Sony announced a new streaming music service at their CES press conference yesterday for many of their product lines, including televisions, computers and game systems. Today they had Qriocity Music Unlimited running on PS3s and other devices on the show floor, giving us a first taste of what the service will be like when it launches later this year.
This service will stream music from the ‘cloud’ to your devices, from one library that will be shared across all of them. For example, your songs from your computer will go into your library, and from there you’ll be able to stream the same songs on your PS3 or Sony television. There are over 6 million songs in the streaming library now and it will continue to grow. I was told that even international music can be found in the song offerings. You’ll never be at a loss for new music as the system will learn from your listening habits and automatically suggest other music it thinks you might like. Hitting the up or down directions on the PS3 d-pad will let you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ a song that was suggested, helping the system fine tune its recommendations.
A Sony rep told me that Qriocity can look different depending on what device it’s on. Of course, they’ll have all the same service elements, but they’ll be represented in slightly different ways for each device. The PS3 version is streamlined for SIXAXIS control, and it seemed pretty easy to navigate. There are rows of boxes that represent musical genres, classifications and even moods. Within the menus, among playlists and other options, is a search function that will look through all 6 million songs to find what you’re looking for. You can then add from your search results to your library.
The idea of a cloud-based, streaming library of your music that is shared across many of your devices is definitely attractive. Of course, you’d have to be a Sony product fan to get the most out of it, but I think similar services like Spotify will have to sit up and take notice. I could definitely see myself using this on my PS3, at least.
Expect to see Qriocity Music Unlimited running on PS3s, Bravia TVs and Vaio computers soon, and PSP a bit after.
