Product Trends Magazine

About the Company: The Sony Brand has always been synonymous with the entertainment scene since as long as even the most season music fan can remember. The leaders in just about all things electrical, it is no surprise that Sony CONNECT™ has become the website of choice for music punters when it comes to downloading tunes.

The Big Pitch: Featuring one of the most extensive music libraries online, if you’ve ever heard it, chances are Sony CONNECT™ will stock it.

While Sony CONNECT™ might pride itself on its easy to use nature, and extensive catalogue of songs, it is more then just a musical jukebox.

How many times has this happened to you? You’ve got into the car, switched on the radio and a catchy little ditty strikes you like a bolt of lightning. You’re mesmerized. You know it sounds familiar but you just can’t picture the group in your head. The song finishes and the DJ says it’s the new track from Radiohead. You can’t believe it. You need to hear it again. You know you wont make it through the rest of the day without hearing it again. Now thanks to Sony Connect, you can access any song you like, anytime. What’s more, you don’t even have to leave the house to get your music “fix”. Sony CONNECT™ is that music store you have always dreamed about. It features everything you need and more. Music fans, Sony Connect allows you to listen to the hits, or explore new music - whatever you decide. If you hear something you want to keep, you’re always just one click away from owning it.

Sony Connect also boasts such impressive features as Connect Player as well as Radio Connect.
Sony’s Connect Player is a state of the application that allows music lovers with a practical and simple to tool to organize your music. The Connect Player also allows you to transfer your songs to your digital music player as well as the means to create your own compilation CDs.

Meanwhile Radio Connect provides you with the radio station to die for. Radio Connect features an eclectic array of music programmed by people who share your musical tastes and passions. What’s more, you won’t hear a single commercial on Sony’s Radio Connect. And best of all, it’s free.

The Product Trends Rating: Sony has always been at the forefront of home entertainment technology and is now considered the pioneers of the digital revolution. With Sony CONNECT™, Sony now further confirms its reputation as the number one home entertainment provider. 4 stars.

About the company: “Founded in 1961 as the book division of Time Inc., by 1966, Time-Life had combined its book offerings with music collections and packaged them as a sturdy box set. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, the selection of books, music, and then video grew, diversifying into all genres. Today, Time-Life is one of the world’s pre-eminent creators and direct marketers of unique book, music, video/DVD, and multimedia products. The Time-Life name is one of the most recognized and trusted brands in existence today.”

The big pitch: A leader in the sale of music and video products, the Time-Life brand offers great value for quality entertainment products.

You are up late one night watching television and you come across a commercial for Time-Life music or video products, and wanted to order but didn’t get the number down in time. Hey, it happens - but now, Time-Life has created a website that you can visit and review all of the music, videos, and other product that they offer, without the need to dig behind the couch cushions for a pen that works.

How do you find that product you saw on television? Easy - just click on the “As Seen on TV" icon on the home page, category pages, and product pages throughout the site, to find the products advertised on TV. You can also search for the product that you are looking for by using the empty search box option that appears on every page. Just enter the product name and hit go, and all of the products will come up.

Want to listen to some of the music before purchasing? That option is also available on the site. If your product includes music CDs, you can listen to a 30-second sample of almost any song you choose - just click the song you want and it will play right there on your PC speakers.

Ultimately, Time-Life is the home of the various artists’ box set. With titles such as Legends: Ultimate Rock, Lifetime of Romance, and Classic Soul Ballads, you know pretty quickly what you’re in for. I mean, there’s just no confusing Superstars of the 80’s as being anything more than a collection of songs by the likes of Billy Ocean, Cyndi Lauper, Rick Springfield, Fine Young Cannibals and Huey Lewis and the News. But what may surprise is just how huge these box sets are. The Superstars of the 80’s set, for example, boasts discs for every genre - ten of them, in fact. In essence, with just one of these box sets, you could be purchasing enough music to get you from Jacksonville Florida to Spokane Washington without ever hearing the same song twice, or having to fiddle with a radio dial.

The video side of things is even more impressive, with DVDs of entire runs of classic TV shows, from Columbo to Murder She Wrote, Hee Haw to Second City Television. Even better, Time-Life regularly lists items for sale in their ‘clearance’ department, with prices dropping from the usual $16.99 to as little as $5.99. In addition, if you buy more items, you earn big discounts - buy 3 and get 10% off, buy 6 and get 15% off, or buy 9 and get a whopping 20% discount. That’s great stuff.

Customer Service is a number one priority for Time-Life. They are there for you before, during, and well after your purchase to answer any questions you may have, and to assure you are happy with our products and service. You have three ways of getting to customer service: Call Toll-Free: 1-800-950-7887. Call between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., ET, Monday through Friday, and Saturday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., except holidays. Send an email using the customer service form provided on the website, or if you prefer the age old methods, mail ‘em a letter.

If customer service matters to you, then Time-Life has our heartiest recommendation. When I called and asked various questions about the products, they were very helpful and easy to speak with. The return policy is fair and clear to the customers.

The Product Trends rating: If fast, quick and quality entertainment products are what you are looking for, then Time-Life products are for you. Five stars. —Reviewed by Denise Seegobin

To try Time-Life for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: Musicnotes.com offers more than 45,000 pieces of instant digital sheet music from major publishing companies such as Warner Brothers, Universal, BMG, and EMI. Their online store features over 260,000 books, CDs, and videos, and recently the site passed the one-millionth download mark in the summer of 2005. The Rolling Stones even used their patented MusicNotesXtra technology in their newly released singles box-set to teach fans how to play “Sympathy for the Devil” (the official theme song for aging rockers).
The big pitch: Printable sheet music that is instantly accessible at more than reasonable prices.

Buying sheet music is now easier than purchasing a book online. Can’t remember the title or artist behind your favorite track? Just make like the La-La Lady from “Name That Tune” and type in a few lyrics, and the advanced search engine will tell you what you’re looking for. It also allows you to look for songs by instrument, style, scoring, level of difficulty, composer, or lyricist.

The instant download, purchase, and print technology bheind Musicnotes is perfect for professional musicians, teachers, or anyone who wants to learn a new tune right away - but doesn’t want to schlep to the music store or wait for a snail-mail order of sheet music to arrive. Download the free viewer and player to see what your music looks like before you purchase - it couldn’t be simpler!

Indulge your inner rock star and learn the guitar with Musicnotes’ online help. The guitar guru section provides instruction as well as virtual fret boards, adjustable tempos, CD-synch technology, and printable tab for beginning students. A recent tie-in with Guitar Player magazine also gives their readers the chance to pick one free download per month from a list of fifteen selections.

As an amateur musician, I was amazed to find sheet music for the trumpet as low as $1.95 (“Stairway to Heaven”), and the site offers an amazing genre of music - everything from Christian pop to classical to AFI’s 100 best movie songs. Whether you play piano, drums, bass guitar or the harpsichord, Musicnotes’ books of sheet music are much cheaper than my local music store, and the selection is much larger.

And that’s not all - Musicnotes also offers a discount card for 10% off all purchases, and they offer monthly specials to keep things fresh and inexpensive. If you play any sort of music instrument, you really need to take a look at Musicnotes today!

The Product Trends rating: Five stars! Incredible catalog of music, free software, well-priced sheet music books, one of the best music search engines on the web, and complimentary customer service for all services. Musicnotes doesn’t need to blow their own horn - there are already too many fans willing to do it for them with their own downloadable sheet music. —Reviewed by Teresa Wentz

To try Musicnotes for yourself, search for your choice in the search box below:

About the company: "Musicmatch’s combination of personalized music software and services lets music fans manage their music and listening environment in one place. With Musicmatch Jukebox and music services, consumers can buy, record, burn, download, discover, enjoy and organize an entire music collection. At the same time, Musicmatch delivers exceptional personalization through technology not available elsewhere. The patent-pending Musicmatch personalization system learns from millions of community members to deliver tailored music, artist recommendations and valuable services unique to a listener’s own tastes."

The big pitch: The internet’s best (and free!) music jukebox software. Play and organize your music collection, create custom playlists, burn and rip your own music CDs, and transfer music to your MP3 player - at no cost!

When people talk about music software, they inevitably either mean Windows Media Player, or Apple’s iTunes. But those people are missing one very big, very good, very free addition to the jukebox software field - Yahoo’s incredible MusicMatch Jukebox 10.

Never heard of it? That’s kind of the problem - MusicMatch leaves iTunes and Windows Media for dead in just about every category, from the free music playing software, to the ‘pay per download’ music store that sits behind it. But the real beauty of Yahoo’s MusicMatch store is that, even without paying a cent, you can get a whole lot of value out of it, including an hour per day of MusicMatch’s Artist Match radio, which is AWESOME.

Here’s how it works. When you start up MusicMatch Jukebox 10, you click on the ‘radio’ tab, which gives you a whole host of free radio stations that you can listen to to your heart’s content without spending a cent. These range from hip-hop to comedy to world music to techno, but the real gem in the rough is the Artist Match option.

First, type in the name of your favorite band. Let’s say you’re digging Dashboard Confessional right now (I know we are), so you type them in. What you get next is a page of their music that you can, if you want, sample for free, or download. But hit the ‘artist match’ button and you get one hour of random music from other bands that MusicMatch says are very close to Dashboard Confessional’s style. In this case, we get music from The Shins, Something Corporate, Jimmy Eat World, The Ataris, Brand New, Matchbook Romance, Death Cab for Cutie, The Used, Senses Fail, Incubus, Boxcar Racer, John Mayer and the always amazing Bright Eyes, among others.

Now in case you don’t understand the gravity of this, remember all those times you got bored of commercial radio playing the same bands over and over? Haven’t you ever wanted a way to find new bands that are similar in style to stuff you already like? Well here it is.

MusicMatch’s Artist Match radio, even if you decide not to spend a cent on monthly subscriptions and pay-per-download tracks, gives you a litany of bands you’ve never heard of, but which you will absolutely like enough to pursue in the future. And if you REALLY like what you hear, you can purchase the track for download with a single click of the mouse.

And even if you don’t, an hour per day of music focused on your own likes and dislikes is an incredible deal - especially for free.

We LOVE this software, and the service behind it is a heck of a deal too, at just $19.95 for the premium service, but because we’re cheapskates we use ArtistMatch to find new bands, and then we download the hell out of them, using MusicMatch to play the downloads later. It’s a great deal, and MusicMatch also allows us to burn CDs, rip tracks, send music to an MP3 player, burn MP3’s, and they even offer personalized tech support.

Yahoo may be a huge company devoted to eating all their competitors and spitting out the bones, but in the case of MusicMatch, they simply have the greatest piece of jukebox software available. And it’s free!

The Product Trends rating: Absolutely five stars. This is a piece of software that leaves iTunes and Real Player in the dust, with a music store behind it that competes very well with anyone else out there. MusicMatch gets our strongest recommendation. And it’s free - try it now!

To try MusicMatch for yourself, click the image below: