While Sony originally led the market with the cassette walkman in the 80's, they have failed to attract much attention with its digital walkman and music store. The failure of pushing the ATRAC audio format was clear a few years back when Sony finally started offering MP3 support on its Walkman digital audio players. Now the company has confirmed that it will begin shutting down its Connect Music Store in March on a phased basis in North America and Europe.
As part of this planned move, Sony has decided to support Windows Media Audio DRM in its new line of Walkman players, which will allow users to carry music from any Windows Media DRM based service. As Sony may drop the ATRAC format on future players, the company is advising customers who bought music from Sony Connect to back up their music library to audio CDs.
At least this will finally mark the end of one of several DRM systems in use that are not compatible with each other, leaving just Apple’s FairPlay DRM and the two DRM systems by Microsoft in mainstream use on portable digital audio players. It will be interesting to see how much longer Microsoft’s Zune-only DRM system lasts. Despite the Zune hype when the player first launched, there is not much news around now about the Zune. The player is not even in Amazon’s top 100 selling gadgets list at this time of writing.
The full story can be read here on The Hollywood Reporter.
These companies fail to listen to what consumers want.. We want NO DRM!!
Can anyone post how many propietary format has Sony dropped?
Why sony is always so stupid and tries to p against the wind. There is a growing momentum to offer non-drm music and yet they stick to another scheme from MS, I wonder if they know which one of two.
what can be easier than to support just 2 formats - one compressed and one not (mp3 and flac) - will such player not sell like crazy? then whats the problem?
Happy Birthday to you 
