Future Music is reporting that EMI, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony have teamed up with SansDisk to introduce the new "slotMusic" album format (whoever came up with that name should be kicked in the groin and fired). The format will make available albums for purchase in a compact memory card format like the one used in your digital camera.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of this is, especially since it costs the consumer the exact same amount as an album in CD format and the files on the slotMusic card are in MP3 format. Why on earth would someone pay $5 more for MP3's just because it comes on a tiny, easy to lose memory card? I think these companies are in for the same sort of thing that happened when they tried to release albums on Minidisc format - ie no one bought them and the format died a quick death as a consumer format.
Am I wrong on this? Does the idea of this format appeal to people?
Monday, September 22, 2008
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8 comments:
I agree, Tom. And people who buy CD, want the art. Booklet and etc. It´s like the books. They never died and never will.
BTW, who carries digital music, buy music at mp3 online stores and just transfer to the mp3 players...
Agreed. This is yet another attempt to hang on to a dying paradigm.
Clueless.
btw if you haven't read this "ebook" or blog, check it out. It rules.
http://newmusicstrategies.com/
It doesn't appeal to me at all. For that cost, I'll keep buying CD's, at least it's lossless. Until DRM-free downloads are lossless and at a lower cost than CD's, they're not going to get anywhere.
What a stupid idea. Either consumers want to download via web or phone 'shitty' mp3's for convenience or as boreli pointed out they (we) want nice artwork and the much better sound quality (ha) from uncompressed 16bit 44k cd's. You're right Tom, it will flop like minidisc.
krell
The cards are supposed to also contain artwork files, liner notes, and the like, but honestly, when I talk to younger music fans these days about downloading, they pretty much all indicate that they don't care about this stuff anyway. That seems kind of sad to me, but maybe I'm just a grumpy old man. haha
Thanks for the website suggestion, Clint!
i don't know about cards, but i would love to hand out music on thumb drives. but thumbs and cards still are not as cheap as CDs (yet).
but i agree - i don't think this will pan out for commercial production and sales. downloads are the future for sure, but it's nice to hand someone something physical after a gig. it's an object they have to deal with (even if they just chuck it) which means they are more likely to check deeper into your stuff.
if we are not handing out CDs, we have stickers with our URL on them. better than nothing. but if little thumb drives got cheap enough to hand out for free, then i really like this format.
other than that, i'd never pay for something like this unless the price was right.
It's a convenient way to put the Boogie In Your Butt ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4le6Zr86ojs
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