Sony finally makes the Connection

Despite owning a major label and having thousands of bands on its roster, Sony took its own sweet time getting an online music store up and running. This time last year, Irish journalists were told Ireland would be part of the first tranche of European stores to get the green light.

But the mooted start date of June 2004 came (and went - the stores were late opening) and Ireland was nowhere to be seen. So when Sony's Connect store on these shores finally went live yesterday, it passed almost unnoticed and made none of the waves of the corresponding iTunes outlet.

With most track prices varying between €1.20 and €1.40 each, Sony isn't even attempting to compete with iTunes' uniform €1 a song rate. In fairness, the difference on an album basis is much less glaring. But it doesn't help the perception that Sony's participation in the online world is half-hearted at best.

The catalogue is estimated at 600,000, well short of the 1m in Napster (not available here) and other stores (some of which are). The compression is marginally better than rival stores but, of course, uses the accursed ATRAC format, supported only by Sony devices.

The store itself requires you download the generally awful SonicStage software (Windows only, like all of Connect) but at least the buying part is quite painless.