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Sony Releases Hard Drive-Based Walkman Portable Music Player

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on November 30, 2004 - 4:14am.
Amsterdam -- Japanese consumer electronics firm Sony on Tuesday introduced its first Walkman portable music player to feature a hard drive and support for the ubiquitous MP3 format. The 20GB player will go on sale in the U.K. and Japan next month for $462, nearly $40 more than Apple's comparable 20GB model iPod. The device, which comes in five colors, will be released in the rest of Europe early next year. The Walkman will not play songs purchased from Apple's iTunes Store; likewise, the iPod cannot play songs purchased from Sony's Connect online music store. Sony contends that the Walkman can hold up to twice as many songs as an iPod, though, if songs are formatted using its proprietary ATRAC3plus compression.
tags: Sony | Walkman | Releases | Music Player | Drive-Based |

Report: Yahoo to Launch Own Music Player, Independent of Musicmatch

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 20, 2004 - 4:00am.
Sunnyvale, Calif. -- Yahoo plans to launch its own internally-developed digital music player software later this year, despite its recent $160 million acquisition of Musicmatch, which offers an already-popular player software, CNET News.com reported. Yahoo will launch the player -- which will offer songs for download from MusicNet -- by the fourth quarter, alongside Musicmatch's existing service, before eventually migrating users from Musicmatch to the Yahoo-built service, sources told News.com. Yahoo's purchase of Musicmatch may have been motivated by the Musicmatch's more digital music-savvy subscriber base, its proprietary technology, and the desire to keep these assets out of the hands of its rivals, sourced told News.com.
tags: Launches | Reports | Yahoo | Music Player | Independent | Musicmatch |

Sony to Add Video Capabilities to Vaio Pocket Music Player

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on May 14, 2004 - 1:57am.
Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium -- Sony said on Friday that it plans to launch a version of its new Vaio Pocket "iPod killer" digital music player that supports video playback and can beam video to a TV, Reuters reported. The Vaio Pocket audio version is slated to launch in Japan next month. "Vaio pocket will be launched in Europe within this year," Keiji Kimura, chief of Sony's Vaio computer and mobile products, told Reuters. "As for the video version, we want to productize it as soon as possible. It's very near future. It will be earlier than (2005)." Sony also recently launched Connect, its entry into the growing roster of legal music download stores that includes Apple's iTunes and Napster. For the time being, only Sony's own portable digital music players, such as the Vaio Pocket, support the transfer of songs from Connect.
tags: Video | Sony | VAIO | Music Player | Pocket |

Apple Reports 100,000 Pre-Orders for iPod Mini Music Player

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 17, 2004 - 8:53am.
Cupertino, Calif. -- Apple Computer announced on Tuesday that it has begun shipping its iPod mini digital music player to retailers, and will officially begin selling the $249 devices on Friday. Additionally, Apple said it has received over 100,000 pre-orders for the device, a smaller 4GB version of its iPod player that was introduced last month. "iPod mini broadens the market for iPod by competing head-on with flash-based players," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. "iPod mini costs only about $50 more than a 256MB flash-based player, yet it holds 16 times the music, is smaller, is easier to use and provides superior audio."
tags: Reports | iPod | Apple | Pre-Orders | Music Player | Mini |

PC Maker HP to Introduce Music Download Store, Digital Music Player

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on December 2, 2003 - 6:51am.
New York -- PC maker Hewlett-Packard said on Tuesday that it plans to counter rival Dell with the launch of its own music download store next year, Reuters reported. The service is expected to partner with an existing provider, such as Musicmatch -- which provides fulfillment for Dell's download store -- and launch in conjunction with the release of a new HP digital music player, which will also compete with a similar product from Dell. The company will likely introduce both new products at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
tags: Downloads | PC | HP | Digital | Musics | Music Player |