Financial report on Sony Music Unlimited leaks

Defunct streaming service Sony Music Unlimited had a little over 20,000 subscribersbefore it was shut down earlier this year.

According to leaked documents, Music Unlimited had only 20,017 subscribers on board during May 2014, seven months before the service was shuttered last January. However, the source of the leak claimed to Digital Music News that there were a few additional subscribers towards the end of the year.

The leaked publishing statement also reported that Music Unlimited’s total revenue was just $99,884.83. In comparison, internet radio giantPandora, which partnered with Xbox in 2013,pulled in $218.9 million during its second quarter, while Spotify earned $1 billion in revenue last year.

Spotify’s success paved way for its pairing with Sony earlier this year, effectively closing Music Unlimited to create the PlayStation Music service. It is set to launch at the end of this month to 41 different countries, including the US, UK, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia.

PlayStation Music replaces Music Unlimited as the only streaming service for the gaming console. PlayStation Music will allow users to manage their Spotify playlists on their consoles, with the option of linking both their PlayStation and Spotify accounts. The service will be made available to PS3 and PS4 models, with the latter permitting users to access their Spotify playlists while gaming.

It will be a step up from Music Unlimited; while Sony had a catalogue of only 22 million songs available, Spotify has over 30 million, with 20,000 new tracks added daily.

Music Unlimited, known initially as Qriocity, launched in 2010 as an exclusive service for gamers to listen to custom tunes while they gamed simultaneously. Its failure to gain momentum is the latest example of hardware companies realising that bigger companies, such as Spotify and Rdio, could do streaming services better. In Australia, Music Unlimited ceased its service at the end of March 2015.