Sony Takes A Step Towards Ubiquitous Internet Audio

from the just-a-step... dept

Late last year, we wrote about how some people were saying the whole debate about file sharing and downloading would be obsolete soon enough - now that ubiquitous high speed wireless broadband access appeared to be on the way. The theory was that once you could be connected anywhere why would you ever need a local copy of a song? Instead, you'd just sign up for a service that would have every song ever recorded, and you'd just stream whatever you wanted to whatever device was nearby. Well, we're not anywhere near having that vision come true, but Sony has taken at least one step in that direction with their plans to a mobile music streaming service that would at least do some of that. It would let people stream different "channels", create their own customized channel, and even set up a personal playlist. Of course, it won't have every song ever recorded, and the bandwidth might not be all that great. The first version will run on TeliaSonera's GPRS/3G network. TeliaSonera did just make some news for launching one of the first 3G networks that can credibly claim to be nationwide - though, that's in Sweden. It appears they're launching this service in neighboring Finland. Maybe they should think about changing that. Still, even when the service is "nationwide", it won't quite be the "always-on" that people listening to music will demand. There will still be deadspots and dropped connections. Also, there's no indication on price, which could be quite the killer detail. Still, this does sound like a step forward.