Sony Connect Music Store

So my wife brings home some new toothbrushes the other day and I notice that you can get "3 free mp3s" if you register on their site. So I do that. My investment has only been 15 or so minutes at this point, so that's not too bad. After I get registered, they push to the Sony Connect Music Store where I can choose from 1.5 million tracks. Here's where the real fun starts. I have to register. Oh wait, the registration won't work with Firefox 🙁 so I've got to use Internet Explorer which also insists that I update it to the latest version. I do that, not too big a deal at this point. I try to log in and IE crashes with a flash error. I try again and IE crashes. 😡 I disable flash and login. I can't see anything because all of the menus are flash based 😡 I begin swearing profusely I try to update flash - that doesn't work 🤦 I try to apply a patch MS has said will fix some issues 🤦 Finally I go to Adobe's site and download a flash removal program, remove flash and reinstall a new version. It works, but I'm still ripping 😡 Total time invested - well over an hour and I have yet to even see what music they offer.

So I get logged in (finally) and attempt to browse through their music to see what I can find. I'm thinking I might find something interesting to put on the station. I click the "punk/hardcore" category. It shows me the top albums and top tracks which is fine. However, not knowing what I am really looking for, I'd like to browse through a list of bands. Can you do that? NO! 😡 They have this system where if you type in a band name, it will bring up that band and a few bands that "sound like" the band you have searched for. BUT I JUST WANT A LIST!!!!!! Sorry Sarge, today is not your day but i've invested enough time that I need to see it through. So, an hour and a half later, after massive amounts of searching, I finally decide on 3 tracks to download and so I download them. Oh wait! you have to install our crappy piece of crappy Sony software to download these songs 🤦 So, not willing to give up at this point, I do that. It of course requires a restart to work which means I have to re-log in and find the tracks I want again and put them in my "cart" 🤦 So, being a complete glutton for punishment, I do that and finally get the tracks downloaded. I open the folder that they are put in to move them to my music folder and play them with WinAmp and in the folder are 3 *.oma files. WTF is an oma? It is an proprietary format from sony that only allows you to play music in their POS software or on a sony digital walkman or mini-disc player or something. You can read about it here if you are interested. Ok, no problem, I'll just convert them to MP3s - no such luck. Winamp or any other piece of software won't do it. 🤬 So I start to do some searching and find a utility that allows me to "convert" the oma to an mp3 or wave format. I do that and guess what....IT WORKS!!!!!! F*CK U Sony!!!!!! I delete the dreaded oma files and uninstall their POS SonicStage software. If I can figure out how to unregister from their site I will do that as well.

Moral of the story: Avoid the Sony Connect music Store like the f*ckin' plague. It's just another reason (along with the whole rootkit thing awhile back) to not purchase any music directly from sony.

The three songs should be up on GR2 in the next couple of days. One is a replacement for a song that is already up but is clipped off at the end. The other two are from bands that aren't represented now (I don't think anyhow).

Many of these were complaints I had with Itunes, Not sure fi they changed it, I haven't really used it since.
But they have the propietary format, They used to only allow it to be used on 3 machines, only burn it 3 times. They may have changed some of this. I have since deleted the music I got from itunes, I know I could have converted it, but didn't seem worth the effort.

WoW! Sarge, that sounds like a great editorial piece for the front page of GR. ;-)

The real problem here is the music industry's fear of not controlling how you use their music. What you post proves is DRM makes it harder for legitimate customers while those who want to bypass it can and will.

When will these guys learn.

Bubba, there is a program called Fairplay which allows you to remove the DRM from ITunes and play the songs on whatever mp3 player and as many devices as you want.

As for the SonicStage craptastic software.. yeah avoid that if you can, my loving wife purchased a mini-disc player for my entertainment when I was in the sandbox, however just trying to transfer a few cds worth of music was a pain, if you didn't delete the software using their slow link the SS you suddenly had one less song. In order to move anything you have to give the SS rights to look at and change any files that you hope to play limiting its performance later. I will second Sarges motion to stay the heck away from the SS, there is something evil about them there controllers.

Now onto iTunes. HAH. Thats about it...

I got an iPod Shuffle from my wife for Christmas, ok ok its not Christmas yet but we find it difficult to keep secret presents for each other. So either way I load it up, without any iPod iTunes software and it opens just like a flash drive, but after I do some reading about it [read: google - iPod shuffle without iTunes] I find a working and beautiful little ditty that is about 8kb and rewrites the iPods control/database just like you like it. letting you organize your music in any way you want, with actual file structure and 😳 organization. So I am currently using the little beast without any problem or assistance from iTunes.. all is well in the neighborhood.

First off I have never had any major problems with IE. I guess you had a bad flash install. IE 7 is worth installing, if only for the really cool new printing feature! The web page previews which shows a thumbnail of all your pages is also very cool!

I personally use AvantBrowser and have for a few years now. I really love it. It uses the IE engine but is a total remake "skin" feature wise. Added tab browsing even before Firefox came out. Tabs started in opera I believe.

Second Sony Music store is not the only pain. Ever use Itunes??? This can also be annoying and bloated. Any music store that lets you DL only into protected file formats is usually lame as there are specific players that can play the formats. I understand the need for DRM but still 😉

Just one example of iTunes problems I found on the net.
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“Nothing makes me more happy with a piece of software than having to adjust my computing habits to accommodate its demands. Ever tried to keep your iTunes files where you want to? (Even -- God forbid! -- on an external drive not always connected to your computer or backed up on DVDs and not always in one folder precisely where iTunes expects you to store all of your media?)
And don't get me started on the inability to actually adjust the order by which your iTunes Store purchases download. It only downloads in the order by which you make your purchases because, of course, who would ever be so stupid as to to maybe later want one thing to download before another? What fools are they?
And ever tried to move your iTunes Store purchases to a separate location without then having to point iTunes to it? (Which, in my case, would be a bookshelf where some burned DVDs are located -- you know, because I don't necessarily need Season One of Lost to be indefinitely located in my iTunes default folder, except for the fact that iTunes requires it -- if you dare to back up purchases on an external device to free up space, the next time you go to the iTunes Store it re-queues everything you've ever purchased (that it can't find in the default folder) and you either have have to download all of it before you can download anything else or replace all those files you dared to back up externally to free up space.”
Am I the only person who has noticed these really annoying things about iTunes?
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Guess he had probelms as well 😉

Lets talk MP3 players now 🙂

Every year I buy myself a Christmas Present. Only way I actually get something I want. 🙂
I am hard to shop for, just ask my wife 😉

Anyway I finally broke down and got myself the 80GB Video Ipod a few weeks ago. I am not a huge fan of them as I read many stories of people that had problems with them and Apple's support is not known to be very good. If they do replace a bad HD it takes weeks and weeks, if at all.

With that said I am taking my chances anyway. I try to be open minded so gave it a shot. I got one for two main reasons. First I really wanted a lot of space. I have a LOT of CD's and MP3's. So 80Gb is a nice size for me. No other player comes that large. Second reason is you can get accessories for it. One cool thing about Ipods is the HUGE 3rd party support.

I will not use Itunes as I am a MP3 guy. I really do not like AAC.

I am already finding lame things with it. The latest firmware, 1.21, seemed to mess a lot of people up. I am not upgrading to it. See EA is not the only company 🙂

Why for the love of everything that is holy would they let me choose various settings to be put on the main menu EXCEPT shuffle and repeat???? They have a shuffle songs option there but that plays everything on it. Sorry playing 80GB of songs is NOT what I want! Let me choose to add the normal shuffle where it is convenient. ALL options should be. Shuffle is something that should easily be turned on/off.

There is no option to leave the backlight on when docked. Ummm WHY???? I can turn the timer off and set it to be it on all the time but then if I am non-docked I have to re-set the timer to 15 sec or so. Why can’t it just leave it on when plugged in? lame.

It has a separate section for podcasts and audiobooks but there is no way to manually put MP3’s there. I am still looking into this for podcasts. Audiobooks supposidily have to be purchased to list under that so I understand this but it is lame for podcasts since most podcasts are free anyway Why cannot I just ad them there?

Now one MAJOR thing the Ipod does right over other players. It FINALLY has good gapless playback. I think you can understand how important this is. FINALLY a player that does this right!!! Now my Pink Floyd will play as it was meant to be!!!!!

I did find a cool FREE utility called yamipod that is one small exe file that I put on the Ipod. it keeps it setting on the Ipod as well. So I can plug the Ipod into any computer, it mounts the normal drive and I can run Yamipod from there. This then allows me to add/delete/copy/create playlists of all my music without using ITunes at all! YEA!!!

I haven't ever used Itunes precisely for the same reason as I will never again use the Sony Connect. I did try the new Napster when it first came out but have no interest in having my music go away when I don't renew the monthly subscription. You can buy the songs from napster, but they do have a DRM of some sort and the cost is in addition to the "privilege" of using their service.

farkin bastiges!

Are we in the minority in not wanting fifteen different audio players/formats on my machine? I think people just don't get it, or maybe, like many other things, they don't care that someone else is deciding what they can or cannot do.

For my money emusic is the only music service that I have ever used that didn't have DRMed mp3s, did have some funky proprietary format, or didn't allow you to only keep the music as long as you are a subscriber (a la Napster). You pay your monthly fee and get a certain number of downloads and that is it.

This all comes back to the music industry. They demand the DRM that makes it so difficult to do the things we want to do with the files.