Yahoo! Music,
our partner in developing the SanDisk® Sansa® Connect™, will discontinue its
music subscription service (Yahoo Music Unlimited and Unlimited To Go) mid-year
2008. At that time, your wireless connectivity to the Yahoo Music service will
be discontinued, but the device will continue to provide access to other music
subscription services when connected by a cable to your
PC.
RIP Connect. It was a fun ride while it lasted and I hope SanDisk has learned something from this failed project.
Could Sandisk provide answers to the following?
- Since Yahoo! is keeping Launchcast (and Plus) Radio, will the Sansa Connect still have Internet Radio functionality?
- Will Zing work with Rhapsody?
- Will ratings still work?
Well, here’s my final response to Sandisk!
Sandisk,
Don’t you ever create a device like this again AND partner with a lousy company attempting digital music with DRM!
You should’ve went with Rhapsody or Napster from the beginning because digital multimedia content delivery is their bread and butter. If Sandisk is dropping the wireless functionality of the Connect 1, without a firmware migration to another service, then double shame on you all and I’m sure customers will think twice about purchasing the Connect 2!
If you all do a Connect 2, partner with Real Networks or Napster AND/OR Amazon.
Provide both subscription and purchase options.
Purchases on the service should be in MP3 AND subscriptions should be Helix DRM or MSDRM.
Don’t you all ever do this ■■■■ again, and not provide a way out, or atleast have one planned!
You all partnered with Yahoo, thus you all should be held somewhat accountable for your poor partnering decisions!
I don’t care if I’ve spoke too soon and Sandisk may change their minds, etc. You all should’ve had your own press release out 20 minutes after Yahoo’s stating your intentions to your Connect customer base, because you knew this may be coming, for months now!
Will we still be able to use the Sansa Connect with Rhapsody with the same features such as the zing to wirelessly add songs? Will it be able to play the internet music? What will happen to all of the music added to the Connect that was added through Yahoo music unlimited service? This situation is obviously frustrating. I bought the Connect when it was over $200. I also bought the speaker dock for $100. I bought a Connect for my nephew only 1 month ago.
It’s not the connect fault, it’s #%/$· Yahoo’s fault, the connect was a good idea.
Common somebody do something!! DON’T LET IT DIE!!! HELP!!!
Well, i think i’ve just payed extra money for a useles service and a common Mp3 player.
Sounds to me like Sandisk is planning to make the WiFi component of the Connect completely useless (someone correct me if this isn’t true), and this isn’t right.
Sandisk should provide a firmware update which allows the Connect to communicate over WiFi with some other streaming music service.
Unfortunately it’s not a quick fix. To sign contracts and agreements with other subscriptions and develop the FW to support it will take time.
Since Connect already has WiFi capability, are there are plenty of free internet radio URLs available, why can’t
Sansa enable the user to put in a list of URLs to Connect to? I would think somone like AOL radio or SomaFM
would jump at the chance!
Well here’s what sandisk support told me:
we may be able to get refunds for purchased Sansa Connects at www.shopsansa.com. The friendly support at Sandisk alerted me that I should keep my sansa connect until July (because mine is still under warranty at this point) and see if there might be a new firmware to support additional providers. There’s a chance they might do this, or suffer mass returns.
http://hackingym.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-info.html
I’ll keep you all posted: Hacking Yahoo Music
HappyIsBrian wrote:
Unfortunately it’s not a quick fix. To sign contracts and agreements with other subscriptions and develop the FW to support it will take time.
Then they should get started.
I guess I’m naively thinking that they already have a step into the process given their other models that support Rhapsody. Of course there are the WiFi protocol issues.
Or maybe they could just give us a rebate on a new iBiza Rhapsody.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/19/haiers-ibiza-rhapsody-pmp-gets-reviewed/
As far as I can tell, Yahoo is planning to keep their LaunchCast Radio service, so why wouldn’t the Sansa Connect continue to work with that?
I think the moderator’s post was so vague that everybody’s overreacting. I would expect that Launchcast/Flickr features should remain intact and that Zing would be modified to support Rhapsody. At least, that would be the fair approach, and since Sandisk has relationships with both Yahoo and Real, this should be feasible, but Sandisk’s lack of details on how they are planning a transition is frustrating, apparently, to us Connect users. Sandisk, please clarify soon.
According to Sandisk and Yahoo support, there is no indication that they’ll be changing their features to rhapsody. This may change, but there’s no official word on it.
FredFredrickson wrote:
According to Sandisk and Yahoo support, there is no indication that they’ll be changing their features to rhapsody. This may change, but there’s no official word on it.
Well, I can see where Yahoo wouldn’t have much to say about it.
@promisedplanet wrote:
@happyisbrian wrote:
Unfortunately it’s not a quick fix. To sign contracts and agreements with other subscriptions and develop the FW to support it will take time.
Then they should get started.
Or maybe they could just give us a rebate on a new iBiza Rhapsody.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/19/haiers-ibiza-rhapsody-pmp-gets-reviewed/
I assume Zing did most of the original code. Then Dell bought Zing. It’s usually considerably harder for maintenance programmers to take over and implement a major change than for the original design crew. Wish they would subcontract out our desired firmware updates to the Zing wing of Dell.
Message Edited by jj2me on 02-05-2008 05:07 PM
@lagunasansa1 wrote:
Yahoo! Music, our partner in developing the SanDisk® Sansa® Connect™, will discontinue its music subscription service (Yahoo Music Unlimited and Unlimited To Go) mid-year 2008. At that time, your wireless connectivity to the Yahoo Music service will be discontinued, but the device will continue to provide access to other music subscription services when connected by a cable to your PC.
Is this all that needs to be done?
The reason I question this is because my Yahoo subscription licenses just expired, which is proper behavior after a month of not re-licensing. But not only are the Yahoo-2-go tracks expired, but also all the free local library OverDrive audiobooks in my Connect.* The current firmware seems to think that the Yahoo subscription service owns every WMA DRM’d track on the Connect.
Thus, it seems like the Connect will not work as a normal PlaysForSure device. Unless you sign up for a subscription service! I don’t have any purchased WMA DRM’d tracks, but it might be that those, too, will no longer be accessible. If this is true, then the Connect is forcing us to pay up to Rhapsody for a monthly subscription fee, or else it’ll lock up all our other legally-obtained WMA DRM’d content.
Could Sandisk please check whether this harmful behavior is true? I can test with my Zen Micro that I’ve used with Yahoo-2-go, to see if it also disallows playing other tracks when the subscriptions expires. But unfortunately, it will take a month, since I just re-licensed those tracks yesterday.
*I checked three ways to make sure that the audiobooks were not expired: my library’s website, the OverDrive software, and successfully playing these audiobooks on another player (Sansa m230).
[Edit: I remembered that I *do* have a second Creative Zen Micro that I’ve never used for my Yahoo subscription service, but always use for OverDrive Audiobooks, and it works fine playing those audiobooks and never expires them.]
Message Edited by jj2me on 02-06-2008 02:46 PM
The Sansa Connect is a very cool device. I couldn’t try it live yesterday, but I do like the overall package.
I am optimistic that it may become a Rhapsody partnered wireless device…with Rhapsody’s streaming radio and channels, it looks quite possible.
Don’t get too mad at SanDisk, as they’re subject to the same market changes as we all are. Heard about Microsoft grabbing at Yahoo lately? Perhaps there will be a change in Yahoo Music in the near future.
Remember that we are dealing with corporations and ongoing negotiations…the guys in Tech Support have to wait just like the rest of us, and giving a direct answer isn’t yet possible…because the answer is still being found.
I am sure that the connect will still be just as cool!
Bob 
Well, I think SanDisk has a few choices on this:
- Provide a new streaming service as suggested;
2. Take back and refund $ for all the units because a major feature will be ‘in default’ (defunct); or
- Do nothing and pay out later on a class action lawsuit from buyers of the Connect.
Pretty simple.
How would this class action lawsuit be organized?
Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 02-14-2008 03:51 PM
