Sony’s proprietary ATRAC format is finally going the way of Sony’s proprietary Betamax format:

With these new Walkman players, Sony has widened its digital music environment to support Windows Media technology. This gives customers greater flexibility in their music software approach. As a result, Sony will be phasing out the CONNECT Music Services based on Sony’s ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe.

Sony announced they were doing this some time ago, but it looks like they finally got around to pulling the plug. If you’re stuck with a library of DRM’d ATRAC, you can probably burn them to CD and then rip them to MP3 to play on newer players.