) they got Blu-Ray established.
If you’re going to copy Apple, Sony — and in this case we hope you do — copy it as closely as you can. Have liberal DRM with 5 (or more) devices that can be authorized, content that can be transported between devices. In other words, make it as consumer friendly as possible, even if it scares the traditional Big Media out of you.
[Business Week - thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
November 20th, 2009 at 11:16 am
They already do have a pretty liberal drm at least with games that with PS3 and PSP games
November 20th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Yeah not sure what the article is talking about. The PS3 is the most open console platform on the market. They allow you to put your own HDD (used to allow you to install another OS until the Slim), among other things. Heck you can play Blu-ray movies in smaller resolution on the PSP.
And how is UMD consumer hostile? It might not have been the best decision (in fact it’s horrible) but consumer hostile? Please.
November 20th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
This could be some competition for Apple’s iTunes. Sony Music is huge. But I’m glad I’m hearing less and less of Rhapsody, that **** sucks, I’m hoping Sony doesn’t copy that.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Sorry guys, Sony did us wrong in the past. ATAC and rootkits were unforgivable, and I stand by UMDs and getting people to buy more than one copy of a movie just based on device is hostile.
I use a lot of sony (TV, PS3), and they need to stop thinking like old-world media and start thinking like new.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hmmm. $14.99 a month for all that you want to listen, including on mobile devices. Why, TK, does that suck? Should it be free? Pandora is free. I know. But I really do not want a computer to decide my “playlist” and then to play the same songs over-and-over every hour, or two, no matter how much I have “seeded” the darned thing. Same thing for Slacker, last FM, etc. Bow-ring.
Oh, yeah, there also is Spotify coming to the U.S. Maybe. “Freemium” does not work. They will either change or die. And, I, for one certainly do not want that Peer-to-Peer nonsense. Use your own damned servers. Leave my computer alone.
November 20th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Sony is several years too late. In addition this service would have to offer music and movies from all of the major publishers.
November 21st, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Competition FTW! Maybe iTunes might consider subcription packages for music/video.
November 21st, 2009 at 10:21 pm
“it’s a miracle (of money and will) they got Blu-Ray established.”
I don’t understand what you mean by this. If I’m not mistaken, BluRay has shown that it benefits are more advantageous when compared to other media types such as DVD and HD-DVD in terms of storage, and resolution output.
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:47 am
Here at The Music Void we have explored this service and it’s threat to iTunes: http://bit.ly/6Si49d