SonicStage is a discontinued software product from Sony that is used for managing portable devices when they are plugged into a computer running Microsoft Windows.

SonicStage was a requirement to transfer and manage music on all Network Walkman, NetMD and Hi-MD players, and the Clie handheld, before the product was dropped entirely outside of Japan in 2007.

[1][2] SonicStage was first used in Vaio PCs put on the Japanese market in October 2001, and superseded OpenMG Jukebox.

However, Sony announced that on 31 March 2008, its CONNECT download site would be going offline, affecting SonicStage users.

In late 2008, Sony launched a new online music store called "bandit.fm" on a trial basis for a small number of markets.

[3] Japan exclusively uses the mora service, and SonicStage continued to be released for Japanese customers until it was superseded by x-APPLICATION in 2013.

Some earlier models (such as some of the Net-MD line) could not even transfer voice recordings made by the user (with the player's microphone input) to their PC.

SonicStage 3.4 allows tracks recorded via digital or analogue inputs on Hi-MD devices to be transferred back in WAV format.

SonicStage will play ATRAC3 files directly from a digital music device when the latter is connected to the computer and detected by the software.

The origins of SonicStage lie in OpenMG Jukebox, which was created for the Memory Stick Walkman (NW-MS7) and VAIO Music Clip, Sony's first digital audio players.

An MP3 encoding plug-in was sold on Sony's on-line stores (SonyStyle Japan: ¥1,590[7]), for their Palm device called CLIÉ.

SonicStage 3.4 includes an option to de-DRM an entire library (the larger it is, the longer it takes) allowing unlimited transfer and playback on PCs.

The main downside is that a number of features, such as the ability to recover from corrupt track lists, are still missing.

As of October 2008, 16 "au" phones (manufactured by Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications, Kyocera, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba) support LISMO's ATRAC service.

That too proved to be problematic to users, forcing Sony to apologize in January 2006 and temporarily take the software off the market.

It only provides a simple drag-and-drop interface and is lacking many of the newer, more advanced features of SonicStage (such as the ability to transfer files back to the computer).

[26] As mentioned in this forum,[27] the VAIO Music Transfer software allows files to be dragged and dropped onto the player.