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Last updated: Thursday, October 30, 2008

As you’re shopping for presents this holiday season, you may notice something new in the music aisle beyond the latest CD from Britney Spears: albums on flash memory cards. Whether you’ll want to buy one is an open question. Dubbed slotMusic, the albums will come on microSD cards, a fingernail-size memory format that fits into a port on an increasing number of cell phones and other gadgets. The format is aimed at consumers who haven’t figured out how to get music on to portable devices or who don’t have the time to do it. It also could appeal to consumers who want to get music on their gadgets instantly. “There is an ongoing need for tangible media,” said Daniel Schreiber, senior vice president and general manager at SanDisk, which developed the microSD card format and the slotMusic concept. “People don’t want to spend an entire Saturday afternoon loading up a music player.” But there are several reasons why consumers may not take to slotMusic albums. For instance, you can’t plug the cards into the most popular digital music players around, Apple’s iPods. Nor can you fit them into most car and home stereos in use today. And few U.S. consumers currently listen to music on their phones — the device where most microSD card slots are found. “This is a bit of a solution looking for a problem,” said Mark Donovan, a senior analyst at comScore M:Metrics, a market research firm. The slotMusic launch comes amid a wrenching transition for the music industry. CD sales have been plummeting, and digital music sales have not made up for the decline. In recent years, the music labels have been desperately searching for new ways to sell music. Meanwhile, music retailers want to find some way to make up for their lost CD sales. And SanDisk, of course, would love to…

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Will Buyers Eat Up Music on Flash Memory Cards?

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