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Sony pulls the plug on Connect, refocuses on PlayStation

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pata2001 Newbie

pata2001

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Wow, you beat me. :D Why the sad face? This is to be expected. Sony should've done this earlier anyway. How many people actually use the service, outside the free connect coupons? Better start converting your connect tracks to audioCD. Now let's see how long till Sony switch completely to AAC.

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navsimpson Newbie

navsimpson

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Finally - a sorta' smart move by Sony. Connect was slow, relied on a subpar codec (why not at least use ATRAC3plus?), was DRM'ed to hell and had a marketing budget of, I'm guessing, $100 a year... :) So why attach great players to a lacklustre service?

But overall, I think this is good news. What it means is that Sony will refocus their efforts on integrating the Playstation and Walkman ecosystems, which will greatly increase their demographic awareness. It will also give them a chance to start over. I think there's even a possibility they might rely on a redesigned PSP to replace a high-capacity Walkman.

I also think there's actually a good chance that EMI's DRM-free tracks may show up on the PSN. Sony stands to lose nothing by selling unprotected tracks from a competing label while matching features with iTunes. And I think pata2001 is dead-on in saying that Sony will be moving over to AAC. Unfortunately, I think one of the reasons that they will is AAC's capacity for DRM.

The only downside is that I'm not sure if Media Manager is good enough as a standalone jukebox/podcatcher software yet, and I've read that it's also slow and clunky. Still - SS 4.2 showed some performance increases, so perhaps they can do the same to Media Manager.

-Nav

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doclloyd Newbie

doclloyd

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While I agree with others that this isn't a surprise, my hope is that they still provide compatibility with all their existing Walkmans, including MD (esp. for record uploads) and everything else they've created that supports ATRAC. I have a large music library in ATRAC format and do not intend to re-rip all my music into mp3 or AAC. I'm not ready to let go of MD (ATRAC only to be compatible with my deck and bookshelf system) and I do enjoy ATRAC's sound.

If Media Manager has better drag and drop support and podcast/vidcast support, it would be a better fit for everything Sony is putting out there -- and Sony Ericsson. With the A800 series and PSP's having drag and drop video and photo support, I don't see why music would be that far behind. As long as they can add on ATRAC support to Media Manager and read in my entire music library as is (maybe even remove the old DRM I have from tracks imported years ago before they made DRM not required on tracked I imported from CD's), I'm all for the changes that are coming.

I hope Sony officially makes some official announcement about their plans so their current customers aren't feeling left in the dark. The next step is to make the changes swiftly. Lots of announcements are made by Sony but it seems little actually is executed.

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bob123_ Newbie

bob123_

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There does seem to be some big changes going on at Sony in this division. Like pata2001 I'm not sure why there isn't something on the main page. Also no further word on their article re "Sony Changes Everything...." What's going on guys?

I'm not at all bothered by the death of Connect, nor really if they ditch ATRAC (even though I have a lot of music in the format). As long as they coninue to make innovative, reliable, quality, great sounding players I will be happy.

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Zizone_ Newbie

Zizone_

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So what will become of Sonic Stage software? Seems a little pointless now.

Well, not many users were using Connect service anyways. That means that the users were using SonicStage for other reasons, so I don't think the SonicStage is pointless. Though I find replacement for this software for much better one is critical. Anyways, I still think some kind of download service from Sony is still needed to bring new buyers maybe. It is nice to have some sort of download service.

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maxthrusters Newbie

maxthrusters

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After years of waiting, the Connect store finally arrived in Canada only a few short months ago. Now it seems Connect USA (and presumably Canada's store) will be "winding down and closing" over the next few months. Not mentioned is Mora (the Japanese store) or the European Connect stores.

It all seems very odd to me. I've used the Connect service (a few hundred tracks) since the Canadian launch. I like it, but a few things annoy me:

1. While a good many songs have unlimited transfer limits, all of the tracks coming from the Universal Media Group have a transfer limit of 3 much like the dreaded "check-in" and "check-out" of SDMI days. While I only have two ears I do have many Sony toys that play music, so this is especially annoying.

2. Ridiculous licensing restrictions cause some albums to be available as "tracks only", or "album only"...sometimes both on the same item! "You can only buy this item as seperate tracks, and yet these tracks can only be bought as an album" lol

3. The mixtape feature is pretty cool, however the Canadian store lacks the rights to sell a lot of songs that are available to Americans. For example, one collection of 25 songs in the USA is reduced to only 7 for Canadians.

4. The pricing makes me uncomfortable, it just feels "wrong" to pay anything for something intangible like a digital file. I'd rather get the CD if I must pay, and that gets me uncompressed DRM-free music.

Despite these comments I still went ahead and bought various songs and albums, I think because I had fun doing it and it was a lot more convenient than going down to a physical shop. I hope the Connect store continues in some form.

If they were smart they would dump everything except Sony's own labels (and interested indies and EMI) and give away the compressed ATRAC files, with lossless AAC or ATRAC for sale.

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ender325_ Newbie

ender325_

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Sony's decision surprised me. At least I hope their authentication servers will not be shut off. Who knows...the staff being moved over to the PlayStation division...Sony's up to something. I know I once read (a long time ago) the company saying they were trying to unify every division - oh and they also said the PS3 was very important for the company. Doesn't this uh...(speculation coming) mean that Connect will somehow be reborn at the PlayStation Store like "hey look the store now has a music section!"? All we can do now is speculate and wait for Sony to talk......maybe at E3? Hmm...who knows.

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theblueraja Newbie

theblueraja

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Sony's marketing & planning team are like a chicken with its head cut off. People always ask me why I buy multiple units, etc... maybe because the "here today, gone tomorrow" concept never rang more true than with Sony.

My greatest concern is, will Sonic Stage still trigger Gracenote when I pop in a CD to rip years from now?

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Richard Grand Master

Richard

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My greatest concern is, will Sonic Stage still trigger Gracenote when I pop in a CD to rip years from now?

I think the answer to that will probably be yes as 1/ Gracenote /CDDB is a service independent of the Connect store and 2/ people will still need to title their tracks irrespective of the format they are ripping to.

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Shinji Ikeda Newbie

Shinji Ikeda

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My greatest concern is, will Sonic Stage still trigger Gracenote when I pop in a CD to rip years from now?

What you are mentioning is a feature of SonicStage and does not relate to Connect music service. I have turned of the Gracenote feature in SonicStage, since I do not need it. Gracenote may be replaced by another service, but the feature to search the internet for CD information will exist in future versions of SonicStage (or whatever application replaces it).

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markey Newbie

markey

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Posted (edited)

What you are mentioning is a feature of SonicStage and does not relate to Connect music service. I have turned of the Gracenote feature in SonicStage, since I do not need it. Gracenote may be replaced by another service, but the feature to search the internet for CD information will exist in future versions of SonicStage (or whatever application replaces it).

If you are not using Gracenote, what are you using for album art on your NW-A808 & S706?

Edited by markey
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Shinji Ikeda Newbie

Shinji Ikeda

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If you are not using Gracenote, what are you using for album art on your NW-A808 & S706?

I am using the painful and slow method :D . I manually search for them. There are two reasons for this, some of the tracks that I have are podcasts and other audio CDs. The other, I kind of like being creative in selecting my album art.

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SimonGrafftey Newbie

SimonGrafftey

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Does anyone know more about this article which came out on paidContent.org on Saturday?

"Sony Connect To Close Music/Video Services; Focus on Servicing Playstation Group; 20 People To Go

By Rafat Ali - Sat 16 Jun 2007 01:05 AM PST

The Sony Connect experiment is about to get, well, disconnected: it will be winding down its music and video services in the next couple of months, and focus on servicing the Playstation group on the technical needs, paidContent.org has learned and confirmed. In an all-hands meeting yesterday in Sony’s offices in Los Angeles, employees were told that about 20-plus jobs are being phased out during this winding-down phase as a result of this closure. The eBooks division will remain however, as it will be servicing Sony Reader product.

Steve Banfield, the head of the Sony Connect division, will be leaving in the next few weeks, and Tim Schaaff and Fumi Kanagwa from Sony corporate will now run what’s left of Connect engineering team. The remaining team of around 80 will be devoted support Playstation.

Few things are unclear: whether Sony Connect brand will remain after this restructuring; and whether SonicStage software will continue. An unfortunate end to a business hampered from the start by the internal politics, and inability of the corporate parent to give any real attention to this digital media unit. For instance, check out the two posts Staci did earlier yesterday, about Sony’s plans to relaunch Grouper and Sony-MySpace Minisode network."

The url is: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-sony-...cing-playstati/

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aob9 Newbie

aob9

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I would have expected to see something on this from the 'in the knows' at Atraclife by now. There was a prediction made weeks ago that Sony is 'To change Everything'........ and then total silence. To me this issue is at the very core of this website and requires comment.

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hpmoon Newbie

hpmoon

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If you are not using Gracenote, what are you using for album art on your NW-A808 & S706?

I'm sure you can agree that Gracenote is woefully inadequate as a repository for album art. More than half of my CDs (many classical and opera, and I'm not a pop music fan) don't pull album art, and I end up copying and pasting from Amazon.

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hpmoon Newbie

hpmoon

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I'm still absolutely shocked that after so much time has passed, where DRM isn't mandatory save for Connect downloads, you still can't convert from ATRAC to anything other than WAV which has no metadata (ID3 tags, etc.). So I have this big huge ATRAC Lossless library that I want to occasionally migrate into MP3 or WMA for my cell phone and my GPS unit and my PDA and my media server...etc....etc....and the only tool available at all is Hi-MD Renderer, which crashes constantly and basically just sucks. (No offense, but let's get real, it's not a Sony-grade piece of software.)

WE COULD BE LEFT IN THE DUST WITH NO ABILITY TO CONVERT OUR ATRAC LIBRARIES TO ANYTHING ELSE. This would be a travesty. And converting to WAV files is no option, period, end of story.

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cswallow Newbie

cswallow

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THIS IS PARTIALLY WHY CONNECT GOING BYE-BYE DOESN"T MAKE SINCE TO ME!

WED, JUNE 13, 2007

"Rick Clancy, head of Sony's US public relations, quickly reminded reporters that Sony would still innovate in this category, but when discussion turned to the Sony Connect service, Glasgow said that, looking to the future, it would be more focused on movies and books. (It is currently the content hub for Sony's E-Ink Reader.)"

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/field-notes/son....php?mail2=true

This piece was taken from Gizmodo.com on the June 13th. So you're telling me 2 days later Sony decided to end CONNECT? Something doesn't add up... They would't just do movies and books with CONNECT in my opinion. Sony wants to be so badly like iTunes with CONNECT. Why would they trash it?

Soo many of their Walkman devices support SonicStage and depend on it, because of the Walkman proprietary file structure/formatting etc. And the only place a person with a Walkman device can purchase online music is CONNECT.

When Sony started supporting AAC, WMA and MP3 on most all their devices, they gave themselves a way out of ATRAC3, just in case, I'm sure. If music labels go DRM-free, CONNECT could still be used for unencrypted music purchasing in any of the aformentioned formats, most likely AAC, since they had a hand in the development of it. Or, they could just sale in un-encrypted ATRAC3.

ANOTHER THING

I contacted CONNECT Customer Care/Service 4 times Monday.

1. They themselves had no idea what was going on.

2. I pointed a Customer Service representative to the original source of the article, paidcontent.org.

3. They have not heard anything about this, and until a press release comes down the wire, they're not believing it.

4. Probably all of CONNECT Customer Care knows about the story at paidcontent.org by now.

- Even though the PlayStation stuff sounds slightly accurate, my gut feeling leans toward CONNECT going to be merged into the PlayStation Store, probably by this Fall, but I don't think CONNECT is going away.

- My other gut feeling says something is going to be mentioned come E3.

I'll believe it when a PR comes out. Until then... I've got all my music in WAV/MP3/WMA format, just in case, but I'm not going to worry about it.

P.S. CONNECT has never had a chance of PS3/PSP integration, but I would think Sony would try that (at the very least) before they terminate CONNECT. Yes, CONNECT/SonicStage can be currently used with the PSP, but I'm talking about purchase/download directly on the PSP/PS3 itself all from a PlayStation Store web interface within the handheld and console.

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ender325_ Newbie

ender325_

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- Even though the PlayStation stuff sounds slightly accurate, my gut feeling leans toward CONNECT going to be merged into the PlayStation Store, probably by this Fall, but I don't think CONNECT is going away.

- My other gut feeling says something is going to be mentioned come E3.

I'll believe it when a PR comes out. Until then... I've got all my music in WAV/MP3/WMA format, just in case, but I'm not going to worry about it.

P.S. CONNECT has never had a chance of PS3/PSP integration, but I would think Sony would try that (at the very least) before they terminate CONNECT. Yes, CONNECT/SonicStage can be currently used with the PSP, but I'm talking about purchase/download directly on the PSP/PS3 itself all from a PlayStation Store web interface within the handheld and console.

Hey cswallow great post and welcome to the forums! You have the same feeling I still have -- like I said on page two of this thread, maybe something fishy's going on. All we have to do is wait some weeks for the answer. I agree with you, SonicStage is the base of a lot of their Walkman devices (there's always a chance they're cooking something new but...I don't think so just now). Sony knows a lot of their loyal people (lots I think) invest on the PlayStation and who knows...maybe Howard Stringer's Sony United thingie may bring movies and music to the PlayStation Store (after all both the PSP and the PS3 are much like media centers so why not?).

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cswallow Newbie

cswallow

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Well I have a 155 song investment in CONNECT. So, I'm trying to keep the best attitude. I want CONNECT to succeed. I've tried just about every music store that is or was ever available in the U.S.

Circuit City/AOL MusicNow (gone),

Virgin Digital (gone),

Napster

Rhapsody/Real Music Store

URGE,

Walmart Digital Downloads,

F.Y.E. Download Zone,

MSN Music Downloads (gone)

MusicMatch Digital Downloads (merged in to Yahoo MU),

Yahoo Music Unlimited

Liquid Audio (gone)

CRY-Tunes (Never Again for FairPlay tracks. I will not be stuck to an iPod. I convert my iTunes Plus re-purchases into ATRAC3 256kbps.)

I signed up for a CONNECT account in launch 04.

CONNECT (and Napster) are the only 2 that I know allow you to get your downloads back whenever you need them.

(I think MSN did, and URGE/Zune may, never looked too much. Been using CONNECT.)

I Own:

VGF-AP1L (40GB Vaio Pocket Player)

COM-1B/W (2 Mylo's)

NW-E003F (1GB Flash Walkman)

NW-A1200 (8 GB HDD Walkman)

MZ-NH600D (2 Hi-MD players)

MSAC-US40 (2 MagicGate Card Reader/Writers. 1 for BootCamp.)

PSP (Of, course)

Those were also CONNECT investments. They were all bought with the purpose of utilizing CONNECT (and only) CONNECT in mind, along with my prevously purchased CD library.

I haven't bought a physical CD in years.

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aob9 Newbie

aob9

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Posted

I contacted CONNECT EUROPE and this is their reply ( direct copy and paste)

Thank you for your enquiry.

On Friday 15th June, Connect US made a re-organisation announcement that has

since been extensively reported on the internet. Unfortunately, most of these

reports are largely incorrect.

The Connect Europe team would like to emphasise the two following points, to

any and all of its customers who may be concerned by the mis-reported

information:

The Connect music service is not shutting down, either in Europe, the United

States or Japan.

The Connect Europe team will continue to improve its service, and offer more

great new music titles and promotions, exactly as usual.

If you have any further questions on this mater, please feel free to e-mail

back.

In the meantime, thank you for your continued custom, and we look forward to

continuing to offer you great music to buy, and selected free video downloads!

Yours sincerely,

The CONNECT team!

CONNECT, a division of Sony United Kingdom Limited, a company registered in

England and Wales. Registered office: The Heights, Brooklands, Weybridge,

Surrey, KT13 0XW - Registered company number: 2422874....................

So, there you have it then!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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cswallow Newbie

cswallow

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(AP) -- Internet music retailer Sony Connect Inc. is eliminating some positions as part of a restructuring plan to shift resources to other online services, but it intends to continue operating, the company said Tuesday.

Sony Connect is shifting emphasis to other network services, specifically one for users of the PlayStation game console, the company said.

http://www.physorg.com/news101537588.html

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Sony-Connec...id=11000A5R7DK8

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-br...ines-technology

I can't wait until CONNECT comes to the PlayStations Store/PSP. That'll be sweet! I'd be surprised if something wasn't mentioned @ E3, in regards to CONNECT.

I didn't even think about contacting CONNECT Europe or Mora in Japan. (I could've translated the question/response with Google.) Good Idea, though!

I GUESS THE WORLD CAN START SPINNING AGAIN!!!

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navsimpson Newbie

navsimpson

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Posted

Thanks for the updates - this clarifies. But to me it's sorta' disappointing - I was hoping Sony were getting the message and were going revamp things entirely. I really hope they work to further consolidation and inter-departmental collaboration. I do also think that Connect is subpar - in selection, speed/ease of use and sound quality. There's no way on earth it's either generating a profit or driving sales of Walkmans - I can't say I understand why they're keeping it around.

When music does come to the PSN, I really hope they either ditch ATRAC entirely or at least move to ATRAC3plus 256kbs or higher. Many people will have their PS3's connected to stereos where 132kbs ATRAC3 just won't cut it.

-Nav

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ender325_ Newbie

ender325_

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Posted

Yeah today I read the news on Engadget, that Connect isn't shutting down. About a music service coming to the PSN...Sony could choose AAC instead of ATRAC or maybe let the customers choose which format they prefer to download. All is possible, time will tell.

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