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.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Mar 2004 @ 10:31am

    O Tannenbaum O Tannenbaum

    I think it was Tannenbaum who said "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Yme Bosma, 17 Mar 2004 @ 11:00am

    Not the first....

    This was the first, it works over GPRS:

    http://www.vivesta.nl/site/index.php?option=displaypage&Itemid=76&op=page&SubMenu="

    Change language to English, then search for 'NCRV', at the bottom of the search-results you will find the news item.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    MusicLover, 17 Mar 2004 @ 1:11pm

    Already exists

    Listen.com's Rhapsopdy has been doing it for a while. It's an awesome service that allows on-demand listening....something like half a million songs online.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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