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Sony Admits MP3 Error
inflex writes "In a rare show admission of taking a wrong turn, Sony's officials have admitted that their stance on MP3 players was wrong." While this was pretty obvious to anyone who has ever shopped for a portable MP3 player, it is nice to see Sony admit their shortcoming. Ken Kutaragi puts it best when he says, "We're growing up," and with any luck future devices won't be crippled with silly formats no one uses.
Ken Kutaragi puts it best when he says, "We're growing up," and with any luck future devices won't be crippled with silly formats no one uses.
Growing up implies some sort of learning from ones experiences. Is this not the exact same situation as the Sony Betamax debacle? How about my Minidisc NT that broke trying to load my MP3s onto it. When are they going to grow up?
For that matter, Sony is doing it again with the PSP. Please, buy all the products you have bought in the past on our new media format. The irony of Universal Media Disk should not escape anyone. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times, realize me for a massive, faceless electronics and media company who has had a drop in overall product quality and customer care.
Yes, I know the main goal in business is to make money and grow, but to do that, you must serve the customer as well. At least, that used to be true.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Chicken and egg? It looks like everyone's pretty much agreed on MP3 as the standard universal compressed audio format. Like VHS, It's good *enough*, and even if it has IP and quality issues, they clearly aren't compelling enough to force seek alternatives because it works *everywhere*, which is what the digital music revolution is really about. (It used to be that app development stopped when the program could do email, now hardware development stops when you can play MP3s and take pictures - go figure!)
If MP3 were the only audio format out there, OGG might have more widespread acceptance as the 'free alternative', but with WMA, AAC, RM ATRAC (whatever) and the other formats that are available, **my** eyes start to glaze over, and I work with computers for a living!
I think OGG needs a sugardaddy -- a sponsor like Linux has with IBM -- someone with bucks that can really take ownership of pushing it into the marketplace by demonstrating its power and versatility. Sony has the position and clout to do that, but there's no way their music division would go for it.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, said he and other Sony employees had been frustrated for years with management SCE are the Playstation people. The Playstation people say "Sony screwed up". The Walkman people are probably still creaming their pants over how nobody wants MP3 and would prefer ATRAC
How many times must this be said......?
The iPod is not the killer product, iTunes is. All these people hoping for an iPod killer to come along need to remember that the software you use to interface to the thing is far more important than any other factor. Previously I had a NetMD and quite apart from the fact that it didn't play MP3, the software was ghastly. Sure I could import stuff from other formats and the likes but it was so clumsy compared with iTunes. When I got my Mac I tried to use my NetMD with it but of course Sony didn't provide any software support. What little open source software existed for it was restricted to seeing the tracks and starting and stopping it. You couldn't actually record onto the thing with it. Typical Sony. So I sold it on Ebay and put the money towards an iPod. End result, much happier but also I realised just how great iTunes is, it completes the iPod.
I think for a true iPod competitor to come along it is either going to have to have some seriously nice software backed up by a great music store, or it should just work with iTunes.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
> give consumers what consumers want, not what you want consumers to want
I was living/working in Japan in the early '90s, and it was common to hear how Sony took great pains to listen to students, artists, housewives, etc. as to what they wanted - in time, of course, that approach changed when Sony got into the entertainment industry. The believed the phrase 'content is king' and jumped in with both feet.
This marriage resulted in the kind of mindset within Sony that we all know and loath in the US...that of the music industry wanting to keep the 'album' as a metric - bleeding the customer again and again and again. CD's will mean lower cost...right...
Sony can try to go back, but other companies have the lead. I admired Sony until I got to Japan and found out the locals don't think much of the company, actually....too western thinking for the average Japanese consumer.
Today, the record/entertainment industry is the one bleeding, and Sony only has itself to blame for being in the same boat. Sony execs may cut those ties, but they can never wash the blood off of their hands.
Did anyone else notice how much stage time the President of Sony got during the Stevenote? Not only was he up there a loooong time but he was gushing like a little school girl in love. The Reality Distortion Field was on full blast and Steve had it pointing right at Sony's president.
I suspect there was much more that went on behind the scenes that week that will unfold over the course of the year.
Despite Steve's claim that this is the year of High Definition we all know that HD is not his focus.
How long has he been telling us that Apple doesn't want to make a $500 dollar Mac while secretly designing it for the past year?
How many times did he tell us that flash based MP3 players were a waste until he had one of his own?
How many times did he badmouth PDAs which he later admitted he had developed but decided not to ship?
My intuition tells me that one or more of the following will happen this year...
1) Sony will license FairPlay
2) Sony will start selling Sony banded iPods
3) Sony will make its own music player which uses the iPod OS
4) Sony and Apple will jointly develop new digital lifestyle products
5) Sony will become a Mac OS X licensee(eliminates the single source argument)