Sony Starts Music Service in U.K., Ireland

Sony Corp. opened an online streaming-music service in the U.K. and Ireland and said it will roll out the platform to other major markets next year, as it looks to try to catch up with rivals such as Apple Inc. in linking electronics to digital content.

The electronics and entertainment conglomerate said that its Music Unlimited service, which opened in the U.K. and Ireland on Tuesday, will be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other European countries next year, though the company didn't offer details.

The Tokyo-based company will offer subscriptions to a library of six million songs. Unlike Apple's iTunes service, which sells copies of music and movies that are stored on hard drives or device memory, Sony's service will deliver the songs over the Internet to PlayStation 3 consoles, Bravia television sets, Vaio computers and other Sony products.

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Time Warner Cable-Disney Dispute, Apple's Reported $0.99 TV Rentals, Amazon's Subscription Service, and Sony's Efforts

I wonder if September 1, 2010, will be looked upon as the day in which we witnessed the beginning of the end for traditional pay-TV services. There is an interesting intersection of news today spanning the world of cable TV and Internet TV services, including Apple, Amazon, and Sony. The items:

• Time Warner Cable and Disney are expected to officially announce a new retransmission agreement, preventing Disney programming (including ESPN) from going dark after today. Good thing - you'd have a ton of ticked-off customers wanting ESPN's colllege football coverage starting on Thursday night. Our hometown paper - The Dallas Morning News has a good piece on what the contentious negotiations might mean for consumers. My take is to expect higher cable bills. In recent days, we've been asked a number of times about the pain threshold for consumers as they consider what they're paying for a triple-play service. Our analysis shows that consumers are still finding high value in their pay-TV services, and efforts by operators to increase their video-on-demand and high-definition offerings certainly help. In this recessionary period, we have found that - as consumers moved more entertainment into the home - that cable TV service has been viewed as a lower-cost alternative to paying high movie ticket prices and the babysitter expenses. It will be interesting to see, however, if we start to reach a pain point for consumers in what they're paying each month.
• Apple is expected to announce something today, and the speculation is rampant about new iPod models, a cloud-based iTunes service, an Apple TV remake, and the possibility of the availability of $0.99 TV show rentals.
• Amazon is reported to be launching a subscription video service that could potentially challenge Netflix in streaming older movie titles.
• Sony has launched Qriocity, a cloud-based movie and music service that feeds content into Sony's connected devices - TVs, Blu-ray players, and home theater systems
  
  
  
  
  

Who's going to control the "Digital Locker"?

We've been pleased to have Mitch Singer from Sony Pictures and the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) coalition speak at our recent CONNECTIONS events and speak about the potential of "digital locker" services. Roughly defined, these would be services that could authenticate and manage a wide variety of user-owned content in a virtual environment. One key element of the digital locker is widely agreed-upon digital rights management protocols, where multiple connected devices across a wide array of platforms can connect to content coming from multiple sources. The other key is the virtual storage and management of content that will become more important as the number of Web-connected media players (smartphones, tablets, TVs, Blu-ray players, etc.) proliferate.

The DECE is not alone in pursuing the development of digital locker solutions. The Walt Disney Company is promoting Keychest, which Disney CEO Robert Iger describes as a way to allow a consumer to purchase content and play it back on multiple platforms without having to worry about interoperability.

Now, there is the report from CNET that Apple is in discussions with the studios to enable iTunes users to store their content on the company's servers. Apple has told the studios that under the plan, iTunes users will access video from various Internet-connected devices.

We've taken an early look at consumer acceptance of a digital locker type of service, and have found that 30% find the idea highly appealing. I think that the trust issue is going to be more of a problem with the studios than the consumer!