Washington Post: Sony’s internet music service ‘is an embarrassment to the company that gave the wor
Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 08:08 AM EDT"If anybody can get Internet music downloads right, it should be Sony. The company has years of experience selling records, consumer electronics and personal computers — and it's had plenty of time to study earlier digital-music ventures," Rob Pegoraro reports for The Washington Post.
"So how could the Connect music store, unveiled early this month, be so bad? It gets a few things right, but by forgetting that customers want to feel like they actually own their music, it repeats — or exceeds — the mistakes of other music stores," Pegoraro reports.
"The tool you must use to download and manage your purchases, Sony's Sonic Stage (Windows 98 SE or newer), is a bloated, bug-ridden beast of a program. It ploddingly searches through the store's catalog as if it were a card catalog, while its space-wasting interface requires constant scrolling within its own window. It can't copy CDs in MP3 format, and it defaults to storing music in an invisible, deeply buried sub-directory," Pegoraro reports... the Connect service allows you to transfer songs to Sony's MiniDisc players, its two overpriced flash-memory players and Clie handheld organizers that ship with Sony's Audio Player program (the TJ37 I reviewed recently did not). The iPod is not supported, nor are other hard drive-based MP3 players. "
"This service is an embarrassment to the company that gave the world the Walkman," Pegoraro concludes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ouch. 
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They'll get better at version 2. Of course, by then we'll be seeing fifth generation iPods and the iTMS will be another order of magnitude improved...