Earlier this month at E3, Microsoft announced a tie-in with music-streaming service Last.fm for US 360 owners, allowing them access to loads of free music from their NXE dashboard.
That’s pretty cool for Stateside gamers, but what about us folks in Europe? Sony think they’ve stumbled upon the answer by creating a tie-in deal with VidZone, a UK-based website that lets you watch music videos online and, for a small fee, download the MP3 of the song you’re listening to on your cellphone.
Inexplicably armed with a marker pen and some paper, I decided to check it out. Here goes nothing.
This would usually be the part where I start telling you about how it presents itself at the start and how blown away/unimpressed I was by the initial screen I was displayed with, but for the first hour I received nothing but error messages as VidZone’s servers were completely, utterly unprepared for the barrage of thousands of Europeans looking to get their free musical fix.
“Fatal error. Unexpectedly high levels of demand.” Unexpectedly high? It’s free streaming music, people are going to be extremely interested! Unless, for some reason, people have gone off of freebies. Which, um, they haven’t. Which is why VidZone isn’t working.
A good hour or so (and an EULA agreement) later, I’m in. Well, not quite. “An error occurred during the country checking process.” Yes, VidZone has a lockdown on a country-by-country basis, meaning only certain countries in Europe and Australasia can currently access the service due to legal constraints.
Let’s try again.
Press X. ”An error occurred during the country checking process.” Press X. ”An error occurred during the country checking process.” One more time. ”An error occurred during the country checking process.” Getting a little sick of this now. It is, to put it lightly, a whole big clusterfuck of overloadage. Shouldn’t VidZone have been ready for this?
Okay, console reboot. Maybe that’ll sort things out. It has! It’s now “updating music video feeds”…and now it’s not. Bugger.
Maybe taking a new page in this article will help…VidZone seems to be so volatile that it just might work!
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Good write up, I love how it chronicles the struggles of a young european male, fighting for justice in an unjustifiable situation.
Sooper Epic.
I loved that story… tell it again.
A story… with illustrations!
Seriously, did the launch of Home teach Sony nothing?
By which I mean, if you bring a free service out, everyone and their rock will try and get in. ‘Unexpected demand’ my eye.
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Oh god, Eoco got out of his cage.
TOLD YOU SO
remainds me of when the killzone 2 server crashed.
Was hard going to start with, but now it’s been well over a day since I had trouble gaining access.
Bits of the user interface are clunky and need fixing (and a random play feature is definitely called for) but… for free it’s fantastic. And it’s got some relatively obscure stuff as well. Five videos by Silver Sun… pretty much my favourite band ever… ace.
Currently whatching my playlist which consists of System of a Down, Europe, Dizzie Rascal and some sweet Bollywood hits……..Seriously they have like 300 Bangra songs! JAI HO!