Music Unlimited Spreads Its Wings At MIDEM In Cannes

Hi, I’m Mark and I work over @SonyEurope on the Consumer Electronics side of Sony’s business (BRAVIA TVs, Cyber-shot cameras, VAIO PCs etc). I’m blogging for @PlayStationEU because, as some of you might hopefully be aware, Sony has recently unveiled its new cloud-based music streaming service: Music Unlimited. It’s an exciting venture for us as it allows you to stream music on a range of Sony networked products, as well as through your PS3 (and any PC).

Last weekend, the team behind Music Unlimited visited the MIDEM 2011 conference in Cannes. If you haven’t heard of MIDEM before, it is an annual music industry conference where movers and shakers come together to talk about issues being faced, unveil new products and ideas, and showcase forthcoming bands in music in 2011.

Sony was there to announce that Music Unlimited, which went live in the UK in December, is now available to those of you based in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. President of Sony Network Entertainment, Tim Schaaff, who is the main man behind Music Unlimited, also flew over from California to engage in some of the key debates of the digital elements of the activity. Following an interesting discussion around the future of music in the cloud (featuring Sony Music’s Thomas Hesse, more of him later), Tim took to the stage to be interviewed about Music Unlimited and the Qriocity platform in general. MIDEM have the full interview on their YouTube channel, and we live-tweeted the conversation on the Sony Europe Twitter stream:

The following day started off with a very special visitor to the Sony booth at MIDEM – the French minister for Culture and Communication, Frédéric Mitterrand. He had expressed in interest in the service and wanted to see how it worked, so he was given a private demonstration of Music Unlimited by one its developers. Let’s hope the network access in the Minister’s office allows him to stream his favourite tracks at work!

Next was a very special Q&A put together by Sony, which brought the major players from the four major record labels into the same room to discuss Music Unlimited and music streaming in general. Alongside Tim Schaaff and Shawn Layden (both from SNE), we had: Mark Pibe, global head of digital music at EMI; Michael Nash, EVP of digital strategy and business development at Warner Music Group; Rob Wells, president of the global digital business at Universal Music Group; Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business at Sony Music Entertainment.

Again, the event was live tweeted by Sony Europe, and the MIDEM blog has a transcript.

Hopefully for those of you into music and thinking about the future of music online, these discussions are interesting and stimulating. We’re also pleased to let you know that you can currently enjoy a free 30 day trial of Music Unlimited’s premium service – head over to http://www.qmusic.com to find out more.