Yesterday SanDisk introduced its new slotMusic cards that will bring prerecorded flash chips to the checkout ailes of a Wal-Mart or Best Buy near you. EVERYBODY jumped on that story.
What am I missing here? Is this really the second coming of packaged media? Will people who stopped buying CDs suddenly turn to slotMusic albums? According to SanDisk the projected target group for this format includes people not tech-savvy enough to download music or people too busy to have time for selecting downloads for their mobile devices. Like working mothers with fancy cell phones.
To get some outside perspective on this I asked my wife, a working mother of two. She owns an iPod and a cell phone with a card slot. Would you buy a slotMusic album of one of your favorite artists if you saw it while checking out at Wal-Mart? Answer: “No. Why would I? Are we going back in time now? I can get the songs I like on iTunes, can’t I?”
Okay, maybe she is too tech-savvy for this product. So … who’s going to buy those sM cards? People who don’t download. Will they figure out how to put that thing in their cell phone/MP3 player? Chances are they will. Are they going to carry their tunes with them on multiple sM cards? Unlikely. Doesn’t that beat the purpose of mobile storage for music? First we dreaded the clutter of tapes in our cars, then the CDs. Now technology allows us to store and listen to our music on phones and digital players. Why should we go back to buying physical units? Units that most likely contain a selection of music we would never cherry pick like that. Digital is killing the album. Like it or not. People don’t want to be told which songs to buy. If they buy at all.
What’s in it for the labels? They seem to hope for additional sales. sM cards won’t be placed in the CD ailes but closer to phones, MP3 players and the chewing gum at the register. This is not an attempt at replacing CDs. And it shouldn’t be. The manufacturing costs for a microSD card exceed those of CDs by far. Assuming the retail price for sM cards will be between $7 and $15 the labels will yield a lousy margin compared to what they make on CD sales.
[...] is doomed 23 09 2008 I am certainly not the only one with serious doubts regarding the market opportunities (or rather lack thereof) of SanDisk’s slotMusic cards. [...]