There are so many online music stores today that I can't even remember them all. There is iTunes, RealNetworks Rhapsody and Music Store, Napster, Wal-Mart, etc. Given all the offerings today any new comer to the market needs to either be exponentially better than what is on the market or simply as good but carry a great brand name. Fortunately for Sony, they carry one of the biggest brand names in the world, because their new music service called Sony Connect SUCKS!
Yes, I said the service sucks! I couldn't find another word to better describe my first impressions of Connect. So what is so bad that I have resorted to the term "Sucks" to describe it... well its starts from the very beginning when you try and install the software. I have been through some painful software installs, but Sony has taken it to the next level with Connect. After downloading over 10MB of software the application took around 15 - 20 minutes to install on my laptop. In comparison, all other music services took me less than 5 minutes to get up and running. I never let the install process affect my thoughts about the actual product, so after installing (and being forced to reboot) I waited a while before launching the application and seeing the features.
Upon launching the application it is hard to ignore how terrible the user interface is. I have a 15" screen on my laptop and unlike iTunes which uses all of that space to allow me to see information and navigate my music Sony wastes 75% of my screen with nothing! It is literally painful to try and navigate the 3000+ songs I loaded into the application. There is a search feature that works decently and the main way of navigating your tunes is through a drop down list and a "mini keypad" that will allow you to choose a letter and jump to artists whose name starts with that letter.
When you jump over to the music store the wasted screen space becomes even more annoying. Doesn't Sony realize they are trying to sell music and that utilizing less screen space makes it hard to find content because you spend more time scrolling than anything else. So lets pretend that you find the album you want to buy, Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. And what do you find... you can't even buy the album!!! You are told you can go buy the songs one by one and you see the option to buy only 36 of the 40 songs! Now if you head over to iTunes you can buy the entire album for $19.99 and get ALL 40 songs. Recap: Buy 36 of the 40 songs on Sony for about $36 bucks or buy the entire album, all 40 songs for about $20 bucks from iTunes... Perhaps the only redeeming factor for Connect is that you can use United Airlines miles to purchase songs.
Summary: Shame on Sony! Shame on them for being so late to enter the market. Shame on them for forcing users to buy some albums song by song! And most of all, shame on them for creating such a TERRIBLE product.
No comments:
Post a Comment