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p2pnet.net News:- How’s Sony’s new Sony Connect service looking?
Don’t ask.
Especially don’t ask Washingon Post reviewer Rob Pegoraro.
Sony Connect didn’t seem to be particularly exciting when the company announced The Coming and said it’d be opening a shop in Santa Monica, California, to take care things, ‘things’ being the usual 500,000 tracks “from the major music companies and many independent labels” with singles going for the usual 99 cents, and albums for the usual $9.95.
But, “how could the Connect music store, unveiled on Tuesday, have turned out so badly?” - asks Pegoraro in his Fast Forward colummn here. “It gets a few things right, but by forgetting that customers want to feel like they actually own their music, it repeats - or exceeds - the mistakes of other music stores.”
On a positive note, he says Sony Connect “does more than any other service to bring down the cost of listening to digital music on the go”.
That’s correct only if you’re someone who’s desperate (another word also comes to mind) enough to want to buy from one of the plastic corporate sites, such as Sony’s, in the first place.
But, “the store’s advertised selection of ‘more than 500,000′ songs is missing a concert stage’s worth of major artists - to name a handful, Missy Elliott, Norah Jones, the Replacements, Liz Phair and Los Lobos,” says Pegoraro, going on:
“Even some of Sony’s own artists are largely absent: Connect’s Bruce Springsteen collection consists of a measly nine albums, not counting a few re-releases.”
Is anyone surprised?
He also says Sony’s Sonic Stage download tool is a, “bloated, bug-ridden beast of a program” that “can’t copy CDs in MP3 format, and it defaults to storing music in an invisible, deeply buried sub-directory”.
May 10th, 2004 at 1:41 am
Sony just wants to give the appearence of providing a comprehensive service, Big Music doesn’t want online distribution as it currently exists (ie see variable pricing desires) so to appease the powers that be (read lawmakers, competition bureaus etc) they’ll put up this piece of cr$%. Funny how they all are failing (minus Apple and thats debatable) yet they all keep following the same business model - and in this case the usability, fair use etc is even worse than it’s peers.
Don’t look for it to change anytime soon, unless it suits the Rec Cos long-term goal of complete domination of what, who and where we listen/view entertainment.