SanDisk Introduces Competition for the Compact Disc
Posted 09/23/08 at 01:20:52 PM | by Florence Ion
SanDisk is teaming up with major music labels, including Sony BMG, to offer “slotMusic”; 1GB memory cards preloaded with full length albums.
The albums will be sold at retailers likes Wal-Mart and Best Buy and will be encoded in high quality mp3 format. The microSD cards will have no DRM restrictions, allowing the music to be easily downloaded to a computer or loaded onto an mp3 player. SanDisk also anticipates that be offering 1GB cards, artists will take the liberty of offering more than just an average 11-track album, maybe even venturing to offer music videos, interviews, album art, bonus tracks, and other premium content.
This business venture is an interesting one, especially considering that SanDisk seems to be attempting to revive physical media. This could prove to be a difficult endeavor, especially with companies like Apple being ahead of the game with iTunes. There’s speculation that this is SanDisk’s way of trying to offset the takeover bids from Samsung and Toshiba, though analysts say there is little the company can do to try to stay independent.
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"Song" and "MP3" are synonymous
Submitted by sjl1986 on Wed, 2008-09-24 06:54
Personally I would never purchase something like this. I don't understand why anybody would like this idea. Even with DRM free music we'd still have to waste time with one more step to pull the music off the chip before we could burn it to a lossy CD that sounds terrible in a nice sound system. I'd much rather just buy a hard copy of the CD which I can use in my truck, loan to someone, sell later, and rip as many copies to my backup hard drives and different computers as I want. Then the studio quality in the CD remains and if I want something to listen to in the office or just piddling around the house I can do that too. CDs are images which cannot be overwritten or fail electrically like a flash drive can and WILL given enough time. Every flash drive I've ever had has eventually gone bad and I expect the new ones to as well. Don't scratch your CDs and they'll last as long as you care to have them. The real question here is why the companies would sell a 1GB flash card with MP3s that can't possibly take more space than 200MB. When artists want to add more things like interviews and music videos they do it on their websites and DVDs or a 2-CD set. It's not really that big of a deal that we need to change all our CD players out for new ones that are compatible with flash drives. I thought MP3 CDs were going to be the greatest thing ever. I soon ditched them for my originals because of the quality. Unfortunately, the many average users with untrained ears out there will probably take this new idea and run with it because to them "song" and "MP3" are synonymous.
Yeah, I think you said it
Submitted by jwalch.hawk on Wed, 2008-09-24 07:28
Yeah, I think you said it pretty well, particularly at the end there. A very large percentage of users don't notice the difference between a lossy MP3 and something studio quality. However, I don't think they're targetting people who would want to take this and put on their CD player or in their super nice sound system. One use I can see is one that (surprisingly) Florence didn't mention... Look at the one that's in the illustration. MicroSD. Lots of mobile phones use microSD, and I can only assume they'd do miniSD as well. Just as an example, if they did a miniSD one I could have copies of what's on the card on both my PCs and then I could always have the card in my phone if I wanted to "take my CD on the go" where the laptop might be an option. The whole mobile phone as an mp3 player thing is something they keep trying to get to take off. And since it's not as though most mobile phones have superior audio capabilities, the loss of quality in the mp3 compression isn't going to be as obvious as it is if you compared mp3 and studio quality on a really nice sound system.
This won't overtake the CD's biggest captive audience, the folks who DO care about high fidelity audio. However, I do think that this has a chance to take off if they capitalize on the use in mobile devices. If you're just going to yank it off the card onto PC X,Y, and Z I don't really see the point.
Submitted by winmaster on Tue, 2008-09-23 14:46
Would the memory card contain a RAM chip or a ROM. I don't want my music dissapearing after ten years.
I don't think most people
Submitted by yogurt80 on Tue, 2008-09-23 11:39
I don't think most people will be quick to embrace a replacement for CD that's crmpressed in a lossy format. There have been many attempts to overthrough the CD wth musch better, high res formats- MiniDisc, HDCD, SACD, and DVD-audio, and all have jumped the shark. I'd be the first to accept low price, high bit-rate flac downloads, and forgo the physical media all together. Any way of getting multi- channel music on a digital download? That'd be sweet.
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