Sky Songs launching next week: here’s more details
BSkyB has been holding media briefings to unveil its Sky Songs streaming+downloads service, which launches next Monday in public beta following nine months of development.
We had some details earlier this week: all four major labels are on board, and the service will be available in two versions: £6.49 a month gets users unlimited streaming plus ten downloads, while £7.49 a month gets unlimited streaming plus 15 downloads. But today’s event provided flesh around those bones.
Sky Songs is purely browser-based. It doesn’t involve a Spotify-like desktop client – users will access it entirely through their web browsers (click on image at the right for a bigger version). However, this means Sky Songs WON’T be available on other platforms – mobile, console or even Sky satellite TV – at launch.
The company is planning on going cross-platform, but for now is figuring out the best strategy to do so, including working around the technical limitations of distributing to set-top boxes.
Anyone can sign up. Sky Songs isn’t restricted to customers for BSkyB’s ISP. It’s the third service Sky has done that isn’t restricted to its own existing customers, following the Sky Player and Sky TV Mobile.
There’s a big editorial and recommendation focus. BSkyB made a direct comparison to Spotify here, saying it throws you into the deep end of a massive catalogue. Sky Songs wants to help guide users to content through editorial features from UK sites Holy Moly and Pop Justice, and recommendations powered by Gracenote. There are also lots of playlists, many of which will be topical based on current events or celebrities in the news.
Omnifone and 24/7 Entertainment are involved. The streaming and download services are powered by Omnifone, which uses 24-7 Entertainment for the back-end side of things – or “catalogue ingestion” as BSkyB puts it. Four million tracks are present at launch, and when users search for something that isn’t available, Sky’s licensing team gets a report to help them chase up new partners.
No social networking elements at launch. There is no integration with social networks from day one, which seems like an odd omission – it’s not hard to let people share links on Twitter and Facebook at the very least. However, Sky says they are figuring out what makes the most sense for their business. Users CAN create, manage and share playlists, however. Songs and artists can be ‘favourited’ too.
Marketing is low-key for now. All 16,000-odd people working at Sky have been given free accounts, while Sky’s ISP subscribers will all get a month’s free trial from Monday.
Users can buy additional songs on top of their allowance. These are mostly 320kpbs MP3s, and when a user signs up, they choose their default media manager – iTunes or Windows Media Player – with Sky Songs then ensuring that when songs are downloaded, they are saved in the correct folder on the computer.
Tags: sky songs
October 14th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
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October 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
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