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Sony Connect Online Music Download Store Launches
securitas writes "USA Today's Jefferson Graham reports that today Sony launched its online music download store, Sony Connect, to compete with Apple's leading iTunes service. The tracks use the MagicGate DRM copy-protection scheme and will work only with Sony Memory Stick-compatible devices including VAIO computers, CLIE PDAs, MiniDisc, CD and Walkman products. Sony will also launch a new line of 1-gigabyte Hi-MD disc players that support the service. Sony Connect's catalog sports 500,000 tracks from independent and major labels and songs sell for 99 cents each or $10 per album. The service uses Sony's SonicStage software and works with Windows 98SE-XP PCs only. It is only available in the USA until the planned European launch in June. That's a whole lot of restrictions in an already-fragmented market. More at The Register and The Age."
Is this just a way to sell the devices?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
. . . even right down to the vendor lock-in part. Wonderful. Wake me when I can buy, rather than rent, music.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Sony Connect Online? What an unfortunate acronym. What are they going to do, sue iTMS for selling music, the concept which they apparently own?
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
1. They're a major record label AND a major PC vendor
2. They can get into the Japanese market easier
I think they'll be able to clobber Apple.
Best Buy can have you arrested
it such a small share, I only know of one company that uses it (correct me if I am wrong)
when I look for a divice that uses a flash card, I do not buy sony because I will not be able to use it on any other device I already own, right now I am looking at digital camras, and I sony is not even an option for me because I can not use it with any other device I use, I want one with an sd card because all my other devices accept an SD card.
I think it is not a good idea to only suppord devices that only use a memory stick for it, since, that limites your market right there.
Who really cares about sony's mp3 store solution, especially with the files being crippled. And it only works on the actual system it was compiled on apparently...
i don't think steve jobs has anything to fear from sony considering you have an old, aging minidisc format, working on only win98-xp pcs, and really not offering up that much initial space, 1 gig? i'm not even an mp3 whore and i have more music than that.
...will work only with Sony Memory Stick-compatible devices... ...1-gigabyte Hi-MD disc players...
From the sonyconnect site: "What devices are compatible with Connect?
Any ATRAC-compatible device from Sony works with Connect."
Great! This will be a huge hit with the people who thought Apple's music store doesn't support enough players.
I wonder how many iPods there are out there in the public's hands for every Sony Memory-Stick and "Hi-MD" device. I'm guessing at least 4, and that's being generous to Sony.
And 1GB. Wow. That's sooo much music. Has anyone at Sony ever even heard of hard drives? C'mon, I was expecting some sort of competition here, but this is more like a joke.
Anyone know what restrictions the DRM imposes? They conveniently make no mention of it on their 5-page website (overview, features, download, customer support, independent label signup). I'd say that's pretty relevant information to put out front if you want to convince people to download your software.
-Daniel Pritchard
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's a whole lot of restrictions in an already-fragmented market.
The trendy people and the first-out-of-the-gate people have already gone to Apple. And people interested in their own personaly freedom and fair use will be using one of the services that doesn't include all this hand-tying. So I think Sony might get 10 or 20 people to use this.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the friend would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
The claim is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
DRM and proprietary memory stick, that just doubles my reasons not to subscribe to it.
...will work only with Sony Memory Stick-compatible devices including VAIO computers, CLIE PDAs, MiniDisc, CD and Walkman products...
Buh-bye, thanks for playing!
Is it because we are less then 10% of the OS market? Figures.
Yeah, Sony Connect Online. Only 699 US dollars per song.
Too bad you sold it. I got a package deal brand new for $70 at the local electronics store.
I didn't install Sony's software (just the drivers and the OpenMG encoder) -- I use RealPlayer 10 which is surprisingly a decent product... Real cleaned up their act. The RealPlayer plugin for NetMD doesn't have DRM... although it takes a bit of work to get my iTMS purchased files onto my NetMD.
Also if you purchased a more expensive model it would have had a SPDIF input.
I've been buying music lately from Allofmp3.com, covered lately in Slashdot. A review of it can be found here.
It's cheap (1 cent per megabyte), great quality (offers me lossless FLAC files), and legal (royalties paid to ROMS, the relevant group in Russia). And the files are unencumbered
All the problems of iTunes (summarized excellently at Downhill Battle) still apply. Why go for something restricted, too expensive, and too controlled by the media monopoly, when you can get cheap legal music from Allofmp3 or similar services?
|/usr/games/fortune
Sony does make Good TV's and DVD players, however, that's the extent to which I like there products. Anything that is just proprietary BS, I just leave alone - hopefully this won't creep into the TV DVD market, though I hear they are making TV's that use memory sticks.
Can blonde people use it or only brunettes?
I havent followed the minidisc scene in a while, but the older sony models were pretty useful and DID have s/pdif recording and output. then again back then the models had a full complement of jacks, mic in, line in, line out, while new ones don't it seems.
so yes it probably sucks now, but it used to be pretty useful
Sony still doesn't get it.
Betamax : Tried to push its own standard. Failed even though it was superior.
Minidisc : See above
Memory Stick : Again persists on going it alone even though other standards are more popular and widespread (CF and SD)
Sony connect : Lauches its own spin when other established players are already in the market.
Interoperability means nothing to these guys.
I will continue to get my music the old fashion way, rip it into MP3s and I(i.e., Me, Moi, NOT YOU) will decide what I want to do with it!
It'd be interesting if Sony added some features to the upcoming PS3 to included support for their music store. With game consoles gradually veering towards becoming "home media centers" (or whatever the buzz word is today), this seems like a possible move.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
1. Sony's being one major label only gives other labels a disincentive to cooperate...and most artists fall into the "not on Sony" category. Sony has no majority of artists on its labels.
2. Yeah. Apple has no following in Japan at all. Give me a break! The Japanese can't keep their hands off sexy, stylish, hip little things. I predict it'll be even harder to get your hands on the iPod mini in Japan (upon its release there) as it has been in the US. Name a Sony product that's come out in the last three years that's got anywhere near the amount of buzz as the 3rd-gen. iPod and iPod mini.
I think the words of Seinfeld's Jackie Chiles will soon apply for Sony here: "This is the most public yet of my many humiliations."
Just what we need, another "Me Too!" offering. Nothing new, no compelling features, just a very limited Sony version of the same thing offered by others.
Sony's stuff is restricted to Sony's patforms. At least Apple's iTunes software is multiplatform, openly usable (there are cgi scripts that will query the database and get songs for you) - I dont think Sony will get very far with their online music store.
-Imidazole2
it's small and it runs for 50 hours on a single AA battery. That and it's cheap -- I can [destroy] it and not worry!
What a coincidence!
That's the same reason I drive a Yugo!
Let's face the facts. DRM is coming, it's going to be here no matter how much kicking and screaming people do it's going to be here. Many of the Slashdot crowd have been wringing their hands concerned with Linux/BSD/other being squeezed out of being able to view movies, listen to MP3's, etc. All they have been saying is M$ is bad because of DRM they are going to screw *US*. Well they are going to screw non MS users if we don't do something about it.
Content providers want DRM, MS probably doesn't care a bit about DRM but they realized that providers want it before they'll release their product. So they fill the niche because opensource has only been against it instead of offering their alternative. If opensource, etc doesn't want to be completely squeezed out of this market they need to offer an alternative. An alternative that can be used on any platform without cost. Content providers don't want to pay a M$ license, they just want a warm fuzzy. If we can give them a warm fuzzy without cost; it'll still be DRM but it'll be *our* DRM that won't prevent *my* OS from being able to view their content. We need to get an acceptable alternative out there before we non-M$ users completely lose any use (even a crippled DRM use) because we let M$ control the market completely.
"Walk into a store," he says. "You don't see MiniDisc players promoted or people talking about them. Its time was three years ago, and it didn't make it."
Since everything he says is wrong, can we assume that Sony actually has a chance?
You would think the Betamaxalicious success of MiniDisc (yeah yeah, its big in Japan, whatever) would have taught Sony a lesson here. Its amazing, Sony has gone from being one of the smartest companies in consumer electronics to one of the dumbest in a very short period of time.
Their financials are in the crapper and they can't seem to bring anything to market to dissaude iPod buyers.
So they've got their featured artist featured on the right side of the homepage. You'd think maybe you could click on the graphic and access those tracks? Nah! That'd be too logical. Usability. Start there, then add the fluffy stuff later.
We know you are interested in using the Connect music store. Unfortunately SonicStage only works on Windows 98SE and above.
We have no immediate plans to support other operating systems at this time. However, we believe this is an important user base and we hope to support it in the future.
This is so sad... i'll stick with iTunes
The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X
While I don't have exact numbers for the amount of Playstations owned, I could see this as an added service for future Sony products (Playstation) as more and more companies are seemingly moving towards an appliance in your entertainment center that plays games, movies, music, you name it.
So while everyone thinks of this as another music store over the web, the inherit possibility of integrating this with future Sony products is perfectly legitimate, albeit speculative.
I'd mod the above as Flamebait. *Any* time competition enters the market it's good for the industry.
And you disagree with me here why? I didn't say it was bad for the industry!!
I'm criticizing SonyConnect because the Sony store and players are more restrictive than Apple. If you hate Apple, then fine. Don't buy an iPod or don't use iTMS. But do you think Sony is going to support OGG? Do you think they'll support AAC (DRM or no)? If you do you're dreaming. And if you hate Apple because of their "restrictions" you are going to hate Sony even more.
Sony makes Apple look like a bastion of free choice by comparison.
So this thing will ONLY work with those devices? They qualified the statement with the term 'including' so that makes me wonder if other computers could use it besides VAIO's. If it is indeed limited to VAIOs for computers, well....Sony just shot itself in the foot with a BFG. Not only are they entering an already saturated segmented market, but Apple does everything that do, sometimes for cheaper, with less DRM, and it works on practically any device out there. Please explain to me how this service has ANY advantage over Apple.
I think I'm going to call up customer service for this service and ask why I should use their service, and for each bullet point they give me, I will explain how ITMS does it better, and then ask them to tell me why I should still consider their service. Honestly, I don't think they'll have a good answer.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
When will the music companies realise that $1 per track is far too expensive, and their profits would probably increase if they acutally decreased the prices. And they'd have much happier customers as a result.
If tracks were 10c each, I would quite happily buy whole albums without worrying if I might not like them after a couple of plays. I buy up whole genres of music - if it cost me $50 to buy up all the best punk tracks of the 70's (or whatever), I would do that, despite it being a genre I never normally listen to.
However, I spend very little on music. I just don't like to get ripped off and I don't think $1 a track is justifiable when they have virtually zero distribution costs. And don't give me all that crap about how expensive it is to promote a record, or how the cost has to be high to pay for the flops. That's just all bullshit, especially with the near zero distribution and manufacture costs that the internet allows.
I use the itunes store. Burn Cds which seem to work anywhere I have access to a cd player (ie on my work computer).
I'm amazed at the tone of comments here. Everybody's saying since Apple's done it already then forget it. Aren't you folks for choice? Do you really want a monopoly by Apple, no matter how good it is? It's not "fragmentation" it's "more choice is good for the consumer."
OK, this one has DRM and vendor lock-in etc. But it's still a competition for Apple. And unless Sony and Apple get into a cartel, that's a good thing. Because at the very least, Sony can generate an environment where prices may even drop. Remember, you wouldn't see any sale prices on your favorite food if there was only one supermarket chain in existence.
Are you people really such sad, ignorant elitists?
But IBM did, just because they succeeded in selling their existing business customers on the concept of IBM being the "Standard For Business" in the PC market too. Once a few businesses signed on, it was all over for Apple in the business sector because you wanted to go with the standard. And that was the end of the PC wars.
So where's Sony's parallel advantage here? I think that analogy is a good thing to keep in mind in general, but very fallacious because Sony doesn't have a big captive audience that they can convince on a new standard.
For the record, MP3 is the Standard For Music, with all its faults (poor quality and no DRM from the label's POV) is the standard and will remain so for a while because of its ubiquity and freedom of use. The iPod has become the de-facto "Standard For MP3-Players" and it's not a personal thing--I'm just going by marketshare here.
All these services requiring their own software, or even their own devices...or at least strongly discouraging using anything else...
I'm sorry, but I can't help but say anything but "fuck you!" to all that.
If they can make their DRM work just fine with winamp, and not require me to have any special software to use their site, I might be able to deal with it.
You might try and compare it to online games, but most of those, you get the game and the rest is pretty much automatic. It's more like if Amazon and Barnes and Noble required you to use their own proprietary browsers to shop their web sites.
It might be MEANT to be a pain in the ass to make it harder to switch to a competitor...but the first site that can keep out of court and turn a profit while using nothing more than a web browser, will be the one who can REALLY take on Apple.
Perhaps moderators should check sources as well.
http://www.wagnerconsultingllc.com/ goes nowhere. Hidden backdoors in BSD? One Eyed Jack? His journal claims that he's charging Rusty six figures for work on kuro5hin.org's back-end code, and his other entries are almost as amusing.
Sir, your fiction borders on the believable, in a Clancy-esque way. I congratulate you.
Hamster
If customers buy responsibly and if NetMD/OpenMG was any indication of how tight sony's DRM is, they shouldn't do so well against Apple. Apple has the advantage of the iPod and the fact that its players hold loads more music than an MD (which you have to burn) or a Memory Stick (which you burn your money buying). sony is just too restrictive when it comes to things. I couldn't even upload a recording I made via NetMD. I had to use a freaking optical out cable and manually record it. Who wants restrictions like that?
MY SECRET DIARIES
Jack,
Spyware isn't the main concern with these things; the DRM would prevent me from giving it to a friend, and so any kind of spyware would only be applicable if the DRM is cracked. But its pretty trivial to take two cracked files, DIFF them, and find out what's DIFFERENT.
On the other hand, if the DRM is uncrackable, then spyware doesn't really seem to matter.
So I guess I'm thinking you're either bullshitting (no offense), or mistaken, because spyware doesn't do Sony any good. On the other hand, some exec might've gotten it up their ass that somehow spyware will help them track things on P2P, so perhaps you're telling the truth.
In either event, you're only arguing that we should buy physical CD's for two reasons:
1) Unemcumbered
2) Cheaper (BMGMusic sells CD's for $7-8 SHIPPED)
I'm imagining the review meeting held one or two years from now where all the Sony execs sit down and try to figure out why their music store was such a dismal failure...
They'll probably talk for hours and never really figure out what happened. They probably don't even realize how badly they suck.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Um, your list is not a full list, and well, the argument is ass backwards...
.. but the rest...
" I want to be able to play all kinds of music: Apple's protected AAC, MP3, Ogg, WM. But I can only do the first 2, and the third is probably only available through a hack."
Can't say much on ogg, havn't tried it, havn't much want or need to
The iPod can play:
1. AIFF
2. Apple Lossless
3. AAC
4. Apple "fairplay" protected AAC
5. MP3
6. iTunes can convert your WMV files to MP3 for the iPod to play...(as long as they don't have DRM)
If that list is too short for you, then I'm sorry, but you need to get a life.
As far as Apple controling what you play the songs on? You said it yourself, burn a CD and rerip if you want to play the songs on something other than an iPod. What's the big deal? I mean, if you have the time and energy to mitch and bone about it, it can't be that it would take too much of your time to do that, right?
This service is dead dead dead dead DEAD . Toast. Kaputt. Stick a fork in it.
sulli
RTFJ.
"Failed even though it was superior."
No. It was inferior in terms of recording length (corrected, but too late).
The myth of "superior picture" was just that. Oh... it might've been marginally superior, but certainly not enough that mattered. The professional beta recorders were clearly superior, but this had no relationship to the consumer beta other than similar tape packaging.
So please. Enough with the "Beta was superior myth". Its boring and marks you as uneducated.
...are what first sprung to mind. Perhaps the analogy isn't quite right, but I think Sony's making a somewhat similar mistake here. But then I realized that maybe Sony considered Betamax to be a success? ... and at the time, they didn't even control any content, like they do now.
It's interesting how Sony portrays their own history.
It cannot be denied that SONY was once one of the greatest companies on earth. Take a look if you have not already seen this gallery of Walkmen. They got it right lots of times, in many areas.
In this one area, digital music, they have got it completely wrong. This is unusual for SONY. Their portable digital music players have completely flopped, their proprietary encoder is a failure, and they are being left out in the cold in an area where they should be numnber one.
They were in a position to set the rules. They own Columbia and its huge back catalogue. They have the technical expertise to build the most seductive portables. They have software developers. What they were/are missing is the foresight.
They should have:
They would have owned the portable music player space, created the number one destination for music online, demonstrated that MP3s are the new radio, short circuted all the RIAA lawsuits, and....acted more like SONY.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
"Apple's iTunes software is multiplatform"
Yes, iTunes works on Mac and Windows XP. Oh, and it works with iPod.
Now *that's* selection. AND value.
Sony Software has always sucked - especially SonicStage. It came with my MiniDisc-Player and it is #*+/&%$"$%!!!! And Sony customer service is even worse ...
...) seem to fail completely to cling to their lead positions in the digital age.
Just another single vendor DRM format - just what the world needed. So far Apple has beaten Sony on it's own field of expertise: cool consumer electronics.
All those former industry leaders in the analog arena (Sony, Kodak,
The Leibnitz algorithm is O(n^2), not Olog(n)! Duh!
Okay, I'll bite...
I do keep some heavy-duty tinfoil in my desk for use as headgear, but I fail to see the relationship between covert IP channels developed by Sony and Spyware that may be used with the new Sony music service.
Are you saying that Sony is only going to support IPv6 for their new service? And if so, even assuming that they have embedded infomation in the protocol itself, how does that matter in the broader scheme of things?
I mean, if I were to use their service, I would have to assume that their proprietary software is doing nasty anti-privacy things, anyway, since it is proprietary (and that's before we even start talking about the fact that their proprietary nastiness won't even run on my dual-booting Linux/FreeBSD PowerPC system), so what does real difference does it make how they hide the information they are collecting at their site? If they are using IPv6, it will work only with their site, anway... or maybe theirs and their "partners"...
And finally: What do you imagine a packet sniffer is that anyone might try to use it as "protection from spyware"? My packet sniffer tells me whats going on, but doesn't do aught to stop it....
Altogether, I've got to say your post borders on the incoherent or hysterical; it doesn't make much sense. In fact, it qualifies as "FUD" for someone who perhaps isn't familiar with you abuse of jargon.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Interesting to look at his past posts
d =84664&cid=7388 236
1 425&cid=6460 286
6 83&cid=5144 368
Anti-japan:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?si
Anti-H1B
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7
Mysterious bragging:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=51
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Sony makes really good and somewhat affordable electronics, but I haven't been impressed by their Customer Service in any way. I used to be subscribed to Star Wars Galaxies (one of their MMORPGs) and I was appauled at how terrible their support was. I sent their support crew a number of emails, every single one was ignored. Their forums were just huge flame-fests.. it was crazy.
Because of SWG, I refuse to ever use a Sony service again (I'll stick with napster), although I'll still purchase their electronic goods.
I've noticed that iTunes and Real have the same catalog. I haven't checked out Napster, but I'm starting to wonder if they are all sharing the same exact music source that the labels have approved. Does anyone know for sure?
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
The "PSX" already has a harddrive. So you've got to figure that the PSX/PS3 will be to this service what the iPod is to ITMS.
So what we will end up with is a bunch of different companies that don't have to compete with each other because the music is locked into one type of hardware. Whereas before, we had a nice simple standard.... the CD.
Wasn't the digital revolution supposed to increase competition and give the consumer a better deal?
The one good thing about this is that there are already so many DRM technologies in use now, so Microsoft may find it more difficult to impose its own standard and dominate the whole friggin thing.
DRM is DRM i can see the mind rot has begun and people are just going to choose the lesser of 2 evils ....fuckit rip it.
no drm is acceptable PERIOD
DOWNLOADS LICENSE AND LIMITATIONS ON USE.
Sony Connect hereby grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Connect Downloads in accordance with the following limitations (the "Limitations on Use"):
Permitted Uses: You may play the Connect Downloads an unlimited number of times on up to three (3) personal computers that are registered with the Connect service, including the personal computer on which the Connect Downloads are originally downloaded. Once downloaded to that personal computer, you may transfer the licensed Connect Downloads an unlimited number of times (except for WMG's Content, which may be transferred up to three (3) times) to portable music devices and media that read the OpenMG DRM such as the HiMD, the Net MD, and the Memory Stick media. You may not thereafter transfer, copy or export (or the like) such Connect Download from one such device to another, or to any media of any kind without maintaining the OpenMGDRM. In addition, you may also "burn" up to a total of ten (10) (up to five (5) permanent copies of the Connect Downloads in compressed form in the Atrac3 codec encrypted and protected by the OpenMG DRM and up to five (5) Redbook CD's) to either blank recordable CD-R compact discs or blank recordable CD-RW compact disc (i.e., a physical, non-interactive record configuration that conforms to either (i) in the case of CD-Rs, the so-called "Orange Book Part II" technical specification for "write once" compact discs or (ii) in the case of CD-RWs, the so-called "Orange Book Part III" technical specification for "re-writable" compact discs). Any burning or transferring capabilities of the Connect Downloads are solely an accommodation to you and shall not constitute a grant or waiver (or other limitation or implication) of any rights of the copyright owners of the sound recording and underlying musical composition embodied in the Connect Download.
Non-Permitted Uses: Any use of the sound recordings as embodied in the Connect Download other than as permitted above is a violation of the copyright in such sound recording under applicable laws, and is prohibited. Except as expressly permitted in the "Permitted Uses" section above, you may not reproduce, distribute or transfer the Connect Downloads, in any format. For example, you may not: (i) transfer the Connect Downloads to anyone else; (ii) register more than 3 computers with the Connect store at any one time; (iii) copy or transfer the Connect Downloads to more than the number of portable music devices expressly permitted in the "Permitted Uses" section above; (iv) "burn" more than ten (10) copies of any particular Connect Download to blank recordable compact disc; or (v) copy or transfer the Connect Downloads to any storage device or blank media not specifically authorized in the "Permitted Uses" section above. In addition, you may not reverse engineer, transcode, decompile, translate, adapt, modify, disassemble or otherwise tamper with the Content, or the software, or circumvent any technology designed to enforce these Limitations on Use. You further agree that you will not attempt to modify the software or the Usage Rules for any reason whatsoever, including for the purpose of disguising or changing ownership of the Content.
Notes:
Do not use SonicStage while logged on to a domain user account under Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home Edition.
SonicStage should be installed while logged on to an account with administrator privileges.
So I can't be logged into a domain while using the software? so much for the "at-work" crowd.
This is actually much bigger than you think. . . in fact it's much
bigger than Sony or portables
This Sony Connect actually fits into a larger distro called AnyMusic available in Japan that was
created by a cooperation of Japanese consumer electronic firms including Sony. AnyMusic
Sony, Kenwood, Pioneer, Sharp, Onkyo, Marantz, Denon, JVC, and Yamaha
plan on creating consumer electronic devices beyond portables that will
be comptable with the online distro (using Atrac3 and OpenMG X/Label
Gate); also likely the Sony PSP/PS3 will also be compatible as well as
other non-sony devices.
Here are some devices that support the format:
Pioneer
X-AM1
Kenwood
Sony
NetJuke (40GB HDD)
Demos:
Corporate
CE
screenshot
amen.
> Sony is a plague that never ends. I bought a
> minidisc from them specifically to be able to
> digitally record my own music performances. I
> was falsely led to believe (by the sales person > and the box) that this was possible. It has a
> USB cable after all.
You believed a salesman and didnt do any homework before buying a product and the company is responsible that you are an idiot?
I have an ax or two to grind with Sony but I dont use my own stupidity as an example instead of why the company sux.
And FYI, if youre going to do live taping, the little portable Sony DAT recorders TD7-8 are excellent. Taped over 500 shows (mine and other bands) and counting and was well worth the investment.
I have a hard time figuring out what is more annoying, first person accounts which highlight stupidity or the modders which rate this stuff insightful.
I find it interesting that the RIAA spent some time trying to badger Apple into increasing the price-per-song on iTMS, but now Sony (an RIAA member) comes out with their own service selling songs for the same price.
I will never buy a memory stick device again after buying a 256mb stick to play music with, which turned out to be 2x 128mb on a single stick with a "manual" switch to change between to the two banks of memory.
The switch being of course a bloody feature, like I want to pull out the stick and fiddle about with a tiny dip switch everytime I want to listen to a couple of tracks.
These types of announcements don't mean much to me right now. I'm running linux and frankly, there aren't any iTunes-worthy offerings for linux. Here's another M$ only offering just like the Walmart music site. Boring....
Sony just can't let a bad idea die. Their R&D expenditure on this piece of crap couldn't be that much that they have to continue releasing these things. Enough already!!
Unless Sony's music store brings something more to the table than iTunes does -- and I can't find anything in any of the articles that indicates otherwise -- the deciding factor for consumers is going to be which device they want to be DRM-locked into.
The iPod has a huge head start in the market, and owning one carries a lot of hipster cachet. Meanwhile, anybody still toting around a MiniDisc player looks like they're either hopelessly out of touch or in denial. OK, you bet on the wrong horse, just let it go, man!
The iPod also has arguably a near-perfect design for a portable music device, a design that no other manufacturer has yet been able to equal. Sony's players will likely be well-designed, but they will be hard-pressed to best the iPod, especially since they still require the owner to carry around a pocketful of unwieldy discs. How very late '90s.
Who's going to shell out $200-$400 dollars for an ancient, unloved format, when they could pay $250 for a cutting-edge 4GB iPod Mini that will make them the envy of their technologically inferior friends? I'm guessing only Sony fanboys and misguided grandparents looking for a Bar Mitzvah gift.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
>>They were in a position to set the rules. They own Columbia and its huge back catalogue. They have the technical expertise to build the most seductive portables. They have software developers. What they were/are missing is the foresight.
Correct, but what Sony also has is accountants, and they exert undue influence in Sony's strategic decisions. Allow me to digress for a moment, and I'll explain why this matters.
Sony is a two-pronged company -- they sell 1)content (music, movies, etc) and 2) components (televisions, vcrs, robots, etc.)
These two divisions are opposed to one another. The component side wants to make the open, flexible "killer" hardware we want, but the content side of the company wants those devices locked down (to the point that they're not useful) so as to prevent "theft" of intellectual property, copying movies/music, etc. So these two halves are continuously fighting against one another and the CEO must decide what the right balance is.
In step the Accountants. They're there to help the CEO make this decision, but Sony's beanmen only understand a static balance sheet -- as if Sony must choose between sales of Hardware or Content. They conclude that if a sony device can be used to copy music, they will lose sales from the content side of Sony, therefore the device must 1) be locked down, 2) be expensive enough to offset potential losses from the content side, 3)contain DRM to protect Sony's IP.
Fortunately, Sony's not the only player in the market, so their sales remain poor and they end up squandering an opportunity to compete.
This scenario is good!; the way I see it every company that fails at marketing a DRM device is a win for the consumer. Perhaps after years of disappointing sales, the boardroom will tire of seeing their money wasted and demand a decision, one way or the other (content vs. component) be made. Thus, the stalemate is broken and the company can move forward.
In short, Sony's current "have it all" strategy is doomed in a free market*: Given the choice, people don't want DRM. Let's just hope Sony's (or any other company following this model) spectacular economic flame-out doesn't encourage them to pressure government officials to mandate DRM in order to prop up their failing business model.
Name a Sony product that's come out in the last three years that's got anywhere near the amount of buzz as the 3rd-gen. iPod
Playstation 2?
paintball
"You can now get NetMD players which officially support unlimited check in and out with no restrictions that make you check in files you already own"
Wow. That's almost as convenient as a CD! What *will* they think of next?
Then they get hacked.
...seems to run fine under W.I.N.E. in Linux. All you have to do is make sure you set your windows version variable in the 'config' file of W.I.N.E. to say 'win2k'. I'm downloading as I type this on my RedHat box running under VMWare on Mandrake Linux. w00t!
This rules out most corporate workers. Why in the world would they have this restriction?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Well, one of many advantages, I would say. But their biggest one was that they plugged a music store into a player that tons of people were already using. We just had to upgrade our regular MP3 player to version 4 and there was another playlist called Music Store.
I think this is better than the web-based interfaces of Wal-mart and others, and it's certainly better than making your customers download a brand new piece of software and expect them to use it to manage their music.
RP
the non-portable MD recorders are actually good.. I was against the format until I used one to record some performances at my school and then played it back via SPDIF to computer, edited, and burned on cd.. although the recordings are technically lossy because of ATRAC I havent heard any realy difference yet between that and real cds.. frequency response seems good.. the recordings have the same depth as the live performance did. would have been nice to just drag those files right from the recorder to the computer but for me the extra time wasnt too bad (wouldnt have been getting paid for it either way)
Various rights owners coming out with their own special standards that promote sales of thier special units.
:o)
Fortunately there are plenty of smart fellas out there that know how to crack the files, so after I "buy" them I can acctually listen to them on my MP3 player.
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
This happens right now with Camcorders -- their smallest pocket-sized models use compression that nobody else's software can deal with. It happens in digital cameras, with the memory sticks, and in music here, and with the minidiscs, and so on.
Not coincidentally, their massive recent success was with Playstation, where everyone else is still using proprietary formats, selling consoles at a break-even point, and trying to make their money on the cartridges too.
I don't have the same feeling about Apple. Is the iTunes MS perfect? No. Is it mostly a loss-leader for iPods? Yes. But the store itself really is designed around the user experience, and it's a small pleasure to use. Sony's products don't feel that way. They miss crucial details. The ultramini camcorders have nasty little rocker zoom switches.
Sony almost seems to design around its proprietary formats as if they were a strength, not a weakness.
Some sociologist could do a pop book on this and end up scoring big on the business bestseller list. As a corporate culture, Sony has failed to "get" the impression this makes on consumers for so long, it's shocking. If they were asking their consumers what to do, they'd hear this loud and clear.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
> Sony says it has sold about 2.5 million Connect-compatible devices.
Well, I won't argue with those statistics themselves. But I know that in my daily life I see 3-5 iPods every day, whereas I don't know anyone who has a Sony ATRAC player, and I have only seen about 2 people with a Sony ATRAC player in my life.
Sony has sold a lot of MiniDisc players, because they've been around for probably ten years. However, I'll wager that at least half if not more of them have long since either (A) broken (the reliability of Sony products in my experience gives them a 1 year life-span on average for portable players), (B) been discarded at the bottom of closets because of their lack of utility--expensive media, restrictive DRM even on your own music, lack of format support, etc. and/or (C) been replaced with iPods. It can't be denied that many of the early-adopter-music-lover types who adopted MD in the 90s are carrying iPods now.
So if we're discussing how many players are in the public's hands, and by this I mean the ones they actually use on a regular basis, I'd still consider 4:1 to be a fair estimate. And it's increasing in iPod's favor every day.
Sounds like the perfect solution to me - you don't pay for content, you pay for distribution.
What you're missing is you won't NEED a corporation to do the distribution for you. It'll just happen on it's own - any idiot on the planet will be able to take their content and put it up. As long as you distribute well, you'll be able to make a little money at it.
Some will say that this won't work, because then artists and actors etc can't make any money. This is not true - they'll just have to find different ways to make the money. Artists will continue to make money from performances, movies will continue to be financed by theater sales (because people will still want to see movies in the theater). This might mean that you can't make $40 million per year being an actor, or spend $80 million on a movie promotional campaign, or make $40 million on a platinum record, but that's OK. It also means you don't have to pay $20 per CD you want to pay for the promotion and advances of 20 CD's nobody wants because record executives can't do much better than blindly guess what people will buy.
Yes, currently, we pay big bucks to have record companies and record executives and multi-million dollar promotional budgets and filthy rich actors and musicians. But there's no reason we need to, and since those are the only reasons to make people pay for content, there's really no reason to make people pay for content.
Consumers pay a lot of money to support an expensive, inefficient content-creation system that is no longer relevant. The only reason we don't have $0.20 songs and $1 movies virtually directly from the artists and directors and actors is because the record and movie executives and few multi-million dollar artists and actors don't want to give up their cut. Stop the welfare for the rich, free the content.
paintball
> With game consoles gradually veering towards becoming "home media centers"
:)
:)
The best console-based "home media center" is a modded XBox.
Thank you Microsoft.
Seriously, check out what's available for it. My friend has Evox (which is a Dashboard replacement), XBox Media Player, and Gentoo Linux. And a 250GB hard drive. There's not much that it's not useful for.
Please...if the best you can do is belittle and call his argument "weak" without any justification, I would suggest you withhold your name too.
I indulge in free music as much as the next guy, but if you don't see depriving a person of money they otherwise would have had to be a "loss" then you should go live in some socialist haven where work, effort and initiative are rewarded on par with sloth, apathy and dismissiveness.
Supposing you work a 40-hour week. If your boss comes in and tells you that he's decided after the fact that he doesn't want to pay you for your work--after all, now that it's done and out there, he doesn't feel he should HAVE to pay for it--would you call that a "loss"? Or would you respect his view on your intellectual property?
I hate Metallica and all those other spolied brat movie stars and bands. Having said that, let's not mince words. Downloading and listening to a song you don't own is not legal. If you choose to do it, great; I chose to drink underage and do any number of other things that would be hard to pass off as legal. Still, don't be so sophomorish as to pretend that the only laws that apply to you are the ones you agree with. If you don't like the legal system, work to get it changed...don't just sit in a pool of egotistical neophytes who would rather scoff at it from behind.
Of course, that's just my opinion.
Here's what I dug up from their horrible site. It's buried in the Terms & Conditions, http://www.sonyconnect.com/tos.html. With my observed differences to iTMS added for flavor.
Three PC's running Connect which may play your purchased files. Which is only available on PCs, no Mac version. iTMS just increased this to 5 PC's.
Each track may be "burned" 10 times: 5 times as a compressed, DRM protected file, and 5 times as an unprotected CD audio track. iTMS makes no claims on limiting the number of times you may copy the protected file. Each track can be burned from a single playlist 7 times (two more than Connect), and from different playlists over and over (no total burn limit).
Unlimited copies to devices which support OpenMG copy protection. Unless you have a file from "WMG", which can only be placed on 3 portable devices. All of the compatible devices are made by Sony. iTMS lets you make unlimited copies to iPods, made by Apple. Depends on the device you like.
Sounds likes iTMS has them blown away. I'm not sure how (or if) these are enforced by Connect. How you do keep people from backing up their purchased files to CDs?
the bandwagon is getting quite loaded......
Apple, Real, Sony, Microsoft, Wal-Mart (heh), Coke, and many more...
> Unfortunately there are a few markets where Sony make the best products
I realize that "best" is somewhat subjective, but I honestly haven't seen a Sony product in a long time that technologically was the best. I truly believe, based on observation and not prejudice, that Sony is not a technological leader in any market. Their products are almost universally overpriced, though.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but the Clie is not the best PDA. The best is probably one of the many PocketPC devices.
Are there any other markets where you can demonstrate Sony's offering is truly superior?
moron
The AC made a good argument. Your response lacks detail and finesse. Unless you can present a refutation, I'll have to conclude that in fact you are talking about yourself.
Da Blog
> Cheap media. Sure they don't hold much, but at $2 per 170MB disk, I can carry arround good amount of music. Not as much as an iPod
When I wrote this reply, I interpreted your comment differently. I thought you were saying the media is "not as much [cost] as an iPod" when you apparently meant "not as much music as an iPod." But this is still something to consider.
$2 per 170MB disk
First, observe how ridiculous Sony's pricing here is in itself, when a 700MB standards-based disk called CD-ROM is $0.10.
Second, consider how many of these it would take to carry a substantial portion of music on you:
Let's take my 15GB iPod to compare. That's 88.2 MiniDiscs. Aren't they encased in little sleeves like floppy disks? So that would only take up your entire backpack. And the cost...
89 * $2.00 = $178.
So add $166 to the cost of the player (which you quoted as $130). So at least $308. So for $9 less you could have all your music on the player at the same time, and you wouldn't need a backpack-load of discs to carry it. And it would take about 20 minutes to transfer it the first time instead of having to record 89 MiniDiscs which I'm pretty sure would require a few days and a LOT of patience.
MiniDisc players are good for recording high quality audio, if you ever do that. And if you find the CD player a convenient way of listening to your music collection, but want something smaller, you probably wouldn't be disappointed by MD. But the whole point of good MP3 players (at least for me) is that you can put ALL of your music (or at least all the music that's important to you) on this player and never have to sit down for twenty minutes and think about "which 1% of my music should I take with me today?" With hard-drive based players, you can decide what you want to hear whenever you want, and have it playing five seconds later. Sony can't offer that with Memory Stick or with MD. They need to discover the hard drive. i don't see a real disadvantage to it.
I mean, what's the big incentive to switch from CD to MD? "Well, it's a little smaller. And you can use our proprietary software to restrict your rights to listen to your own music!"
Whereas the incentive to switch from CD to hard-drive players is much more tangible--carry all your music in a package much smaller than your CD [or MD] player, and it also doubles as an external hard drive. To update your collection, you plug it in and it downloads any new songs. This is much more compelling, and it's why Sony will lose this battle by a wide margin.
But we're for VIABLE choice. If the new "choice" is in every way inferior to the existing offering, it's not really a choice, is it?
paintball
they could pay $250 for a cutting-edge 4GB iPod Mini will make them the envy of their technologically inferior friends
I paid $72 (new!) for a 20GB Archos about which I have no illusions as to hype factor but whose low price makes it an envied object by many of my friends. Maybe I have cheap friends?
My "cutting-edge" Archos plays video, features speaking-voice menu prompts and playlists, unlimited bookmarking, and supports a robust plugin architecture with games and PDA functions.
If and when the iPod Linux project manages to definitively crack open the closed iPod box then there will get some cool "cutting edge" add-on apps and functions, but until then for me it's a closed uninteresting box very far from the "cutting edge".
Da Blog
At least it works with 98 and ME (Unlike Apple's iPod+iTunes).
Look up some terms regarding loss, specifically "opportunity cost".
When I check Google or Wikipedia I see too many big words. What's your version?
Da Blog
I thought that was Alphaville.
Forget downloadable Music, that is so 5 years ago. How about opening a downloadable MOVIE store!!! That would be teh b0mb.
actually mean better.
Is one of those words that actually means 'as good as'.
The same with bigger, longer, faster, whatever. Shittier.
"AdSpeak" doan'tcha'no...
-Ch-A
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Well, taking my iTunes statistics, I'll try to answer your question objectively:
I have a smart playlist called "Recently played." The criteria are songs that I've listened to in the past six weeks or that I've added in the past fourteen days. We could call this list the minimum allowable amount of storage I'd require to even consider a player.
The size: 602 songs, 1.6 days, 2.36 GB.
So I could probably get by on an iPod mini, but 2.36 GB of flash would be out of a sane person's budget.
If I had someone who knew me really well and would spend their time choosing and loading music onto it every day for me, that I would enjoy, then sure, I might do fine with 256MB of Flash since that would probably last me the 4 hours or so that I listen per day. But I don't have any such music servant. And after four years or so of doing it, I just got tired of having to make playlists and burn them to Audio CD, and then I got tired *very* quickly of copying bunches of MP3s to burn an MP3 CD (because in this case you want over 200 songs to fill a CD and you also need to organize them by folder or it's a huge mess). And I got tired of buying or recharging AA batteries. In the end, I decided that spending a few dollars more one time would be worth it to have everything at my fingertips, permanently.
Sometimes I'm on the train and something reminds me of a song I haven't listened to in four years. Now I can navigate to that song in seconds and relive a memory right then and there. Isn't that worth something?
In terms of organization, I have 1859 songs(7.25GB). I've always been pretty particular about my ID3 tags. So all my music has the correct artist, most has the correct album, and I've never really care to sort by Genre. iTunes lets me create smart playlists that are great for organizing my music. The "recent" playlist I made also has an opposite, "Haven't heard in a while," that I go to when I want to hear something fresh and less commonly played.
I just know that I could never choose 128MB of music and be satisfied. I'm not saying at all that you should move up if you're happy. It's just that taking 1% of my (2.36GB) set of favorite music would be really hard for me to do each time. And I'd still find myself sitting there wishing I could hear some song that wasn't on the player.
Now if it cost, let's say, over $600 for an iPod* I would understand your reservations. Then it'd be a rich-people-toy and a luxury, and it would be wasteful and foolish to buy one because the benefits don't merit that kind of premium. But it's really not that bad a deal considering that my Sony (coincidence that this came up in the Sony discussion) MP3 CD player cost me $150 (in '02). My iPod** cost me $269 (2003, on ed. discount), will last longer because it's not made by Sony (I went through three Sony "CD Walkman" in high school), and I use it ten times more than I used the Sony. So to me it was a no-brainer that I wanted an iPod. Sure, it's a good portion of my paycheck, one time, but then it's paid for and you enjoy it for a long time. Or use a credit card like I did and it's no big deal. Or a piece of a tax return. For those of us to whom it's important, we work it into the budget. If it's not important to you then by all means, save your money.
I hope I've done an adequate job of answering the question of "What are those iPod users thinking?" I know it's difficult to understand if you don't have the same requirements and needs.
---
* And in my opinion, the 20GB is enough for any normal person so don't look at the 40 and think "$500 is almost as much." Think about the 299-399 range of 15 and 20GB (or 269-369 if you're a student).
** And also, if you don't care about style, elegance, or ease of use at all, you can get a hard-drive-based player from someone else and save a few more bucks, bringing the barrier to entry even lower. I don't recommend it, but some people feel better knowing that they got the cheapest player.
I've only seen one mention of the Sony PSP in here, so I'm tossing this comment in. I hate Sony. I rarely ever buy a Sony product, but there are some things that I would purchase because they do well. Maybe not in digicams, PDAs, or music players... but when it comes to video game systems, they are number 1 in sales. I don't think anyone doubts that the Sony PSP will be huge when it launches. I even wonder if there will be more PSPs sold than all the iPods within a couple of years, as consoles tend to sell REALLY well (Nitendo's portable doesn't look as promising so far). This device will be able to play their music files, and will probably be priced in iPod range. It will also play video. I'm think this will be more of a competition when it comes out, and I think that's when this will become a real issue for Apple. Definately not now.
Sony also has a lot of the copyright on the songs. This has led to problems in the past with one arm (the hardware people) being held back by the other (the content people) from offering systems with easy copying choices. it's the same thing all over again.
that's the perspective I'm using when I call it that.
You are smarter than the average bear.
Da Blog
Allofmp3.com - no DRM, choose your preferred format (encoding on the fly into WMA, MP3, Ogg, MP4, FLAC, etc), and pay pennies per megabyte. Legal... er.... (insert lame joke about "in Soviet Russia").
The reasons I will never buy Sony again is 1) I had the misfortune of working for them one summer and personally I don't like being treated like a serf, 2) I hate the way they try to proprietarize the marketplace, 3) the fidelity of their audio equipment sucks and 4) getting support or parts is impossible.
;)
Remember, you can't spell Sony with out an Oni (demon).
I could understand Sony Connect if it existed in a music vacuum, but since it has competition, they would have to answer the single question: What is the compelling advantage to the consumer to buy their product?.
While I have a number of Sony devices which include memory sticks, I haven't considered tasking any of them to be music players because of other limitations inherent to the devices. For example. minimal available memory in a Clie, or the availability of more convenient modes of usage (CDs) in a VAIO notebook.
To repeat, I can't find a single compelling reason to consider purchasing from their online store over its competition. Can you?
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
... the rest of the World.
Sony have chosen to try and compete, in a slightly off-target way, with Apple's ITunes Music Store. As numerous others have pointed out, Apple has an impressive lead in this arena. However, Apple have chosen to limit sales of their online tunes offerings to the United States. One would think that Sony would choose to launch a service in their heartland that does not compete with Apple. I have no concrete evidence, but I suspect the majority of the MiniDisc sales are in Japan and Asia. But no, the same artificial borders appear in the Sony offering - they will only sell to residents of the US.
I fear I will be an old man before certain parties realise that there is a world outside of the US.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
What a load of crap. How many posts can you publish with a reference to Olog(n)? I'm sure Rusty/Kuro5hin.org and Neal Stephenson will jump into this conversation to rescue your credibility!?
Your posts should be auto modded down -1 - Troll.
I wrote the following recently in my blog:
I've been thinking lately about the iPod phenomenon. In many ways, it seems to repeating past patterns similar to the competition of Microsoft versus Apple.
Steve Jobs is loath to share Apple technology and partnerships with anyone else. Despite embracing Open Source in the form of the BSD kernel for OS X and adopting other GPL projects such as KDE for the Safari browser, Apple does not seem interested in reciprocating.
Currently, the iPod and the Mini iPod are the darlings of digital cognoscenti. With good reason, it is a slick product with good fundamental design. I would wager even its elevated price even makes it appealing in some perverse way as well. However, lifting the lid, just a little bit, may reveal some trouble down the road.
The recent news about Real making an overture to Apple to open up its proprietary cloaked DRM AAC format has revealed some of Apple's thinking. While Real's overture was in some ways rather pathetic, it did point out a growing problem that will be interesting to see Apple navigate.
The problem as I see it is that Apple by retaining sole control and manufacture of the iPod and the DRM AAC format it is ultimately in danger or winning the battle but losing the war in almost exactly the same way they lost the OS war with Microsoft.
Of course, I am referring to the difference in how Microsoft is pursuing the same market. In contrast to Apple, Microsoft has licenced the WMA/WMV codec far and wide to third party hardware and software manufacturers. The current WMA codec has fared very well in codec shootouts and has several unique capabilities. For example, while Apple has just in the past few days introduced a lossless compression option to their codec, WMA has had this option for nearly two years. In addition, WMA also supports multi-channel which as had limited application in such releases as Peter Gabriel's recent UP release. More obscurely, Microsoft gobbled up Pacific Microsonics and their HDCD technology in an acquisition several years ago.
What really has momentum is the rapidly expanding universe of diverse hardware products supporting WMA. From DVD players to hundreds of portable players there is support for WMA. This includes such applications as the PhatNoise car audio system that uses a removable hard drive for audio storage. The recent adoption by the DVD Forum of the WMV format in the next DVD standard is a real watershed event. This guarantees that WMA/WMV files will be supported in all future DVD players! On top of this, I have heard that future direct to digital movie theaters will employ WMV technology. Finally, I recently read that the new VOOM HD Satellite service will be using WMV for broadcasting their standard definition channels. See announcements. A recent editorial by Paul Thurrott at Wininfo.com talks about the upcoming new version of the Windows Media Players will incorporate the ability for leasing music rather than outright ownership. This would allow an individual to access as much music as he wants for a fixed fee and be able to play it on portable players, etc. Paul has taken heat for some of his pronouncements but I think he may be right in describing this as a paradigm shift.
So, Microsoft, by widely disseminating the WMA/WMV technology and setting licensing costs very cheaply it has once again positioned itself to possibly own the standard of audio/video distribution just as it currently owns the desktop computing standard.
Apple, by contrast, could find that while it owned the early lead in music distribution ultimately is relegated to single digit market share once again. It is fascinating to observe that this is inherently a Steve Jobs blind spot which repeats itself over and over again.
The future will indeed be televised.
The list is too short because it doesn't include FLAC. I have 500+ albums ripped to FLAC and I don't want to convert them to Apple Lossless.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
like 5 freaking korean geeks in california...
Mini Discs are so 1991
Memory Sticks are so 1998
and Sony is no longer ubiquitous with high quality electronics, in fact most of their stuff is over-priced, cheaply made- garbage.
Good-Luck Sony, but you already failed along time ago...
Sony has always had crappy customer service; their service ends once the retail sale has been made. Getting parts or information from Sony is nearly impossible. They have been this way for decades.
Sony's idea of customer service is the idea that there are other retail units available, buy another one.
...that by purchasing these DRMed products and music that you're just encouraging and supporting these large corporations and the **AA's business models?
Even if fair use it taken into consideration through the use of proprietary hardware, the big companies will take those rights away as soon as they have M$-sized market share (proportionally-speaking) and people can't afford to switch to a platform that takes their interests into consideration.
I guess if you're gullible enough to chase after the pretty bells and whistles without considering the consequences, you deserve whatever happens. I guess that really means I don't have a point.
I thought she was pro-Apple?! (she appeared in ad. for iLife 04.....)
Just ask that Skylarov guy, or DVD Jon, how far US laws extend.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're actually agreeing with the post you replied to?
Why do I got a feeling that more and more big companies will enter this market of online music store and that this will create a chain reaction where everybody will start lowering prices per mp3/album or shove more offers.
.02 on sony is the following.
my
I love Sony products. They're top notch and they perform like I expect them to but one thing I hate is the way they try to force the user to use their technology (kinda like SUN with Java). Here's why:
The NetMD players isn't that popular cause it doesn't store enough mp3's and cause ATRAC blows (here me out.) Force to user to use their "high-tech codec" called ATRAC which is only available in either uber-low quality (~32kbit) or the "ok" level of quality (~132kbit). Problem is doing the conversion from mp3 (doesn't work ogg so if u have ogg, u have to convert to mp3 first) to atrac (.omg OpenMG. very omg!).
The HI-MD will feature the possibility to store up to 1GB. That's a fair amount of songs and + the long playback of ~40-50 hours, it's gonna be one rock solid player BUT because sony are forcing us to use ATRAC (since that's the only format the player understands) and because we have to use their software available on WINDOWS only. I've seen projects on OSX/BSD & Linux but they will never manage to find a way to do the conversion from mp3 to atrac. Result? People become aware of these limitations which are obvious.
Basically, this example just to say how Sony are proud of their technology which may OR MAY NOT be all that good. So what does all of this have to do with Sony's new online music store? the fact that you have to use their portable players and to use the SonicStage software which is horrible IMO because it's a software with more candy-eye than features. GUI's have to be STRAIGT FORWARD. the first time I opened SonicStage 1.5, I searched for 2 whole minutes where the heck I had to go to transfer music! Ended up googling and finding an alternate way to transfer music (w/ simpleburner).
Online Music Stores have to be the most flexible possible. Giving the user the possibility to get the songs no matter what O/S he uses and no matter what Portable Music Player he owns. Therefore, I think Apple will continue to be on top in this market.
I'l stick with buying albums/ripped to 320kbit mp3's
thank you come again!
I'd explain for you, but I suspect this is closer to the truth: You're stupid.
Is that really the best you can do? I suspect, rather, that you have no deep understanding of economic theory and this is evidenced by your inability to explain in simple terms some core concepts of the ideology.
My simple test is this: if someone cannot explain to me what they mean in simple terms then they do not really understand what they are thinking about.
I could teach a parrot to say some economic terms, I could even teach a parrot to say "Google it!", but I doubt I could teach a parrot to explain economics to me.
Does that make you feel more or less than a parrot?
Da Blog
Well that's nice sony launch another pay for crap system. Plus Sonic stage is again one of us... May the lord have mercy on us.... I remember the first time i got an MD i was so impresed until i tried to put some music on it. Lately eveyone think we shoud pay for music , isn't that awfull? Really im not ready to pay for music , if the purpose of music was to make money then high capacity device wouldn exist , seriously who will fill an 20gig ipod witn 99c songs? In the end the best solution is to go back to 80's state of the art technologie! TAPE PLAYER! small , two sided , long last battery life ( i think ) and skip free! isn't that beautiful! now someone put some usb plug in it and lets all go back to tape cause size does mather.
> Apple has sold 70M songs, only caters to Apple users
You know, that's just total BS. I'd say porting a huge application to your competitor's platform constitutes "catering," and if you don't think that, you're an idiot. By your logic, if someone translated a whole Russian novel into English for you, you would say they don't cater to you? How far do they have to go? Right, of course, provide 19 more ports of iTunes, one for each Linux distro, right? Not going to happen, and it's a matter of marketshare. Linux users hate iPod anyway, and porting iTunes 19 more times isn't going to net them many increased iPod sales, but it would cost a crapload of money. Don't bitch about Apple's market share not being any bigger than Linux either.
A. The program was already written for Mac OS.
B. They ARE Apple, their whole reason for existing is to sell their platform so of course they're going to have iTunes on it.
C. Supporting Mac OS is easy. They're all running a finite number of versions, which they wrote. Linux is so many different distros, so many different hardware configurations, so many different everything. It'd take years just to get out a beta.
Therefore, outside of Mac OS X (see "B"), you're only going to get a port if you have a significant portion of the market. And at this point in time, Windows is the only OS that meets this criteria. If you don't like it then work on Linux's marketshare! Do you think Apple's supporting it on Windows for love of Microsoft? If Linux had 30% marketshare, iTMS would probably have been on Linux first just to spite MS. But spite is not worth it with things as they stand, because it's just too small a group.
> only works on the iPod
Repeat after me, troll. AND CD'S. AND CD'S. AND CD'S.
The average cheap person ( = the mass market) plays music on CD's. iTunes lets you burn basically as many copies of your downloaded music as you want! (If you really feel the need to make 8 or more, just burn one and use Nero or CloneCD!) That is all most people need! Here's the market:The reason for this is that normal people don't care about audio format, and most people don't have the time to waste learning the stupid interface on the cheapie MP3 players, and the fact that the flash players only offer their small size as a benefit over a burned audio CD and a CD-player. Burning a CD takes 2 minutes and everyone already has the technology. And the media costs very little.
I've never heard a single person outside of
Hmm...I didn't realize Sony was much more than a figurehead in the SE organization. I was under this impression since Ericsson made phones before they were called "Sony Ericsson" and Sony didn't really make any serious ones (or any phones at all outside of Japan). It looks to me like Sony bought Ericsson and slapped their name on it so they could say they had a viable phone division. I doubt Sony's people (meaning people who didn't come from Ericsson) are very much involved with the actual phone division. It's probably the people who were at Ericsson, and people that Ericsson managers have hired since the buyout. I bet the Sony guys just come by from time to time to make sure they don't embrace a standard like SD. I wonder if the Sony people tried to push for a Sony alternative to Bluetooth? That must have been a hoot for the engineers. PHSB: "We need to get rid of this, blue tooth. I want something that will only communicate with other Sony products!"
But that's all just speculation.
The P900 does seem like an excellent phone. If SE didn't make just GSM phones, I'd definitely try them out. But function over form for me, when it comes to phones so I'll stick to CDMA. (I live in the US.)
"Apple, by contrast, could find that while it owned the early lead in music distribution ultimately is relegated to single digit market share once again. It is fascinating to observe that this is inherently a Steve Jobs blind spot which repeats itself over and over again.
:-(
"
mmm, Jobs introduced Apple, Apple II and family, then he did a good deal with Parc and introduced the Macintosh and then he got kicked out. At that moment there was happy two-digit market share. The sad decline after that is totally not Jobs' fault.
After that, he introduced a very nice OS, which never got anywhere near two digit design, but was extremely advanced, ask anyone familiar with NeXT.
He also bought Pixar and turned it into a money making machine and creative hotspot, it might very well become the Disney of the future.
He came back to Apple as iCEO and returned it to something profitable - although he still has to stop the decline
Then he introduced iPod and iTunes, turning them into two-digit market players and huge profit makers.
Presuming you know all that, where do you see this "Steve Jobs blind spot"?
I'm not into hero worship, but if you'd ask me personally to point out four interesting and successful CEO's from the last twenty years, three of them would be named Steve Jobs...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Technology has reduced the value of a content business such as Sony Music or Sony Pictures by applying basic economic principles such as transaction costs, supply, and demand to the existing business model for content such as songs and movies. It concludes by suggesting new strategies that are economically efficient in the new marketplace shaped by technological changes.
Traditionally Sony Music and other members of the content oligarchy provided essential services in the marketplace. They efficiently produced, filtered, and distributed content, providing consumers value. Advancements in technology no longer allow large-scale, commercial content production companies to serve these roles efficiently.
A content business such as Sony Music or Sony Pictures has a variety of responses to these changes. At one extreme the company may allow its business model to evolve congruent with technology. Conversely, the company may attempt to contort law and social norms to their outdated business plan. If the company chooses this latter approach and resists technology, fights will doubtless arise with technology businesses such as Sony Electronics.
The conflict between content and electronics is somewhat analogous to the balance underlying the U.S. Constitution's Copyright Clause, weighing rights of consumers to use content against incentives for copyright holders to produce more content. As progress in technology moves this balance in favor of consumers, copyright holders threaten to overreact with artificial technological burdens and new legal sanctions that can harm consumers and subsequent authors. Such a strategy would likely result in a net loss of social benefits.
Sony Corporation reflects the tension between the content and electronics manufacturing industries. At Sony's heart is a consumer electronics company, but Sony has expanded one way into computer equipment and another direction into music, movies, and television production.
Advances in technology are driving the cost of producing content to nominal levels for all factors except the author's time. Inexpensive software like Apple's Garage Band and iMovie replace equipment and professional labor that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars in the previous decade. Personal computers are replacing the expensive studios, editors, and engineers of professional production houses. Apple has always pursued authors, seeking to be the platform of choice for publishing, graphic design, music composition, and video editing.
By contrast, Sony's focus has seemed to be providing content consumers a platform for watching or listening to content. This explains its purchases of Columbia TriStar Films and CBS Records. Sony, as an electronics manufacturer, wants to guarantee that it cannot be held hostage to the content industry by producing content itself.
Meanwhile, the supply of musicians already exceeds demand. Compounding this oversupply, authors are able to produce content without using an expensive production company. The job outlook for musicians and singers belittles the production justification that the music industry offers for its continued existence. Therefore, additional incentives for production of music (such as increased copyright protection) would seem to be a waste of economic resources that are better used elsewhere. With so many authors supplying more content than the market demands, one might suppose that the old content industry can provide value-added services other than production such as filtering.
Video content is more complicated, but even the costs of video production will ultimately plummet to nominal levels as computers allow authors to manipulate virtual landscapes and virtual actors limited only by an author's imagination. Landscapes and crowd scenes are already commonly rendered using only computer-generated images.
When Sony bought CBS Records, there was some concern that it would not filter the good songs from the bad. Traditionally, the content industry oligar
When will the music companies realise that $1 per track is far too expensive, and their profits would probably increase if they acutally decreased the prices. And they'd have much happier customers as a result. Parents won't increase your allowance? Seriously, how poor are you that you can't spare a fucking dollar?
Yes. Happy now?
this deal seems just like itunes, with way more restrictions... i'm not quite sure why anyone would do this... except for if you buy a sony player that can only read their files...
I believe in the first hitter theory and Sony is a day late and a dollar short..time will tell
And as you mentioned, at least they allow you to burn to a CD. My free itunes songs I got from Pepsi were burned to CD encoded in FLAC, and now they play just fine on Linux*.
*Any purchases from them however will be few and far between because I don't own a Windows box or a Mac.
The first rational thing I've read all day. That's what I'd do if I didn't have a Mac (nor Windows, *shudder*) When you have to get music from them, just circumvent it the easy way and other times, just don't buy it. In fact, when my Apple ID got screwed up (really dumb thing I did) and I found myself unable to authorize another machine, I quickly burned all my purchased songs to a single CD-RW (in four passes) and re-ripped them to unencrypted 128K AAC, and then created a new account.
Perhaps if you count every PocketPC that's been sold that can play MP3's, and Clies and fancy phones, there might even be more of them out there than iPods. But I don't know any music lovers that use those for MP3 players. Most of them have the hard-drive-based ones.
The problem with most non-dedicated MP3 players for me is that they are typically flash-based players and they're not very good at playing music. I mean, you can add a headphone jack and an MP3 decoder to a watch (nevermind, ThinkGeek already has) or a remote-control or a calculator, but it probably won't become the primary means of listening to music for most people that buy them. I can't imagine listening to MP3s on my PDA. The battery would drain too quickly, it's too wide to carry comfortably in pockets or belt clips, and it takes expensive SD versus a hard drive. (In fact, conversely, since i have a minimal actual need for a PDA, I've transitioned to iPod-as-PDA because [A] I actually carry the iPod, and [B] I never need to input things on the PDA anyway, and wasn't efficient on entering data on one anyway.) But as far as phones, it's not that it's impossible to combine that with an MP3 player; I'd certainly consider a phone that played MP3's--if it had a hard drive. That's still the key for me. Perhaps that tiny Toshiba drive will make this happen. But with the phone as well you need to beware the curse of every multipurpose device--they tend to to each task more poorly than the "real" (dedicated) device. The PDA features of my phone (and most others I've tried) are pathetic when compared to PalmOS (and even my iPod to be honest). I wouldn't trust SE, Motorola, or Nokia to know how to make a good MP3 player--and still a good phone at the same time. It's hard.
Now, I do have an HP PSC multifunction printer. This is because scanning and copying are very unimportant to me, but it's neat and pretty cheap to get them added on. Also I never print photos. If any of those facts weren't true I'd have a nicer printer and a separate scanner. In the same way, I see people who very casually listen to music getting it as an add-on--in other words, buy a phone or PDA or Sony's new PlayStation Portable* that they need anyway, that happens to include MP3-playing capability, load a few songs on it and listen to it every couple of weeks. But as for people who are serious about music, the desire for capacity coupled with the multifunction "curse" will probably keep them in the hard-drive-based player market. And it will grow more as costs come down, lowering the barrier to entry.
Fortunately my pockets are big enough to carry an iPod and a phone, because I see a long wait before a device comes along that can consolidate my gear any further.
*And I won't be surprised if Sony sells more of these than Apple does iPods, however I will still bet money that most users of that device will not frequently use it to play music in any way that attempts to compete with the iPod. It's kind of like the DVD player they're putting in the back seat of SUVs these days. When you're riding in it, you might watch a movie and you might find it a nice feature to have, but that doesn't mean GM is competing with Sony and Panasonic for your entertainment dollars. If you watch many DVDs, you'll probably get a DVD player for your house too.
However, in the last few years I while I have evaluated their gear on a number of occasions, have not purchased from them at all. They have basically "lost the plot". Like everyone else they have outsourced a lot of production to China etc, which I have no basic problem with of itself, but quality control has gone to the dogs. They are having gear built in the same factories to the same POS quality as the cheapo "no name" brands, but are still trying to premium price. Not only is much of their gear no better than the competition, its actually worse. For instance, multi zone players are the norm in this country, and even many rental stores have out-of-zone DVDs clearly labeled as such.. When I bought a DVD player the salesman asked what I wanted and I said "multi region and preferably region selectable". His response was "anything in the shop will do that except for the Sony models". He also confided that they were having a *very* high return rate on Sony - both because they would not play multi-zone and because of product failure.
Same story on portable music devices. I looked at Minidisc a year ago. Not bad engineering and good battery life & removable discs kinda compensated for ludicrously small amout of storage. Money was not the constraint, but in the end I went with a cleaper generic solid state because Sony had DRM'ed the Minidisc player to the point the generic cheapie was a *vastly better* product.They seem to think that all consumers are thieves, so we will cripple our hardware, but its all right as long as we put our cool brand on it they will still be sold
The hypocrisy and ethics of Sony New Zealand also have to be seen to be believed. Glading works for Sony NZ and fronts for the RIANZ (our pint-sized two-bit RIAA wannabe). At the same time he is thundering in the press and lobbying politicians that format shifting of stuff consumers have purchased and *own* should be illegal, with heavy penalties for infringing products, Sony NZ is releasing the self same (albeit crippled) products.
I spend a *lot* of money on DVDs and hardware (tho' not CDs, I have a collection of about 800, all legal, but have bought precisely one in the last 14 months - ever since I bought a copy protected Norah Jones one and was pissed off when my stereo barfed). I would love Hi_MD and would buy like a shot if the price was reasonable and it wasn't crippled. Instead, I will buy an IPOD - great product from a company that has some flaws, but is basically ethical and treats customers OK.
Maybe an open letter to Sony "Dear Sony, I am a former customer. I still spend a lot of money on the type of stuff you make and sell. In the next 1-2 years I will be replacing my HiFi and will be in the market for a plasma screen and/or video projector. Your design and engineering is basically good. Respect your customers by releasing products that have not been crippled, fix manufacturing quality control, and above all *get an ethics transplant* and I may even open my wallet to you again"?
In the meantime I will continue to shop elsewhere, and (with considerable success - a few friends treat me as resident techie) actively dissuade people from buying anything from Sony.
you've publicly demonstrated not only that you're ignorant (by agreeing with the original post)
Firstly, I've actually written some college-level economics and business texts, and devised standardized testing on the subject, so I am aware of quite a few of the angles. Wikipedia does a good job considering its limited interface and non-pedagogical nature, but it's more like Cliff Notes and imparts largely superficial understanding rather than creating active knowledge.
Secondly, your analysis of what I wrote is flawed and you impute to me sentiments that are not manifest in what I wrote. I have not stated agreement or disagreement. I opined that the original AC's argument was reasonably well constructed proceeding, as it does, from an implicit agreement with idea of the labour theory of value, and the response to it lacked rhetorical integrity. Now, you can counter the AC's argument using some of the ideas of some of the various schools of neoclassical economics, especially the more culturally-based subjectivist constructionist approaches, but nobody seems to have done that.
Da Blog
you're ignorant of the meaning of the term "opportunity cost."
I never said that. I never implied that. I did invite some people to explain what it was they were talking about when they used that term. But I do note some people in this discussion seem to be using an essentialist definition of "opportunity cost", while others are using a subjectivist relationist version of "opportunity cost". This is the perils of conversing in a language which where similar signs and sounds can stand for different things and complex terms are used out of context and stripped of their historical context. It also identifies quite well which people are hewing to a either a Hegelian worldview or a Kantian worldview.
However, saying simply "moron" and "stupid" and "ignorant" as rejoinders when asked to defend your position seems to me profoundly less useful than even Sam Johnson's answer to Bishop Berkeley on the subject of essentialism versus subjectivism.
Da Blog
Opportunity cost means exactly what the textbooks say it means, and no more. Any attempt to pick apart the term beyond what is given us is an exercise in futility.
I disagree. As I have pointed out, the same words can stand for different things depending on worldview. "Opportunity cost" can be problematized through the use of certain paradoxes, as can use-value. This is because every ideology has limits to its descriptive domain. Let's agree to differ.
Da Blog
we are soon enough lost in a forest of our own verbal undoings.
And by the way, here is what another great writer said on the seeming absurdity of willing economic determinism without acceptable frames of reference:
If there existed the universal mind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace -- a mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and of society -- such a mind could, of course, a priori draw up a falutless and exhaustive ecoonomic plan. The plan is checked and in considerable measure realized through the market. Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations.
Da Blog
this topic seems to have turned into a huge Sony bashing session. As a long standing proud owner of minidisc players I want to clear up some misconceptions from other posters who have probably never tried minidisc and certainly haven't tried Connect: 1. Why the hard time over the fact that Connect is linked exclusively to Sony devices with a proprietary file format? Why does iTunes/ACC/iPod get off the hook here? Same thing, different company. Now finally as a SOny user I have my version of iTunes to seamlessly integrate with my device. 2. Yes Sonicstage has had some growing pains as a software but I would say it's comparable now to most of the competition. 3. You can burn regular Audio CDs from Sonicstage just like with iTunes - many here on the board are saying you can't. 4. Personally I like the fact that my minidisc runs 40 hours on one AA battery (externally and easily replacable anywhere thank you iPod) and that the disc is a removable media should my player bite the dust (it just won't die much as I have dropped it) 5. The new Hi-MD units soon to be released should provide enough storage for most casual users out there. A couple of hundred songs on one disk. how many of us really need 40GB accessible at any one time.
Perhaps moderators should check sources as well.
Crap! I just M2'd the Insightful mod as "Fair". Wish I could take that back, now.
I should have known something smelled fishy... darned work distracted me from my Slashdot. I'm calling my boss!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.