My husband recently purchased a Sony MP3 player and is using the Sony Music Store at www.connect.com. “Why not?” I was surprised myself. “Prices are competitive, so go ahead.” A big mistake. Not only does Sony make it difficult to purchase music, it is almost impossible to listen to it other than on an MP3 player .
To download music and albums, you must first include a search program, “Connect Player” also known as Sony’s SonicStage. My husband put it on his laptop and immediately started buying albums from Sony’s Music Store. But the tour was not easy. For some reason, the internet didn’t accept our Bank of America card, but my USAA card seemed to. The problem here is that the Bank of America account spends our money every day and the USAA account generally only has enough money in it to cover the house payment. Now using my husband’s songs and album and money from this account, I have to control and make sure that he transfers other funds into it, so that my house is paid off. I don’t need pain.
Because I was unhappy with the payment arrangement and figured my husband might have entered the wrong Bank of America information, I decided to report it and see if I could change it. I used my email account as a username and it came with a password so I had full access rights. ? Wrong. I turned on my computer and it went to connect.com. Much to my surprise, there was no “log in” page to be found! But I, too, had a desire to play the game. This bothered me because I had the previous version of SonicStage on my PC and I was quite satisfied. But no, I was forced to make amends. Finally, I followed prompts and upgraded.
In order to reach the Sony board on the screen, you have to start the program first; you can’t just go to the site and log in. I found this out of sheer vanity, but it finally figured out. Finally I was able to click on the link and got the following error: Runtime error! This application has requested Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Lobortis was not funny, not funny…..
So here I am now, unable to open up to a simple change of account or music purchase. Grrrr….. deep spirit. Goodbye, I live with him who is tagging music for USAA account. No big deal.
Another problem with the software is that for whatever reason, the CD burner on my husband’s laptop is not recognized by Sony’s SonicStage. This is annoying because it’s a Sony VAIO laptop running Sony software but not compatible. Its CD burner works well in other applications, not only here. downloads all this music but can’t burn it to CD. I installed the latest version of Nero to my laptop so I can copy music via Nero, but Nero doesn’t support Sony’s music format! So you can’t burn a CD outside of Sony’s software.
In a moment of brilliance I reminded myself of the MP3 player on my desk and the music on my CD burner. Hey, what do you know? Sony music files are only licensed for my husband’s laptop. If I want to play them on my computer and use my computer to burn them to CD, I need to buy another license for them too! First of all, I couldn’t buy them if I tried to enter due to an unusual runtime error. Second, I don’t have to pay twice. Finally, Sony Music is so user-unfriendly that we refuse to even bother configuring the software from our computers until it works. But download and buy our MP3 music from the competition.
What worries me the most is that my husband bought a new Red Hot Chili Peppers. This is one of my favorite bands and I can’t listen to it unless I put on headphones and play fiddle with the MP3. Trust me, it’s not how he likes to listen to music. I want to hear it from my stereo or in the car, not blast it into my sensitive ears through headphones. So instead, I think I’ll take a trip to the local music store and buy the old fashioned way. At least I can use my right bank account to pay.
