Sony Throws in the Towel on Connect  Music Store
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Sony's three-year effort to beat Apple's iTunes Music Store is over.
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Sony has announced trials of a service that will offer downloadble music tracks that have no digital locks on them.
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Sony is abandoning its copy-protected CDs that use built-in technology to limit copying them. The CDs allow users to copy their music once for free onto a personal computer, but use the internet to charge a fee for subsequent copies of the same disc.
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It&#39;s another black eye for Sony. After closing its online music store in August, news comes that the entertainment giant is delaying the opening of its online community for  the PlayStation 3.
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The company ended its temporary promotion that saw it slash the price of its downloadable songs to 49 cents. The company launched the promotion last month to compete with Apple&#39;s iTunes service, the market leader.
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Music sales as we know them take another step toward obsolescence.
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Its proprietary audio technology was a flop, says Sony, as it announces at a Berlin consumer electronics trade fair it will shutter its Connect digital music store and open its portable media players to other formats.
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LONDON Sony essentially created the market for portable music devices with its Walkman, but it missed a beat in the digital music revolution as Apple&#39;s iPod grabbed the spotlight.
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Sanctuary Records' UK recorded music business is to be closed as it focuses on its management arm.
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Sony is finally out with their first direct assault on the famed Apple iPod digital music player. As reported earlier, Sony has gone ahead and released their first MP3 supported Walkman.
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Sony stops making copy-protected CDs, saying music fans have heeded its anti-piracy message.
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If you've been clicking "remind me later" for those pesky update windows, Apple's closing its music store to you.
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Sony Corp.  plans to  phase out the cut-priced $499 model of its PlayStation 3 video  game machine, leaving only a higher capacity $599 model for  sale in the United States, the company said on Monday.
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Sony's three-year effort to beat Apple Inc.'s iTunes Music Store is over. The company will shutter its Connect music store and adopt Windows Media DRM.
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In a major strategic reversal, Sony Corp. said Wednesday it plans to add support for MP3 music files to some of its portable music players.
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Sony Corp.'s music unit is abandoning its CDs that use built-in technology that limits copying them, after pushing the program for two years.
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(InfoWorld) - Virgin Group Ltd. will shut down its online music subscription and download service in the U.S. and U.K. next month, leaving one less competitor for Apple Inc.'s iTunes Music Store. In the U.K., Virgin Digital stopped selling tracks last Friday, and is no longer accepting new customers. As of Friday, only existing customers will be able to access the service, and the site will shut down for good on Oct. 19. The U.K. version of the site said users with more than one month of outstanding subscriptions will get a refund, but unused credits for song downloads should be used and won't be refunded. U.S. users of Virgin Digital will be able to use their credit on Napster LLC's music download service. The pending demise of Virgin Digital marks another casualty among online music stores, which have generally received lukewarm reception from consumers with the exception of Apple's market-leading iTunes service. Since Virgin Digital used digital rights management (DRM) technology from Microsoft Corp. to manage how songs could be played and transferred to portable devices, the service was not compatible with Apple's iPod line, which uses different DRM technology and file format. The Virgin Digital service allows customers to download tracks up to four more times to replace lost or damaged copies. Since that option will no longer be available when the store closes, the company advised customers who purchased tracks to back them up by burning the songs to a CD . Burning the tracks will let those customers re-import the tracks to the computer as MP3 files. Virgin also offered a subscription service that let people access an entire catalog of songs as long as they continued to pay the monthly fees. Those songs, which used Microsoft's DRM, would be unplayable if the person's subscription expired. Once the club closes, subscribers will also lose access to those songs. As part of the terms of subscription service, users were not allowed to burn those songs to CD. Virgin Digital officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the service's closure. The Virgin Digital store is not the only one to fold in the face of competition from Apple's iTunes -- or from illegal downloads. Last month, MTV Networks, which is owned by Viacom Inc., said it would merge its Urge music service with RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody service. Urge, which was a partnership between MTV and Microsoft launched in May 2006 that failed to effectively compete with iTunes. Â