Sony Connect, stylised Sony CONNECT, was the name for a series of related software products by

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

, most notably the Connect Music Store online music store. Sony CONNECT Inc. was a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. Sony Connect was Sony's second attempt at online music following PressPlay.

Connect Music Store

The CONNECT Music Store was

's music store built within the SonicStage music management application for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

-based personal computers. It was one of the world's largest online music download stores with over 2.5 million tracks to preview and purchase, with over 10,000 new songs added every Tuesday. In 2003, Robert Shahnazarian began producing exclusive recording only available to users of Sony Connect. These sessions were the brain child of Ty Braswell and Neil Schield to provide exclusive content to users of Sony Connect's music platform. These session were recorded at Sony Studios in Santa Monica along with Westlake Recording Studios. These “exclusive” sessions were known as the Live from the Connect living-room series, and were recorded and mixed by Robert Shahnazarian. Over 350 sessions were recorded for this series and included such artists as Taylor Swift, John Legend, David Crosby & Graham Nash, Tears for Fears, and Brand Carlile to name just a few. The CONNECT Music Store closed in North America and Europe on 31 March 2008, and the website has been unavailable from 1 March 2008. However, in late 2008, Sony launched a new

online music store A digital music store is a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet. Customers gain ownership of a license to use the files, in contrast to a music streaming service, where they listen to recordings withou ...

called "bandit.fm" on a trial basis in several countries, particularly

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. The store was never launched globally, and closed in 2016. In 2010, Sony also launched another store named

Music Unlimited Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) was a digital media delivery service operated by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Network Entertainment International (SNEI). SEN provided access to services, including PlayStation Network for games, Video Un ...

which at first was compatible with PlayStation devices. "Sony Connect" was also the name given to the software used to manage book, music and image content on the Sony Reader; it has since been renamed Sony eBook Library. The SonicStage software transferred music tracks to Sony media devices like Network Walkman, CD Walkman, Hi-MD, PSP (via the Memory Stick), Clie handheld or Vaio computers, but did not transfer to non-Sony hardware.

Connect Video

Sony CONNECT Video was a division within Sony CONNECT developing digital service platforms to enable distribution of next-generation entertainment to Sony devices. Users could download video content directly to their device wirelessly or by means of using the USB port and their computer.

Connect Player

CONNECT Player was a media player application, developed by Sony Connect, a division of Sony Corporation of America in 2005. It was released for European and Japanese market in November 2005 to be used with Sony's new HDD digital music players - the NW-A Series Walkman (A1000 and A3000). In January 2006, Sony Europe recommended users to change to SonicStage (Sony's earlier media player) pending potential further updates to the CONNECT Player software due to thousands of reports regarding its many problems. In May 2006, Connect Player was absorbed into a newly released SonicStage version called SonicStage CP (the letters bearing the name).

Compatibility

The CONNECT Music Store was only accessible via

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

on computers running the

operating system. Files downloaded from the CONNECT Music Store were encrypted using Sony's

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM ...

, in the

OpenMG OpenMG is a digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Sony for managing and protecting digital music data on a personal computer. It was originally designed for audio files in ATRAC3 format; the compliant software, e.g. Sony SonicStag ...

(*.omg & *.oma) file format. Audio content is encrypted using an OpenMG compliant program — SonicStage — and stored on a computer's hard disk for playback or transfer to a Sony media device. The file format is ATRAC3, Sony's proprietary compressed music format.

References

{{Video digital distribution platforms Defunct online music stores CONNECT Defunct digital music services or companies