Sony's embarrassing flame-out with its Connect music service can be traced to tensions that arose after the company contracted with an outside source for the project, according to CNET's John Borland. The reporter spoke with anonymous sources who said that ex-Apple employee Peter Hoddie, who was an architect of QuickTime, clashed with Sony's programmers, leading to a difficult situation that eventually became a hopeless mess.

Mr. Hoddie, who now runs a company called Kinoma, appealed to Sony executives who were both envious and respectful of Apple's overwhelming success in the digital music arena, according to Mr. Borland. He said that "a dysfunctional mix of politics, programming and pique" ultimately doomed the Connect project.

The biggest issue turned out to be Mr. Hoddie's decision to base the software on FSK, Kinoma's proprietary system for handling multimedia files as they're downloaded to a computer and then transferred to handheld devices. "FSK was not a mature technology, according to critics," Mr. Borland wrote, "and lacked most of the documentation sought by Sony programmers working with the system." Even integrating it with Sony's existing online systems was very difficult since FSK doesn't employ HTML, XML or any other traditional standards.

Connect eventually didn't even make it to the United States in light of the problems experienced after its launch in Europe and Japan last November. Sony eventually had to tell users to abandon the software for an earlier solution, SonicStage, and ceased development of Connect in April.

Thanks to Playlist for pointing out the article.