Sony Music Unlimited

One of my biggest complaints with the Sony PlayStation Vita ($249.99, 4 stars) was its media playback abilities. It's a pain to connect to a computer, a pain to transfer songs, and a pain to make playlists. While that hasn't changed, there's now another option that puts loads of music on the handheld's touch screen with a much better interface. Sony Music Unlimited is the new music app for the PlayStation Vita, and it offers a library of millions of songs on demand if you're willing to pay $9.99 per month for the Premium membership. A Basic membership is available for $3.99 per month, but it lacks on-demand playback, library building, playlist building, and most other features that make the service worth a monthly fee. As an online service, Sony Music Unlimited also works through Web browsers, mobile devices, and the PlayStation 3, making it one of the most widely available music services by hardware platform. Unlike Editors' Choice Slacker Radio (4.5 stars) and Spotify (4.5 stars), Music Unlimited doesn't have a free option for listening to its music channels.

Works on PlayStation
Sony Music Unlimited works on a variety of platforms, but I mostly tested it on a PlayStation Vita and a PC with Google Chrome. Both platforms have a similar icon and list-based interface, with the Vita version understandably smaller than the Web version. In both cases, I was welcomed to the home page by rows of album art showing music recently added to my library, music I might like based on my choices, and new releases. The home page also offered, as links on the left side of the screen in Chrome and as a pop-up menu on the Vita, channels, music browsing, and playlists.

While the home page offers great recommendations based on what you listen to, the browse page lets you look at the top songs and albums by genre. There's also a selection of genre-based Internet radio shows, with some available in the Basic membership and some available only in the Premium membership.

Music selection is massive, and I found most of my favorite bands along with some surprisingly obscure metal bands on Music Unlimited, with a few puzzling exceptions. I found Incantation's full discography, one album each from Abruptum and Handful of Hate, and both albums from Pabst Blue Ribbon enthusiasts Red Fang.

Missing Music
I could only find two of Patton Oswalt's three major comedy albums, and there was no pure Queen to be seen anywhere in the library. There were plenty of covers of Queen songs and a Queen karaoke album, but no Sheer Heart Attack or A Night at the Opera. Even Led Zeppelin got snubbed, only getting an audio documentary in the library. If you want to listen to metal, comedy, or modern? pop music, Music Unlimited is the service for you. If you want to listen to the greatest rock bands of all time, you'll need to buy the albums. This is likely every bit an issue on the part of the license holders of the bands' music than it is Music Unlimited itself.

Sound quality is excellent on both the Vita app and the Web page, with songs loading quickly over both Wi-Fi and wired connections. Once songs started, they didn't skip and played straight through with no wait for buffering.

Sony Music Unlimited would be just another solid streaming music service, but PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita support makes it especially appealing for music-loving gamers. While PS3s and Vitas aren't quite as widespread as iTunes and iOS devices, the option to have streaming, on-demand music on them is appealing for many gamers who use their PS3s as their main home theater device. While its classic rock selection has massive holes, there are still millions of songs and thousands of bands and albums to discover and listen to on demand.

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