Sony is next in line to launch its European music service 'Connect' today in the UK, France and Germany, offering a choice of around 500,000 songs. This service will be launched in several other European countries later this year. This launch comes one month late from its original announcement in March.
Its music catalogue will offer content from the five major labels as well as around 150 independent labels. Despite this many independent labels, Sony cannot figure out how iTunes manages to have a library of around 700,000 despite only getting support from several dozen independent labels.
Sony Connect pricing will on par with iTunes at £0.79 ( UK ) / €0.99 ( France & Germany ) per song. Unlike iTunes, Sony claims that its Connect service will be profitable without exception. Apple on the other hand sells music from some labels at a loss to keep its single song price in an aim to promote its highly profitable iPod sales.
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The service will go live on Monday, 5 July in those three territories, followed by stores for Switzerland, Austria, the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands by the end of the year. Spanish and Italian stores will open in the spring of 2005. The dates come from Robert Ashcroft, VP of Sony Network Services in Europe, cited by news agency AFP. Monday's launch represents a late arrival. In March, Sony said it would launch its first three European stores in June. Even Sony's electronics division was under the impression that that was the intention - its press release announcing the launch of the company first hard disk-based Walkman referred to Connect Europe "which launched [past-tense] in June". |
I wonder how well Sony Connect will do in Europe. Like iTunes, it uses its own audio codec for both its music service and portable player series, thus saving costs on MPEG and Windows Media royalties. However unlike the iPod, its latest HDD based walkman only supports the Atrac3 codec, lacking both MP3 and the infamous WMA support.
Feel free to discuss and find out more about Sony's Connect service and other online music services on our Music Downloads, P2P & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: The Register - eCommerce
