Music labels are going to try yet another new format

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sandisk22-2008sep22,0,4166641.story

Universal, the world's largest record label, will start with 30 albums available on slotMusic cards, including new releases and compilations. The next album of one of its hip-hop stars, Akon, will be released on slotMusic as well as on other formats.

Because they are so small, Caraeff expects that slotMusic cards will sit on racks where shoppers don't normally find music, such as at the supermarket checkout line and mall kiosks.

The music on slotMusic comes without copyright protection, so it can be used on almost all computers, mobile phones and music players -- but it won't play on an iPod, which doesn't have a micro-SD memory slot. It has one gigabyte of memory, and the music tracks are played back at high quality.

If it's DRM-free, couldn't you just copy the tracks onto an ipod?

oh so it's sandisk trying to pwn Apple

Did you mean: sloth music

http://www.thetechherald.com/media/images/200839/SlotMusicCardtmSide_1.jpg

Oh, so it's just a microSD card with music on.

Does anyone actually expect this to have any sort of chance?

the future is weird

Ask someone to buy a song for $1.50 or whatever and that person will probably balk. Ask that same person to send $6 on a monophonic ringtone and (s)he will probably do it. By that logic this thing could rip up the music industry.

i want to know what "high quality" means, as these are suppose to be the same price as CD's. all four majors are signed up, wonder if any independent labels are on board?

What about artwork?

This might actually be good. Independents need money too...

blogger Lefsetz weighs in:

Do you even know if you have a micro-SD slot in your phone? And, if you do, what are you going to do with the card inside when you buy an album? Talk about easy to lose… Let’s go even worse… Can you remove the back off your phone? On the BlackBerries I’ve had it’s nigh near impossible. As for the tiny card, you’ve got to raise a door, insert it just so, close the door, put the back back on… FOR EACH AND EVERY ALBUM?

Oh, it’s easy on an iPhone. Which doesn’t have a slot, but has built-in GIGS of memory! But that syncs to the impossible iTunes.

As for the BlackBerry itself. I won’t say it’s counterintuitive, but now that there’s push e-mail on the iPhone, I’d switch if AT&T’s connections weren’t so heinous.

slotMusic is an insane idea. Dreamed up by a company that has difficulty competing with Apple because it’s got no software and is a heartbeat away from being taken over by Samsung. As for the labels running with this idea… Yup, they endorse nonstarters like this, but come up with an idea to actually give people what they want, online, and they say no.

Furthermore, any success in music retail is going to come from LOWER prices, not higher. And, to quote the business cliche, companies are going to make it up on volume.

And one more thing. For those so ignorant, for those at the labels getting their music for free… The only people who care about DRM/copyright protection ARE THOSE WHO ARE STEALING THEIR MUSIC! People who pay at the iTunes Store don’t give a shit. Which is why the DRM-free tracks at Amazon and eventually MySpace Music are not taking over the market. You hear a lot of noise from the Net prognosticators, but those savvy enough to bitch online are also savvy enough to use BitTorrent.

Utterly ridiculous idea doomed to failure.

Next!

The only people who care about DRM/copyright protection ARE THOSE WHO ARE STEALING THEIR MUSIC!

not true

yah i steal my music and dont care at all abt drm

The only people who care about DRM/copyright protection ARE THOSE WHO ARE STEALING THEIR MUSIC!

not true

Yeah I'm against the idea of DRM of any description and I rarely ever download music illegally.
I reformat my computer every couple of months but according to these pricks that counts as one of my 'uses'. Fuck that! Also fuck:
- computers not shipping with operating system CDs
- games you can only install 3 times [see Spore]
- being forced to watch lengthy piracy warnings on the DVD I bought legally when I could be watching the movie already if I'd bloody torrented it
- UK ISPs giving in to the copyright mafia (BPI)

People who steal music are the people who don't care! They never have to come into contact with DRM at all.

most people both steal and buy tho right?

this is sandisk just trying to offload their shitty cards

Should have talked to Radiohead!

I'm still getting over the shock that the Lefsetz post wasn't, "What is this Blackberry thing? Everyone should use the ol' two-cups-and-a-string, like the Allman Brothers did!"

i could be wrong but i don't think my Powerbook has a micro-SD slot, whatever that is.

and i'm not going to bother looking because i'm too busy sorting my RINGLES.

paste, between two existing etc.

This is fucking ridiculous.

what is the point of 1GB memory if you're only going to sell one album per disk? do you put sellotape over a hole so you can format and re-use it for other media etc.

if they're so all-fired intent on selling a physical product maybe they should just start selling things people have a demostrated willingness to buy, like guns or milk

Free Akon album with a glock, free Joanne Newsome album with a pint of silver-top.

Har, I remember when they gave away "Tony Hadley's New Album" with every £20+ purchase of kleid at H&M, back in the day.

I think sales of clothes went down that week.

Again,
ARTWORK?

I always thought it was ridiculous that MP3 downloads didn't come with the inside booklets, or a video, or...anything else.

*Scanned versions

FAIL

I always thought it was ridiculous that MP3 downloads didn't come with the inside booklets, or a video, or...anything else.

the whole point of MP3 downloads is that you don't need any of that shit just to listen to a piece of music

If all you want is just to listen to a piece of music.

Nah the whole point of downloads is that it's easy as hell.

raster noton did this with a few of their recent releases, but their aesthetic fits the sd card thing.

what should be done is vinyl release + bonus sd card for yr digital lifestyle

lol, i thought this must be a few years old and resurrected; funny that this is new.

I always thought it was ridiculous that MP3 downloads didn't come with the inside booklets, or a video, or...anything else.

Sure, but 78s didn't have any artwork for years, possibly decades. The slotMusic is keepin' it real!

itunes downloads SHOULD come with downloadable artwork/lyrics/liner notes.
I just bought an eddie hazel demos thing there and i want that stuff with it for my 8 quid.

there's some sort of PDF attachment thing that you can do but as far as i know only U2 has ever offered it

yeah thats what i was thinking of

viz:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/makebooklets.php

http://www.macworld.com/article/41017/2004/11/liners.html

i'll provide artwork, for a competitive but fair price

the last M83 album had a wee digital booklet thingy with it on iTunes -- nothing more than PDFs of the CD booklet. it was a nice addition, and i can't imagine it involved more than a couple of seconds' work to put it up there. i don't see why this can't be the norm.

i don't see why this industry cannot look beyond marketing to solve a problem that is not marketing related.

side q: does anyone actually really like any of the pay-to-download services? i use a few of them and they all suck in their own special way.

^ Itunes is fine for me. Mostly just when I am too impatient to wait for a cd but still want to pay the label. I don't transfer my music to a million different places though (not sure why anyone would...)

The reason record shops are dying might just be this... I wnt into the Zavvi Megastore on Buchanan St, Glasgow yesterday. 1st floor had the top 40 cd chart, and the rest of the floor was DVD's on sale. The 2nd floor was All dvd's or video games. No music to e seen anywhere. on the 3rd floor there was a few cds and the rest was books and tshirts etc. There was no signs saying that the 3rd floor had cds. No fucking wonder no-one shops there for cds.
If they start stocking cds they might just sell more.

when i turn to itunes for instant gratification they never have what i want. apple as a company is becoming more and more scary these days, too. who'd a thunk they could get more control-freakish?

...it's reminiscent of record companies.

^ Itunes is fine for me. Mostly just when I am too impatient to wait for a cd but still want to pay the label. I don't transfer my music to a million different places though (not sure why anyone would...)

― Beast, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 18:38 (17 minutes ago)

It's not so much about different physical places though. Say your computer dies and you buy a new one, that may count as one of your allocated "uses".
Computer hardware doesn't last forever: if I buy music I want to own it forever, not for the next 20 years.

You plan on your computer lasting 20 years??

The chips have 320 kbps MP3s I believe. I wouldn't pay a penny for those. I personally wouldn't pay for downloaded music unless I get full bandwidth files, for no more than $5 an album. That would be about right, since they're saving on manufacturing of the CDs, cases, booklets, shipping & distribution, retail markup & overhead, etc.

Do Blu Ray players still play CDs? If that's the case, I'd think the CD market has another good decade left. They just need to reduce the prices and make them two-sided, with a DVD side containing videos, files in various compressed formats ready for various players, and cover art and lyrics in PDF for users who want to put it on their hard drive and store the cds as backup for when their hard drives inevitably die (one of my 500 GB drives bit it last weekend). I'm damn glad I have most of my favorite albums on CD.

All those people who ripped their stuff then sold it are gonna be out of luck when their cdrs/dvdrs die and external hard drives pack in.

My records/CDs don't have to be checked out with the company every time I want to play them, and they still work if I buy a new record/CD player.

If DRM is on any music, I won't buy it. The end.

Copy protection on DVDs is fine though, because video's not the kind of thing you necessarily want to play in 12 different locations. But even then, you can play DVDs on a limitless number of devices.

Adam OTM

Again,
ARTWORK?

from the original linked LA Times article:

"In addition to music, the slotMusic cards will come pre-loaded with other things, such as liner notes, album-cover artwork and sometimes video."

I still think people will buy these slotMusic things, even if it's mums buying albums for their kids. The utility of them will ensure they don't last long, though.

All those people who ripped their stuff then sold it are gonna be out of luck when their cdrs/dvdrs die and external hard drives pack in

said it before but after nearly 9 years of ripping and downloading and this has never happened
and in that time i've had vinyl and CDs damaged by flooding

ah, right: this is from the appalling slotmusic website ...

slotMusic cards will be bundled with a tiny USB sleeve ensuring seamless interoperability with all computers – Windows, Linux and Mac

two things:

1) this is not convenient. right now i have an ever-growing library of digital music on my HD (which, fuck, is overdue a backup) and i'd like to keep it that way, not go backwards in time to ...

2) ... the sort of fiddly plastic shit that sounds like some serious precious-resource-wasting wank to me.

I bet they come in a gigantic box, too.

aye, good point: they'll have to, won't they? or at least one of those crappy cardboard backing things that hangs from a little hook of some kind ... oh, god. this is going to suck so hard it blows.

why not just sell USB keys?

Actually I plan on just transferring it to an Ipod...which most of it already is.

why not just sell USB keys?

Anyone can manufacture a USB key! These are slotMusic cards!

I'm going to get together some venture capital, and make a proposal for a new format called CD# (aka, CDSharp). The music is encoded at such a tremendously high bit rate and with so much copy protection that a 50 minute album takes up 50 gigabytes. So you can't trade it over the internet. Or store in on other media. Cause there will never be hard disks big enough. But what's in it for the consumer? Part of the encoding includes all the of raw source tracks, allowing the purchaser to "Mix and Remix" the songs with special "SharpMixer" software that comes with each CDSharp player. See, the CDSharpPlayer has a touchscreen on top, like the iPhone, except the software was thrown together really quickly by some offshore subcontractors. But it will be awesome! You will be able to rub a little virtual turntable on the touch screen and "scratch". And you can even remix in 10 second samples that can be downloaded from the CDSharp.com site for only 25 cents a piece. The CDSharpPlayers can talk to each other over WiFi too, and use ZUNE Squirt technology to allow others to see the titles of the tracks you've purchased. Isn't that cool?

A fine idea. But what will the Dragons say?

Let me tell you where I am.

I have distributions centres that could be distributing this _RIGHT NOW_