Yesterday the online music store from sony connect europe has gone online, so lets see how it looks. It only took 2 seconds as I encounter the first big k.o. criteria. I opened the site with mozilla firefox and a nice site was displayed that I should download the Internet Explorer. I really hate sites that only works with IE because it is not very difficult to create website the works with all modern browsers.
So I started IE and opened the site and started to browse around. It looked like that the sony guys dids some research with iTunes, because the site and navigation is very similar to iTunes, but iTunes seems much better. I also found some bugs e.g. I searched for David Bowie albums and a non David Bowie album was also listed.
Another bad thing about connect is that the file format is the sony specific atrac, and is only usable with the sony sonic stage software or sony devices. Why is the file format not mp3 so that the files can be played on every mp3 player. iTunes is a bit better, cause there are also third party players that can play aac, and qualitity of aac is much better than atrac.
The thing I miss with connect is the "wanna buy" feeling I had the first time I tested iTunes. After testing iTunes I straight opened the amazon.de website and ordered 3 CDs, because purchase at iTunes does not work here in Austria by now.
Connect is also too expensive. The tracks cost 20-70% more then at iTunes. Only fools spend that much money for low quaility DRM protected music.