Is microSD the music medium of the future?

By Jasmine France on 24 September 2008

Credit: SanDisk

SanDisk on Monday announced a partnership with all four major music labels in a deal that's set to bring future albums to microSD cards. The preloaded cards, dubbed "SlotMusic" media, will be sold at brick-and-mortar retail locations as an alternative to the CD.

At this time, there's no information on which albums will be sold for how much and when, but the first outlets set to receive the new digital music medium are U.S. branches of BestBuy and Wal-Mart, among others. More than likely, the SlotMusic cards will go on sale in time for the upcoming holiday season.

No doubt in the interest of compatibility, music will come in a 320Kbps MP3 format. Each card will offer a 1GB capacity, which gives musicians the option of including various album extras such as liner notes, videos, and other creative content. It will also leave extra space for the user to transfer his or her own content to the card.

The idea of SlotMusic cards is to bridge the gap between the physical and the digital, as users of certain cell phones and MP3 players will be able to purchase the cards and insert them directly into the device, eliminating the need to rip CDs or download from a service and then connect to the computer to transfer the songs.

However, given the relatively large size of each card (1GB could fit about eight albums assuming 12 tracks per ripped at 320Kbps MP3), this usage model doesn't completely make sense, as you would need to connect to a computer to make full use of the capacity — unless, of course, you're purchasing songs wirelessly, which in itself indicates a certain amount of comfort with a fairly advanced downloading practice.

And say you elect not to make use of the leftover capacity. A phone or MP3 player only has one memory slot — do you really want only one album taking up that spot? Finally, microSD cards are tiny, which raises a concern over how to keep track of them if you start racking up a collection.

All that being said, I'll wait until pricing is released before passing final judgment on SlotMusic. I can certainly see an argument if it ends up being a much better value than the current $1.69-per-song download structure. At the moment, however, I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around who this might appeal to. Am I completely out of touch? Or do you see microSD albums as just another teeny thing to misplace, too? Chime in below.

Topics: drm, mp3, music, sandisk, slotmusic, album, microsd, cards, capacity, song

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Comments (6)

  • Az commented on 25/09/2008 12:52 Report abuse

    I agree that they should be in lossless, although i have no use for lossless atm and always try to use 320kbps at all times, i know a lot of people dont, 320kbps is fine for my comp speakers, but for home theatre? theres capabilities for much more bandwidth.

    I really dont know if i'd ever use them, i see much more appeal in downloading songs in 320kbps without any drm whatsoever than to buy a card to get the same thing.

    It will be interesting, but in the age where downloading is pretty much here to stay with music, wouldnt it be more useful to expand and research how to make that area work than going to another physical format?

  • bigguns commented on 24/09/2008 16:01 Report abuse

    Sounds interesting, but the music would need to be loseless to interest me. It would be terrible to have tracks not able to flow due to the MP3 format (see "Dark Side of the Moon", any "Ministry of Sound" compilation etc).

  • Fiddy commented on 24/09/2008 15:53 Report abuse

    From vinyl records to cassettes to cd now micro SD. It's the same trepidation ppl had back then

  • Jive Turkey commented on 24/09/2008 15:50 Report abuse

    I used to think this was a great idea back when a 64MB mp3 player was considered large and they often had SD slots for expansion. Back then it seemed a great alternative to carrying my discman and CD wallet which was too big too carry, but not big enough to hold all my music.
    Now I've got an 8GB miniSD in my phone of which about 4GB is music, about a third of my mp3 library. I could put the rest on another miniSD, but it's too much of a hassle carrying and swapping such a tiny thing. Plus, my phone will have to rescan the whole thing to update its library.
    A better alternative I think would be loading stations where the customer can connect their device to a terminal and transfer the purchased files over.

  • nebken commented on 24/09/2008 14:33 Report abuse

    Definitely way too small a medium. Can you imagine having 20 albums each on a thing the size of your thumb! I'd lose them constantly.

  • nathanernest commented on 24/09/2008 11:32 Report abuse

    Sounds interesting, i agree that pricing will be the major factor here. Also, DRM would an interest. I cant imagine that record labels would promote easily transferable files, but we will wait and see i guess :-)

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