Spotify coming to PS3 and PS4; Music Unlimited shutting down


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We know how important music is to our community of gamers, and this partnership combines the best in music with the best in gaming. PlayStation Network users will enjoy the convenience of linking your accounts to Spotify, making it easy to sign-up with your existing ID and subscribe to Spotify

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Ugh, I wish they'd stop "blessing" just one service and actually allow us to choose.

At least it made a little sense before since it was their service they "blessed". (not that I liked it, but it made sense)  Now they're just picking one third party service over the others.

As I understand it Spotify is big in Europe and internationally in general but they're a bit player in the U.S.

Last numbers I saw (less than a year ago) had Pandora with over 30% of the market and, iHeartRadio second, iTunes third, and Spotify was fourth with less than 10%.  (Hey, they beat Google Play music though!)

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Ugh, I wish they'd stop "blessing" just one service and actually allow us to choose.

At least it made a little sense before since it was their service they "blessed". (not that I liked it, but it made sense)  Now they're just picking one third party service over the others.

As I understand it Spotify is big in Europe and internationally in general but they're a bit player in the U.S.

Last numbers I saw (less than a year ago) had Pandora with over 30% of the market and, iHeartRadio second, iTunes third, and Spotify was fourth with less than 10%.  (Hey, they beat Google Play music though!)

Sadly, artists have been pulling their music left and right from Spotify. I personally find Spotify to be my favorite music solution for streaming on the web.

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Sadly, artists have been pulling their music left and right from Spotify. I personally find Spotify to be my favorite music solution for streaming on the web.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I like that they are supporting Spotify.  I don't use it myself but I understand it's big internationally and I welcome support for it.  I just don't like that their using it exclusively.  PlayStation users should be able to use any of the major players.  If you like Spotify great!  If someone else like Pandora, good for them!  If another guy likes iHeartRadio, then that's fine too!

 

Personally I prefer Pandora but that's mainly because I have ZERO desire to manage playlists myself.  I also listen to different music from my friends so I have no desire to listen to what they listen to, or what celebrities listen to, or some random "curator" plays.  I like the idea of having an algorithm build playlists based off of my own musical taste (so I can both hear the music I like and discover new music that is similar to it).  I've spent a great deal of time training my channels on Pandora and haven't seen a compelling alternative that was so good I'd be willing to start over.  That's beside the point though because I don't want Sony to pick Pandora for the PlayStation music either, my point isn't they should have picked the one I like.  My point is I want them to just let each user pick what they want.

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Ugh, I wish they'd stop "blessing" just one service and actually allow us to choose.

At least it made a little sense before since it was their service they "blessed". (not that I liked it, but it made sense)  Now they're just picking one third party service over the others.

As I understand it Spotify is big in Europe and internationally in general but they're a bit player in the U.S.

Last numbers I saw (less than a year ago) had Pandora with over 30% of the market and, iHeartRadio second, iTunes third, and Spotify was fourth with less than 10%.  (Hey, they beat Google Play music though!)

 

Pandora, while great isn't a comparable service. neither is iTunes, even IF Apple ever would make an app for the device.

 

most likely the reason for this is because the PS4 isn't built to support multitasking to the degree the One for example, so the music app needs to be a central service, like it was on the 360. and until MS delivers on their promised background audio without snap, this is in some ways a better solution. at least for those with smaller screens.

 

also for those complaining about missing streaming content. Spotify supports local content, and streaming local content from your PC library on other devices. it might even support playing non Spotify music stored on the PS4, but if not you should be able to play your Taylor Swift albums from your PC ;)

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Pandora, while great isn't a comparable service. neither is iTunes, even IF Apple ever would make an app for the device.

 

most likely the reason for this is because the PS4 isn't built to support multitasking to the degree the One for example, so the music app needs to be a central service, like it was on the 360. and until MS delivers on their promised background audio without snap, this is in some ways a better solution. at least for those with smaller screens.

 

also for those complaining about missing streaming content. Spotify supports local content, and streaming local content from your PC library on other devices. it might even support playing non Spotify music stored on the PS4, but if not you should be able to play your Taylor Swift albums from your PC ;)

 

You can play music of your own on the PS4 just now? Yeah it requires a USB stick instead of letting you copy to the PS4 hard drive but if it can play off a flash drive it can play off a hard drive at somepoint.

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You can play music of your own on the PS4 just now? Yeah it requires a USB stick instead of letting you copy to the PS4 hard drive but if it can play off a flash drive it can play off a hard drive at somepoint.

 

yeah, but this uses the built in system music/audio system. 

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You can play music of your own on the PS4 just now? Yeah it requires a USB stick instead of letting you copy to the PS4 hard drive but if it can play off a flash drive it can play off a hard drive at somepoint.

 

With so much focus on "media" on these new consoles, I would have thought the PS and Xbox would have amazing music support, apps, multitasking. I know their focus is games, but it is no secret that gamers love music and love music on their game console.

 

I guess we will just have to wait until MS and Sony add better support. As it stands now, they work for me.....just not good enough.

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Pandora, while great isn't a comparable service. neither is iTunes, even IF Apple ever would make an app for the device.

I wouldn't expect iTunes support on a Sony device. That's why I didn't list it in my later post as a choice I'd like to see. The only reason I listed it at all is because I was listing all of the services that are larger in the U.S. then Spotify. It would have seemed odd to me to say Spotify is fourth and here's one and two but I'm not going to mention three.

most likely the reason for this is because the PS4 isn't built to support multitasking to the degree the One for example, so the music app needs to be a central service, like it was on the 360. and until MS delivers on their promised background audio without snap, this is in some ways a better solution. at least for those with smaller screens.

The PS4 was built to support playing music while you game. That support was originally exclusive to their own Music Unlimited service but now they're opening it up to a third party (Spotify). Whatever interfaces Music Unlimited and Spotify are using could be exposed to other companies if Sony wanted. Even if they need to maintain tight quality controls they can because any app using those interfaces would still have to be submitted and approved by Sony as a regular part of the PlayStation Store publication process.
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I wouldn't expect iTunes support on a Sony device. That's why I didn't list it in my later post as a choice I'd like to see. The only reason I listed it at all is because I was listing all of the services that are larger in the U.S. then Spotify. It would have seemed odd to me to say Spotify is fourth and here's one and two but I'm not going to mention three.

The PS4 was built to support playing music while you game. That support was originally exclusive to their own Music Unlimited service but now they're opening it up to a third party (Spotify). Whatever interfaces Music Unlimited and Spotify are using could be exposed to other companies if Sony wanted. Even if they need to maintain tight quality controls they can because any app using those interfaces would still have to be submitted and approved by Sony as a regular part of the PlayStation Store publication process.

 

this is not necessarily true. The Xbox 360 was designed to play music during games, but could only do it through the system music player which was part of a system service, no way to add third party music. 

 

From this it seems the PS4 is similarly designed since they're replacing their own service instead of adding another. remember in order for MS to add the app multitasking with games on the One it runs a much more complicated system with 3 OS', the PS4 doesn't. I don't believe they've ever talked about apps having the ability to play music in the background while gaming on the PS4.

 

if it's not designed for apps playing background music while gaming from the start, it's not something they can just slap on, it requires a major OS redesign. this way they're just replacing one service with another. with known and guaranteed performance numbers.

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this is not necessarily true. The Xbox 360 was designed to play music during games, but could only do it through the system music player which was part of a system service, no way to add third party music.

Just because MS didn't allow for third party music doesn't mean they couldn't have if they wanted. If it can play music during games from one source then it could, if the console owner permits, play from other. It has the necessary CPU resources, etc. to play the music while the game is running.

Now maybe a device can only play music on the drive and not over the network while game is running. The source could make a difference but the PS4 DOES play music from over the network with Music Unlimited and Spotify so it shouldn't make a difference if a Pandora, iHeartRadio or any other server is where the stream is coming from.

Maybe the code is just so tightly integrated with the OS that it's difficult to change. Well if that's true then they couldn't change from Music Unlimited to Spotify either. I'm not saying it would require a firmware update but it's not like they have to revamp the whole OS or the hardware isn't capable of doing it.

Remember in order for MS to add the app multitasking with games on the One it runs a much more complicated system with 3 OS', the PS4 doesn't. I don't believe they've ever talked about apps having the ability to play music in the background while gaming on the PS4.

The PS4 already is capable of playing music while a game is played. That limited form of multitasking is already built in and was designed in from the start. Switching out which server is streaming the music to the device doesn't require any radical new functionality.

The whole 3 OS thing from MS is for stuff WAY beyond this and is a misnomer anyway. MS wanted the Xbox One to run essentially a full version of Windows. That's not required to play music while you game. Having it run all of Windows while it plays games would have killed it's performance so they created a stripped down version of the OS to give game developers the most resources they could that full windows wouldn't allow. Then because they had two versions of Windows they had to put in a lower level hypervisor two switch between them as needed which is what they call their third OS. That's massive overkill for playing music while you game. Eventually, in theory, this will allow them to run Win10 "metro" apps on the Xbox One while you game and the PS4 won't be able to do anything similar (Sony doesn't have a competitor to Windows to push) but for specific things like voice chat and playing music while you game those were designed into the PS4 as well.

if it's not designed for apps playing background music while gaming from the start,

It IS designed for playing background music while gaming. It WAS designed that way from the start. You could do that at launch with Music Unlimited and you'll be able to do that in the future with Spotify. If they can switch from Music Unlimited to Spotify they can expose whatever they are doing to other, Sony approved, apps.

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it allows music from one or two very specific core services one was replaced with Spotify, this is not even close to the same as allowing any app to play background music. this isn't a desktop OS. everything is coded for a purpose.

 

have you ever coded or studied coding ? cause it sounds like you only have a basic idea of what coding is and some concepts but don't really understand it. you can't just suddenly add support for any app just like that.


also the background music on the Xbox does run on the other OS as a modern app, it IS the Xbox version of a modern app and while it may be overkill for the purpose it's what allows it. the ability to run any app while gaming, instead of just a limited number of core services.

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it allows music from one or two very specific core services one was replaced with Spotify, this is not even close to the same as allowing any app to play background music. this isn't a desktop OS. everything is coded for a purpose.

If it supports a ton of video apps like Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, etc. then it can support a variety of stand alone music apps like Pandora, iHeartRadio, and Spotify. So that's the first step but that doesn't say anything about while playing a game yet.

So when you're playing a game sure you may not be able to launch the whole music app, that's not what I'm saying (though neither of us know this one way or another.) I'm not saying it can fully multitask the app. I'm saying it can play background music while you game.

If Music Unlimited can play in the background of a game (it can) and has some limited controls (volume, pause, resume, etc.... I'm not really sure what the specific controls are as I only spent a little time with it during the free trial) and Sony can swap that to Spotify then they can provide an API for other companies to do the same thing. I'm not even saying exposing that API would be easy but it's clearly within the consoles hardware capabilties to play music while a game is running and if it can stream from Music Unlimited and Spotify servers it can stream from Pandora or iHeartRadio servers.

Now maybe it will be far more limited then Xbox since it can't fully multitask so while on Xbox you can switch to the full app and change channels,playlists,etc. on the PS4 maybe you have to load up the app, start a playlist or select a channel, select something to tell it to continue running in the background when you close it (that would evoke the new Sony provided API) and then launch your game. With the game running maybe you can't launch the app again but the music you already told it to keep running would continue and whatever controls Music unlimited has while a game is going (volume, pause, resume, whatever they are, again I don't know what Music Unlimited can do while a game is running) could also be supported by the App developer via the Sony provided API. Again I'm not saying the PS4 can run the entire music app while a game is playing. I'm saying the PS4 was designed to play music streaming from an external source while a game was playing and what that source is could be changable (if Sony allowed it) without having to support full multi-tasking as Xbox One does.

have you ever coded or studied coding ? cause it sounds like you only have a basic idea of what coding is and some concepts but don't really understand it. you can't just suddenly add support for any app just like that.

This is funny. I'm a professional developer with almost 20 years of experience so yeah, you could say I've coded. I spend the better part of every work day in Visual Studio actually writing code.

also the background music on the Xbox does run on the other OS as a modern app, it IS the Xbox version of a modern app and while it may be overkill for the purpose it's what allows it. the ability to run any app while gaming, instead of just a limited number of core services.

I don't really care how it runs on the Xbox. That has ZERO relevance to how it runs on the PS4. Just because MS chose to do it one way doesn't mean that's the ONLY way to do it. Playing music in the background while playing a game doesn't require full multitasking support.
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So when you're playing a game sure you may not be able to launch the whole music app, that's not what I'm saying (though neither of us know this one way or another.) I'm not saying it can fully multitask the app. I'm saying it can play background music while you game.

If Music Unlimited can play in the background of a game (it can) and has some limited controls (volume, pause, resume, etc.... I'm not really sure what the specific controls are as I only spent a little time with it during the free trial) and Sony can swap that to Spotify then they can provide an API for other companies to do the same thing. I'm not even saying exposing that API would be easy but it's clearly within the consoles hardware capabilties to play music while a game is running and if it can stream from Music Unlimited and Spotify servers it can stream from Pandora or iHeartRadio servers.

 

 

No, if the console OS wasn't designed to do it to start with, then it can't just do this, just because music unlimited, not replaced with spotify could, doesn't mean you can just make any app feed background music to it.  It it was designed to do that, then yes, it obviously was not. 

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No, if the console OS wasn't designed to do it to start with, then it can't just do this, just because music unlimited, not replaced with spotify could, doesn't mean you can just make any app feed background music to it.  It it was designed to do that, then yes, it obviously was not. 

The PS4 OS WAS designed to play music in the background to start with, it did that on launch day (via Music Unlimited)

The PS4 OS was NOT designed to play Spotify music in the background.  Yet amazingly this announcement says that's going to happen.  So it's going to be doing something it wasn't designed to do to start with... according to you that's apparently impossible.

The PS4 OS is going to need to be updated to change to Spotify.  If they were to open it up to other sources it would have to be updated to support that.  I'm not saying it wouldn't take a software update, of course it would those APIs I talked about don't exist today just like Spotify support doesn't exist today.  It isn't like they have to rewrite the whole OS though.  They just need to place hooks for the EXISTING capabilities for other services to use in their approved apps.  More importantly it isn't like we don't know the hardware is capable of playing music in the background while a game is running. We KNOW it can do that, we KNOW decompressing the music doesn't use too much CPU/Memory or streaming it doesn't take up too much bandwidth or whatever because it's doing that today (via Music Unlimited).

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The PS4 OS WAS designed to play music in the background to start with, it did that on launch day (via Music Unlimited)

The PS4 OS was NOT designed to play Spotify music in the background.  Yet amazingly this announcement says that's going to happen.  So it's going to be doing something it wasn't designed to do to start with... according to you that's apparently impossible.

The PS4 OS is going to need to be updated to change to Spotify.  If they were to open it up to other sources it would have to be updated to support that.  I'm not saying it wouldn't take a software update, of course it would those APIs I talked about don't exist today just like Spotify support doesn't exist today.  It isn't like they have to rewrite the whole OS though.  They just need to place hooks for the EXISTING capabilities for other services to use in their approved apps.  More importantly it isn't like we don't know the hardware is capable of playing music in the background while a game is running. We KNOW it can do that, we KNOW decompressing the music doesn't use too much CPU/Memory or streaming it doesn't take up too much bandwidth or whatever because it's doing that today (via Music Unlimited).

 

Give up Asmodai, your points are falling on deaf ears -_- The hooks/APIs or whatever you want to call them have been there in the OS from the start. Having the OS play music and pause in-game music is as much part of the OS as party chat or remote play. Even if Sony want to add things, like DLNA, settle down people we're playing with at least 1GB for the OS here. Considering what was added into the PS3 OS AFTER launch we need not worry.

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I think what Hawkman is getting at is that Sony are swapping one service for another because it can't support more than one?

 

When in fact, Sony just want to retire their service for a more successful one. It's not because the console can't support both if they chose to.

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My only concern is that they still provide comprehensive options for local music playback.

The PS4 OS is more than capable of allowing any app to run audio in the background as Asmodai pointed out, but that is the least of my concerns. If this is going to be our primary app for music playback on the ps4, I'm hoping Sony works with Spotify to really improve its local capabilities.

Sony built a strong OS foundation, I'm just a bit frustrated with their pace and interest in adding features that take advantage of that flexibility. They have made nice updates of course, but knowing what the ps3 could do reminds me of where the ps4 still needs work.

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I think what Hawkman is getting at is that Sony are swapping one service for another because it can't support more than one?

 

When in fact, Sony just want to retire their service for a more successful one. It's not because the console can't support both if they chose to.

 

Then Where's all the other services. Services with far more listeners and subscribers than spotify anywhere but Europe. Even in Europe Spotify has big competition from Wimp(actually Tidal in the rest of the world). If the hooks are there, why can't PS4 apps play music in the bakground.... instead of as a single system service. 

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Then Where's all the other services. Services with far more listeners and subscribers than spotify anywhere but Europe. Even in Europe Spotify has big competition from Wimp(actually Tidal in the rest of the world). If the hooks are there, why can't PS4 apps play music in the bakground.... instead of as a single system service. 

 

They have a deal in place with Spotify as "the official music app".  Initially they wanted to push MU, but that basically failed so they're trying something else (and I bet getting a cut of revenue somehow).  If Pandora or IHeart or one of the other subsciption services had stepped up with a different offer, they'd be on instead.  Or maybe Sony approached them, who knows.

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And that merely dances around the fact they they're still only allowing a single app/service to provide background music... which suggest they don't really have the proper hooks for anyone to do it. 

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And that merely dances around the fact they they're still only allowing a single app/service to provide background music... which suggest they don't really have the proper hooks for anyone to do it.

The fact they can change the single app/service from one provider to another (especially to a third party) does in fact suggest the OS hooks exist. They haven't been published for others to use likely because at first they wanted you to use their service (Music Unlimited) and not a competitor. If they had come out on day one and let you pick from spotify, iheart radio, pandora, etc. no one would have even looked at Music Unlimited. Now, as soniqstylz stated, they probably have some deal with Spotify for exclusivity.
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The fact they can change the single app/service from one provider to another (especially to a third party) does in fact suggest the OS hooks exist. They haven't been published for others to use likely because at first they wanted you to use their service (Music Unlimited) and not a competitor. If they had come out on day one and let you pick from spotify, iheart radio, pandora, etc. no one would have even looked at Music Unlimited. Now, as soniqstylz stated, they probably have some deal with Spotify for exclusivity.

 

How does that suggest it ? suggesting it would be retaining the original os service/app and adding spotify, not replacing it. and letting others access it. I mean they're doing their damnedest to keep up with MS features in every other area, but here... 

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How does that suggest it ? suggesting it would be retaining the original os service/app and adding spotify, not replacing it. and letting others access it. I mean they're doing their damnedest to keep up with MS features in every other area, but here...

It's suggests it because if Music Unlimited were such a special case and so ingrained into the OS it wouldn't be possible to easily swap it for another, especially third party, app. If they can switch from Music Unlimited to Spotify then they could switch from Music Unlimited to Pandora or Music Unlimited to iHeart Radio, or anything else. It woudln't take a huge rewrite of the OS to let users install multiple music apps that normally just work full screen but register themselves as capable of playing music in the background. Then they just throw a basic UI that lists the available candidates and lets you pick which app you want and that UI would just do the same thing they're doing now in switching from Music Unlimited to Spotify. So if you don't install anything then you have Spotify, like it will be. If you download a Pandora app though then you can go to some setting somewhere and pick between Pandora and Spotify for background music during gameplay. You could do that with as many as you want as just a simple example. They'd just have to publish the API so Pandora knew how to write the app to tell the OS it was capable and handle the OS events. During the app review that PS already does for any digital app they could verify that any app that informs the OS it can handle background music does in fact handle the necessary events just like Music Unlimited and Spotify.

What possible purpose would retaining the old service and adding Spotify solve? They want to get rid of Music Unlimited, it's failed, so keeping it around defeats the whole purpose of what they're doing. Also then they wouldn't be able to off Spotify the "Official" app exclusivity if they still had their app there. Either they have one or they open it up to everyone and if they have one they can get benefits from whoever that is by selling "exclusivity" while if they open it up to everyone they get nothing.

As for keeping up with MS I don't think they really care that much about providing more third party music options than MS. As long as they continue to outsell MS globally they don't need to "keep up" with individual features. I seriously doubt people are going to ditch PS4 for Xbox One because it has better music streaming choices. It has better TV support already and better voice commands but none of that are it's core functions. They're just making this change at all because they want to get rid of Music Unlimited and they don't want it to actually lose features. Since they don't want to provide it anymore they are allowing someone else to and hey, if they can make a little $$ by offering exclusivity then all the better.

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