In conjunction with four major record labels; Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and EMI, SanDisk recently announced their plan to launch 'slotMusic' memory cards pre-loaded with digital music. It is hoped that this will create a new way of buying music, rather than illegally downloading tracks from P2P file sharing programmes.
Music will be encoded in high quality MP3 format and each microSD slotMusic memory card will have the capacity of 1GB; enough to store a whole album and more. It is thought that the left over memory may be used by the record label or artist for extras such as music videos, interviews, album art or even more tracks.
The 'slotMusic' memory cards can be inserted into mobile phones and other digital music players with microSD memory card slots. The cards will have a tiny USB sleeve that will enable content to be transferred to and from a card using a PC.
Daniel Schreiber, SanDisk vice-president says, "There's a billion phones out there and a lot of then can play music and a lot of them have a microSD slot… We think there's still a need for a tangible, physical product."
But how successful will this product be? In the virtual / digital world we live in today, it's so easy to download music onto your computer. Regardless of the time of day (or night), you can purchase and download music or other media to your PC in a flash. (Or a few flashes if your PC's getting on a bit!)
On the other hand, there are many people who still prefer to purchase an actual physical product rather than downloading. It's something that they can actually get their hands on and feel like they've got their money’s worth. A friend of mine almost always buys CDs. (She loves to line them all up in alphabetical order!).
So, it will definitely be interesting to see how well the slotMusic memory card does with music lovers. It's believed that pricing will be similar to that of a CD and a full list of albums is expected soon. The card will launch initially in the US and arrive in Europe in time for Christmas.