Spotify and PlayStation team up for new music service

PlayStation Music will launch this spring, replacing Music Unlimited, which will shut down in March

When you got up this morning, was the first thing you thought to yourself, "You know what the world really needs? Another music streaming service! Because the five bajillion we have already just aren't enough." No, that wasn't what you wanted? Well, sorry buddy, because that's what you're getting. And you're going to like it!

Spotify and Sony revealed on Wednesday that they have entered into a partnership to launch a new music streaming service on the PlayStation Network called, wait for it... PlayStation Music.

It will essentially allow Sony's PlayStation Network users, of which there are 110 million at last count, to link their accounts to Spotify and stream music while gaming. 

All they have to do is sign up with their existing ID and then subscribe to Spotify’s Premium service. It's unclear, however, whether Spotify will require any payment for that service. Meanwhile, existing Spotify users will also be able to listen to their curated playlists through their PlayStation device, if they own one.

"We know how important music is to our community of gamers, and this partnership combines the best in music with the best in gaming," Sony wrote in its blog post. 

Details about the service are scarce at the moment, including what it will cost or if existing Spotify users will have to pay extra to use PlayStation Music, but Sony says that it will reveal more about  "some of the other great features that will be available exclusively through Spotify on PlayStation Music" as it gets closer to its launch date.

What the company did reveal is that PlayStation Music will be out sometime this spring, and will be in 41 markets around the world, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

The new service will launch initially on PS4 and PS3, as well as Xperia smartphones and tablets. It will also be available on all of Spotify’s supported devices.

Failed venture

By partnering with Spotify, Sony is admitting that it can't go it alone with its own streaming service.  Unlike Google, which has two streaming services, Sony is shuttering Music Unlimited, its existing music streaming service.

It will close in all 19 countries on March 29, 2015.  But, fear not Music Unlimited subscribers: nearly all of the countries that had that service will be among the 41 markets where PlayStation Music featuring Spotify will be available at launch. 

Sony is also making Music Unlimited free for the last month, from February 28th through March 29th.

Teaming with Spotify will give Sony's music streaming business a big boost, as Spotify recently revealed that it has 60 million active users, 10 million of which are paying. Given that Sony shuttered its service, we're assuming it probably had fewer subscribers. I've reached out to Sony for comment.  

Streaming on the rise

This news also comes at a time when streaming is on the rise, and music downloads are starting to fall.

In 2013 streaming rose 32%, to 118 billion songs streamed, while digital track sales suffered their first year to year decline, dropping by 6%, according to Mary Meeker's 2014 Internet Trends report.

And, with that rise in streaming, so have revenues, as songwriters in Europe actually earned 13% more from Spotify than they did from iTunes in the first quarter of 2014.

With iTunes, where people pay per album or per song, artists receive a certain percentage of that sale; by some estimates around 20 cents per $1.29 album sold. For streaming services, though, artists are paid every time their song is streamed. While that may only mean around a penny per stream, that can really add up. For example, Kobalt Music Publishing, which administers more than 250,000 copyrights worldwide on behalf of over 1,200 content holders, says that streaming revenues now represent 10% of income, as compared to 3% in 2011.

(Image source: blog.us.playstation.com)