Connect with us

Mobile

Sony Snatches Xbox One Dreams with PS4 Spotify App

Published

on

Sony, makers of the PS4 gaming console, might be dashing any hopes Xbox One owners ever had of listening to their Spotify subscription while gaming without keeping an earphone plugged into their smartphone. This morning, Spotify and Sony announced PlayStation Music, a new joint system that’ll let PS4, PS3 and Xperia smartphone owners stream from Spotify’s catalog long after Sony has killed its own service.

Sony announced PlayStation Music on its PlayStation Blog this morning. When it launches this new PlayStation Music area will be how PS4 users stream from Spotify on their console. Sony says it and Spotify have a number of different features planned, but one of them is playing music in the background while a game is running.

Spotify

Sony partnering with Spotify is interesting for a number of reasons. First, Spotify is the world’s largest subscription music service. It has over 30 million songs and is pretty much synonymous with subscription music at this point. In fact, it’s so big that Apple felt it needed to compete directly with Spotify by adding iTunes Radio and last year’s update to the iPhone and iPad.

Sony’s PlayStation Blog post says that it plans to detail what features will be available “exclusively through Spotify on PlayStation Music.” It also describes Spotify as PlayStation Music’s “exclusive partner.” Some are interpreting this as the PS3 and PS3 only offering Spotify for the foreseeable future. That’d definitely be a big blow to the Xbox One, which only offers Pandora and its own Xbox Music service. Sony hasn’t yet clarified that part of the announcement yet, so we’re a bit unsure at the moment.

Second, Sony has spent the last few years pushing its own subscription music service called Sony Music Unlimited. With this deal announced, Sony Music Unlimited is being discontinued in each of the 19 countries that already support it. Sony Music Unlimited lets users stream songs directly to their console or Xperia smartphone. The company is effectively shutting down Music Unlimited immediately, from February 28th until March 29th users who already have a Music Unlimited subscription will get to stream as much as they want free of charge. The service will close permanently on March 30th.

Sony shutting down Music Unlimited will be seen by most as a way to help stave off financial losses. All told, Sony killing the service isn’t exactly bad for its users. Spotify, is available in more countries and has a much larger library than Sony Music Unlimited ever did. What’s more, Spotify is completely cross-platform, which is exactly what PS4 owners and Sony needs. Sony gets to guarantee its PS4 users an exclusive experience with specific features and already have companion apps and an ecosystem with millions of playlists already available.

In fact, the only losers here seem to be owners of Microsoft’s Xbox One. For years they’ve been able to stream and download music for $10 a month through Zune and Xbox Music. At best Spotify will have features that are exclusive to the PS4. At worse, Spotify won’t come to the Xbox One at all. This a big hole in Microsoft’s entertainment offerings. Xbox Music has millions of songs for users to stream, but it’s not nearly as robust as Spotify. There’s very little in the way of curated music playlists. It’s app for Microsoft’s own Windows Phones is still clunky. Xbox Music on iPhone and Android is outright travesty.

No one is arguing that potential Xbox One buyers might decide to pick up a PS4 just because it has Spotify, but it could push those who were on the fence into buying into Sony’s ecosystem instead of Microsoft’s.

The PS4 is on store shelves now for $399. Sony says PlayStation Music with Spotify will arrive in the Spring.

18 Comments

18 Comments

  1. Charles

    01/28/2015 at 9:22 am

    More signs of Sony going bankrupt!

    • Stamps

      01/28/2015 at 11:18 am

      XBox Music is currently at 38 Millions Songs.

    • Jecht Sin (@Michelasso)

      01/29/2015 at 5:04 am

      lol. What a bunch of sore Xbox fanboys. This is great news for the PlayStation user. Everybody is happy. Deal with it.

      • Brian Gerhardt

        01/29/2015 at 7:29 pm

        It’s great news for playstation owners that are ignorant to what this really means and terrible news for playstation owners that have half a working brain that can put pieces together. All this means is sony is going bankrupt and can’t continue to fund their own failing music streaming service, so they ask another company to come in and save the day so ps owners can say they have some sort of music source on their system. Because xbox has xbox music and Pandora plus I can play all my own music and movies from my external hard drive which sony still for some odd reason hasn’t made that available on the ps4. Guess how many exclusive games per year ps4 will have once sony goes bankrupt……

        • ButthurtXboxFanboys

          01/30/2015 at 8:58 pm

          So many butthurt xbox fanboys. You guys have been claiming ps4 has been going bankrupt since ps4 launch. This has been the longest bankruptcy in history! If Music Unlimited is not making money why would they keep it? So even if they had MS money and Music Unlimited was doing poorly, they should keep putting money into it? You xbox fanboys make no sense.

          • Brian Gerhardt

            01/31/2015 at 7:53 am

            Is it really our fault your not smart enough to do your own research?

          • jca

            01/31/2015 at 10:32 am

            This is nice for the few games i dont want to hear the music for , but I am happy without it.

          • Frank

            07/16/2015 at 7:15 pm

            Real gamers buy both and don’t bitch about the other because of the others harware and software limitations. The both of them are near identical. Yall are just dumb arguing about this when you can be gaming.smh.

    • ButthurtXboxFanboys

      01/30/2015 at 9:02 pm

      Man this sure is the longest Bankruptcy in history!

    • aaron

      03/08/2015 at 2:25 pm

      Please provide proof that PlayStation is going bankrupt. Last I heard PlayStation was the only profitable part of their business. They have been unloading parts of Sony that are not profitable. They are talking to sell off xpria and TV parts. But please provide proof that PlayStation is going bankrupt. Sony is still selling ps4 at 400 , they are making money per console. Thankfully the PR of Xbox did horribly. Sony has sold 20.2 million consoles. This out paced their own ps2 sales . so again how is PlayStation going bankrupt they are making $13 profit per console. Plus games licenses and other services. So how is all this a sign. You talk about us to do research but you lack doing your own. I’m still wondering how a company is going bankrupt when they make $13 per console they sold 20.2 million that’s a lot of money.

  2. Dee

    01/28/2015 at 11:12 am

    Spotify will be on Windows 10. Windows 10 is coming to Xbox one. Any questions?

    • shiva

      01/28/2015 at 12:21 pm

      If this is true story then Spotify is digging its own grave or is joining a company which is inline to go bankrupt.

      Spotify started in 2008 and has 30mil probably songs in catalog by now.
      Xbox music app launched in 2013 and has 38millon songs. Xbox music app just started and in less than a year…..

      Spotify native clients are windows and windows phone along with other OS.

      Sony is yet to have it. Xbox already has it. By the time Spotify comes out on PS4 (as put i this article – PS4 only) Xbox will have god knows how many updates for its app.

      There is no way Spotify will miss out Windows 10….. if true a big funeral is awaiting.

  3. fred

    01/28/2015 at 12:34 pm

    Anyone on the fence who wants media will go for the Xbox One, as well as all the apps it has the media player, this allows you to play all of your own media, music, movies etc in just about any format and the Xbox One let’s you add USB 3 hard drives of unlimited max size that you can store all your media on.

    It also has DLNA for streaming.

    None of this is available on the PS4.

  4. Chelsey

    01/28/2015 at 5:15 pm

    Never heard of Spotify until now.

  5. Rich

    01/29/2015 at 1:35 am

    Attack of the fan boys

  6. Syed Hussain

    01/29/2015 at 5:14 am

    Haha … whatever happened to unbiased factual reporting … The person who wrote this article is clearly a sony fanboy himself … did Spotify officially state that it is exclusive to sony consoles and Spotify won’t support xbox one? No … but the editor is drawing his own conclusion acting as if xbox one is doomed … The final paragraph makes it very obvious of his fanboyism … ps4 sells for $399 FYI … aka please buy it and make me happy …

  7. IAN

    02/28/2015 at 3:52 am

    MEH MEH MEH IDK LOL LATAZ XBOX KEY>BOARD WARRIORS

  8. xXMegaFaggotXX

    08/23/2015 at 5:06 am

    Sony is offloading companies like Vaio because they can’t support them, so they can avoid debt while xbox being the tech overlord it is not giving af about it because their profits are not going anywhere. It’s not me being a fanboy, It’s just facts. Spotify and Sony together could go many directions, could be good for both, or good for none, good for spotify, good for Sony, or bankrupting one of them. But gimmicks are flying from both windows 8 was lame windows 10 is making people wait for an email for updates just to get people to try harder to get it. Spotify is Sony’s new b*tch. Nintendo… um (actually is doing pretty good as far as ideas go) nvm. But PC master race people are probably doing the best right now even though it’s microsoft.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.