Sony Connect
The Connect Music Store is Sony's music store built within the SonicStage music management application for Microsoft Windows-based personal computers.
Although the Connect music store is available on the World Wide Web at musicstore.connect.com, music can only be accessed with the Connect Player, a.k.a. SonicStage, installed.
The SonicStage software transfers music tracks to Sony media devices like Network Walkman, CD Walkman, Hi-MD, Clie handheld or Vaio computer, but does not transfer to non-Sony hardware.
Files downloaded from the Connect Music Store are encrypted using Sony's copyright protection technology, the OpenMG (*.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.
Sony claims that ATRAC3 has been consistently rated to have superior sound quality when compared to competing encoding formats.
Sony Japan has announced a total revision of the player software, now known simply as "Connect Player." It is expected to debut in the United States sometime in quarter one of 2006.
Sony Connect Inc. is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.
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