Sony has officially launched it’s own music streaming service called Music Unlimited, powered by Qriocity, and available now in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. Their aim is to challenge Apple’s iTunes dominance by providing a service that is available across a myriad of devices such as Playstation 3, Blu-Ray players, Bravia televisions and computers. They also plan on adding an app for Google’s Android operating system so they can get into the smartphone scene as well. The pricing will start at as low as $3.99 per month and they plan on rolling it out to more countries this year.

Interestingly enough they are said to also be supporting iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad sometime this year as well. The only problem for them in that regard could be the new 30% cut Apple would require based on their new App Store developer guidelines and subscription service.

We also told you last week that Sony was not happy with Apple and had plans of possibly pulling all of their content from iTunes all together. Well Sony Network Entertainment COO (also involved with Music Unlimited service), Shawn Layden says otherwise.

Sony Music as I understand it has no intention of withdrawing from iTunes, they’re one of our biggest partners in the digital domain. I think those words were either taken out of context or the person who spoke them was unclear on the circumstances.

So so you want Music Unlimited on your iOS device or is iTunes the better way for you to have access to music? Tell us your thoughts on Sony’s new service!

[ Bloomberg, Business Insider ]

UPDATED: Looks like Google is partnering with MySpace’s iLike and with Lala for their iTunes music competitor. TechCrunch again has the details:

From information we’ve gathered from sources, the new service will be integrated into Google search. Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well (presumably any relevant results from YouTube as well as information already available in Google’s existing music search – example). One source said that Google will organize music searches in a way very similar to the way they do public company stock searches today. Users will also be offered the opportunity to purchase songs for download, we’ve confirmed.

Original post after the break!

TechCrunch is claiming, based on multiple sources, that Google is set to take their Apple competition to a whole new level by introducing their own music service:

the company has spent the last several weeks securing content for the launch of the service from the major music labels. One source has referred to the new service as Google Audio.

Unclear is whether it will be streaming or download/purchase (could it, would the record labels let it, be like Spotify?!), and whether or not it will be available outside the US. (Amazon MP3, another iTunes competitor, has struggled to deploy internationally).

This would help record labels take another shot at iTunes dominance in the market and give Google’s Android platform another checkbox towards iPhone parity.

What kind of service would you want from Google Audio?