Sky Songs is the new music streaming and download service from BSkyB which will be launching on Monday. Sky has been developing this music service for the past nine months and the service seems to be shaping up ok, but there isnt really anything to innovative here!
The Sky Songs service is not free to use, but it does have some decent features which might be useful to a certain type of client.
Sky Songs is web based
For most people services list Spotify aren’t able to be used at work, mainly because it is a downloadable application which most corporate IT departments tend to lock down. However, because Sky Songs is web based it should be a lot more accessible at work, unless your miserable IT department blocks the specific URL.
Sky Songs recommends music
Unlike services like Spotify, Sky Songs has the ability to recommend music too you. Once the Sky Songs interface is loaded you will see playlists created by its team of music journalists They range from introductions to new genres to topical playlists, such as memorial collections for recently deceased celebs. Sky Songs also includes a recommendation engine, powered by Gracenote, which will react to the songs you’re hearing with a decent suggestion of other tracks you might like.
You can mark your own favourites
With Sky Songs you have the ability to build playlists and then mark your favourites with a simple heart icon. Once you’ve picked a few favourites, the service will collate them for you, putting all your favourite artists in one place, as well as your most-loved genres and albums. Think of it as an auto-playlist generator, it’s much quicker than building a list of songs by hand, and means all your favourite sounds are just a couple of clicks away.
Sky Songs integrates with iTunes and Windows Media Player
Sky Songs doesn’t just stream music, you can use it to buy tracks to own too. They’re downloaded as DRM-free MP3 files, and will even drop into the correct place on your computer for iTunes and Windows Media Player to find them.
When you first set up your Sky Songs account, you’ll be asked which music management software you use. From then on, all your downloads will automatically appear in your existing music library, ready to be synced to your iPod, iPhone or MP3 player.
It offers more, for less
This is a biggie, and will certainly be the decider for some people: Spotify is already under pressure from cheaper streaming services, and Sky Songs increases the competition even more. It’s offering unlimited streaming from £6.49 a month which also gives you one £6.49 album or 10 tracks to download and keep. Compare that to Spotify’s £9.99 price tag, with no extras included.
Spotify has been in the press a lot lately with their move into the US market imminent, new funding, plus they have launched their iPhone application (but still yet to be accepted).
Today the news is that Spotify has partnered with with Tom Group a major Chinese media conglomerate to launch the company’s popular digital music streaming service in China. The tie-up will create a localized version of the software to introduce to provide music over computers and mobile phones, Tom said in a statement to Reuters. Spotify’s current services are only available over computers.
“Tom will work toward unveiling a localized version of Spotify in Greater China in the near future,” the statement said.
Right next to downloading, music streaming is the next big thing in terms of entertainment on the net. It’s really starting to pick up with many people launching their own private radio stations. While the vast majority are in too small a niche to actually make money, the big companies will.
Spotify are the biggest at the moment. They are the ones to go to for video and music streaming. Recently however, Microsoft announced that it would launch its own music streaming service. This was originally intended for July but has become delayed.
Several other companies are now catching up quickly with streaming services already launched or in the works.
TechCrunch.com contacted Microsoft and this is what they had to say for themselves:
We don’t have much detail to disclose on this subject but what we can share is that, in the coming months, MSN is planning a new music service in Beta via its Music channel in the UK.
“At this stage we won’t be confirming the details behind this but more information will be available soon and will be communicated in due course.”
At any rate, Microsoft had better hop to it if they want to succeed in what it becoming a crowded market. If they let users get too comfortable with one source (as we have see happen in the past with iTunes) then they will not want to move onto any future service provided by Microsoft.
Previously we have written about Spotify’s upcoming Android application as well as their iPhone app, but currently Spotify is fast approaching its “payment due” day.
Spotify has been able to attract a huge amount of users but their free section is being used a little too much and they are now finding difficult to generate enough income to pay their major label partners by the date due.
Currently Spotify seem to be trying to increase incomes in three key areas:
- A premium service is getting much more attention from Spotify as it adds additional features beyond just “ad free” to attaract paid users.
- Spotify is rolling out by far its largest advertising format to date. It will feature wall to wall billboard ads on its music player that appear after just 5 minutes of inactivity as part of a major 3 Mobile ad campaign. (However, if I’m inactive on Spotify I tend not have the application open on my screen its just in a tab at the bottom, thus the ads showing will obviously have no affect whatsoever.
- To buy more time, the startup is on the hunt for another $40-$50 million in venture capital funding. (paidContent)
I personally use Spotify and find it pointless to upgrade to their premium service because I receive unlimited listening time, tracks, search and playlists. I know they are finding it tough to gain additional revenues and maybe moving their product into iPhone and Android markets is a better bet to increase revenues fast enough.
So where are the best places on the net to listen to music for free without downloading anything? Well we have put together this list so that everyone can find the music they want to listen to straight in their browser.
Grooveshark – Grooveshark is a music streaming service that is currently ad supported. Grooveshark has a huge catalogue and there is no need to download any software to use their service. Unlike Spotify for example Grooveshark is straight in your browser and they have a great design to match.
We7 – We7 is a UK based ad supported music streaming service in which lets users stream music straight from their site. We7 has some great exclusive content from some of the major artists here in the UK and all over the world.
HypeM – Hype Machine is a music blog discovery tool in which showcases some of the best free music available on the net. Hype Machine pulls together music blogs and then allows users to play the music via streaming it in their browser.
AudioTube – Audiotube is basically YouTube for music videos. Audiotube allows users to easily search through their huge database and find the music videos they want to stream for free. Videos are streamed inside the browser and all videos also link to a download store in which you can purchase the music. However with the downloading they dont hook into iTunes and Amazon which they really should.
Muzu.tv – Muzu.tv is very similar to Audiotube but they seem to have a bigger catalogue, but apart from that on brief glance the only difference is the colour of the websites. Muzu has a lot more sharing and playlist options compared to Audiotube, thus making it look very similar in layout to Dailymotion.
