Sony’s Qriocity music streaming service running on a TV.
Sony and the world’s major record labels are launching a music streaming service in Australia that will challenge Apple’s iTunes – but it may be too late to save the industry’s shrinking revenues.
The news comes as new figures released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) revealed global digital music sales had risen by just 6 per cent last year – half the rate of the previous year – while the overall music market had shrunk 8 or 9 per cent.
Sony’s service, called Qriocity, was launched recently in several European countries and is available on Sony’s PlayStation 3 games console, Blu-ray disc players, Bravia televisions, PCs and some smartphones.
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Pricing details for Australia have yet to be announced but in Europe users can stream an unlimited number of songs, from various devices, for €10 ($13.70) a month.
“We’re happy to confirm the Qriocity music service will be coming to Australia. We expect the service to be live in the first half of this year,” Sony Australia’s technology communications manager Paul Colley said.
But the IFPI figures paint a scary picture for the music industry, as it appears that growth in digital music sales has levelled off and is not enough to offset the shrinking sales of physical CDs.
The music industry globally is trying to convince governments to introduce legislation that forces ISPs to warn and potentially disconnect people who continue to download music illegally.
Sabiene Heindl, general manager of the anti-piracy arm of the Australian music industry, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), said the Australia-specific figures would be released in the coming weeks.
“The ARIA [Australian Recording Industry Association] figures should come out in the next couple of weeks; we will then know the situation for Australia, but I suspect it will be a similar picture. It ain’t good,” Heindl said.
She added that globally, according to IFPI, recorded music sales had declined 31 per cent in about six years, which she said had led to a number of small indie labels closing down.
With Qriocity, Sony provides more than 6 million songs from studios including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, EMI Music and Warner Music Group. It effectively cuts out the middle men and gives the studios more control over revenue.
The move also helps record companies take on Apple’s iTunes Music Store, which in February reported its 10 billionth song download.
But the road to digital music success has been littered with dead bodies, with Nokia for instance axing its “Comes with Music” service in 21 countries in recent weeks.
“There have been a lot of dead bodies along the way,” said Sony Network Entertainment chief executive officer Tim Schaaff.
Sony’s service stands a better chance of survival, he said, because the number of connected Sony devices in the marketplace would be about 350 million in the next few years.
Sony’s Music Unlimited will, like iTunes, require a payment to access songs and add them to personal libraries. While iTunes allows users to access downloaded songs offline, streaming services require a user to be connected to an online device.
Music Unlimited will rival streaming and download services already on the market, including cloud-based sites such as Spotify, whose majority of users access the service for free in return for sitting through ads.
Sony unit Gracenote is providing technology for the service that will recommend music to users based on their tastes and listening habits.
The biggest obstacle to the success of Music Unlimited is piracy, Universal Music head of digital Rob Wells said.
Hundreds of online music services licensed by record labels have done little to stem illegal downloading.
Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha
