The CD format has been taking a sound kicking from digitally distributed music for the last five years, and now with barely even a second to catch it’s breath and spit out any broken teeth, another bully has arrived – slotMusic
Basically, slotMusic is a fancy way of saying DRM-free MP3 laden microSD cards. SanDisk and a collection of big name record companies (including the four horsemen EMI Music, SONY BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group) have grouped together to bring the new physical music format to retail.
It’s a clever way of bringing digital music to shop shelves and slotMusic disks should find a ready made audience of mobile phone owners more than happy to ditch the rather amorphous carrier specific world of mobile music services, in favour of the much more familiar cash at retail model.
Each microSD will be 1GB in size meaning that besides the DRM-free MP3 tracks, there should be more than enough space left over for liner notes, artwork, videos and other extras. What’s more, each slotMusic disk will come with a USB sleeve so that you can load the music directly onto your computer too.
It had to happen before long, though it will really be down to wide-ranging retail adoption for the format to really take off. Importantly, even if slotMusic disks don’t call time on CDs, they may well have a significant bearing on mobile music (not to mention the impact they might have on influencing handset manufacturers to singularly adopt the microSD format).
No word yet on when slotMusic disks will be released, but as soon as we know, we’ll print the date here.
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About Fraser MacInnes
I don’t get it. Actually, scratch that – they don’t get it. Physical media is dead. Clearly the record industry STILL doesn’t realise that fact. Christ…