CDs are on the path to extinction.

[$aturn¥oshi]

Here's something interesting I just read. Source

SanDisk rolls out new medium for music

SanDisk is teaming up with some of the biggest music labels in an effort to ease the venerable and increasingly unloved audio CD into the retirement home.

The Milpitas maker of flash memory said today that it is partnering with four top labels to roll out a new music medium based on its microSD cards that will feature full-length, pre-loaded albums and additional content. Called slotMusic, the format is compatible with more than a billion cell phones, MP3 players, PCs and game consoles and will give music lovers a more versatile way to experience their music, SanDisk said.

"We see slotMusic as the album of the 21st century and something that makes sense for people today," said Daniel Schreiber, general manager and senior vice president of SanDisk Audio/Video.

The slotMusic cards, about the size of a fingernail, will appear in Wal-Mart and Best Buy outlets in time for the holidays. Pricing has not been announced, though Schreiber said they will be in line with other music options.

Music labels EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have pledged their support for slotMusic and will roll out a mix of current and older albums using the format. Universal, for example, will have 20 albums at release and 30 by the end of the year from artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Akon and New Kids on the Block.

"It's about providing more choice for consumers," said Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of eLabs for Universal Music Group. "It's a mode of getting music that has no friction. It just plays. It gives people the benefits of digital music with no headaches."

Caraeff said the cards are one way for recording companies to recoup some of the money they're losing with the decline of CDs.

1GB card has room to spare

The microSD cards initially will sell with 1 gigabyte of storage - more than a typical audio CD, which has about 700 megabytes of space. Artists also can choose to load their content onto cards carrying up to 8 gigabytes of content. That expandability, SanDisk said, means it will soon target DVDs and later Blu-ray DVDs.

The music on the card will be in the MP3 format and will not be loaded with digital rights management copy protection. Users will be able to transfer music to their PCs, delete songs from the card and fill up any open space with their own data.

The news could help hasten the demise of CDs, which have been on a downward trajectory for almost a decade. Sales of CDs peaked in 2000 with 942 million discs sold, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Last year, consumers purchased just 511 million. Overall, the industry lost 11.8 percent in annual revenue last year, due in large part to the decline of CD sales and the rise of digital downloads, both legal and illegal.

It's unclear how much of the CD's current business the slotMusic cards will snag. And it's unlikely that slotMusic will stem the tide of digital downloading, which is extremely popular with younger music lovers.

Schreiber said it could take some business from the CD but also open new opportunities for listeners who prefer the ease of playing their digital music on a phone or MP3 player without having to deal with syncing through a PC.

"We've done a lot of surveys and many people like the idea of going to Wal-Mart, taking a card and plugging it into a player without going through a computer," he said.

The slotMusic cards enjoy a large advantage over other new physical media formats. Unlike the CD, DVD or Blu-ray DVD, slotMusic will premiere with the ability to immediately play on more than a billion devices. This year, 750 million phones with microSD card slots are expected to be shipped worldwide, and 900 million more are expected to ship next year.

SanDisk, the second-largest maker of MP3 players after Apple, also builds microSD card slots in almost all of its music players. And most PCs and game consoles have either larger SD card slots or USB ports, which can accept microSD cards using an adapter. The cards will come with a USB adapter.

Sonal Gandhi, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said there is still a market for physical media. CD sales contribute about 75 percent of revenue to labels, though Gandhi forecasts that will dip to 50 percent by 2012.

40% still like CDs

She said while 40 percent of recently surveyed music listeners said they still value CDs over other formats, among heavy music users and younger music fans, almost none prefer the CD over digital versions.

She said the challenge for SanDisk and the labels is to get people to buy full albums. She said one of the main contributing factors to the decline of the CD is that digital music lovers prefer buying only a couple songs off a CD, rather than purchasing the whole disc.

"People still value the physical format, but if you target teenagers and the fan segment, it's a bit of a hard sell," Gandhi said. "Among the younger generation, it's cheaper and easier to buy one or two songs from an album."

Analyst Mike McGuire of Gartner said slotMusic might serve as more of a hybrid format, extending the life of physical media in the face of increasing digital downloads. The format will probably do better overseas, where MP3 players are not as ubiquitous as they are in the United States, and consumers are used to playing music on their phones.

A lot of the success in the United States, he said, will rest on the pricing of the cards and what the labels choose to do with the flexibility of the format.

"What's different with slotMusic is the content you can put on there," McGuire. "The labels are trying to change the concept of an album from a collection of songs to not only music, but a disc that can carry all kinds of additional content."

 

[Jukain]

This should've happened ages ago.

 

[paperfairy]

I've been talking about this with classmates for about four years now. It's about time.

 

[Satoshi-chan]

What the fuck is this shit? I can see it right now...

"Mommy, I just dropped my new micro-SD on the lawn and I can't find it."
"Damnit, that's the third copy we've had to buy you this week!"

Seriously, tiny format... easy to lose... totally not a good thing. Also, does anyone know if this bullshit is going to be some lossy format, or actually lossless? This is almost looking like this generation's minidisc... something cute, something fun, but something that should hopefully flop very badly.

On a sidenote, I will be laughing if the compact disc becomes extinct and the vinyl record continues to sell.

 

[$aturn¥oshi]

I actually like the micro SD. I have a 2GB one in my phone with 411 video game songs.

 

[Satoshi-chan]

But can you imagine having to keep track of a bunch of them? One for each album you buy? It's one thing if you keep yours in your player most of the time, but if you have a bunch of different albums, and you're constantly switching the cards out, it would be a hassle.

 

[$aturn¥oshi]

You can combine them. One card can hold a couple of different albums.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

Cough.

 

[$aturn¥oshi]

This thread actually precedes that one. Perhaps a merge is in order.

 

[Satoshi-chan]

You can combine them. One card can hold a couple of different albums.

Only if they're short albums, or encoded in a lossy format (or if they embrace some of the newer lossless codecs such as FLAC (free lossless audio codec) for it). If the average card is 1GB though, and you're using audio that is regular PCM such as on the compact disc, you'd be using quite a bit of space as it is.

It will be interesting as to how they decide this should work. It also will be interesting to see what sort of component decks they would have planned for these.

 

[$aturn¥oshi]

I like the idea because you can pull songs off of them and it saves me from perhaps downloading another virus from LimeWire.

 

[Satoshi-chan]

Oh man, I did hate limewire years ago when I used to use it. Back when I used to do a p2p program (before I got heavily into torrents) I was more of a fan of Soulseek. Not as fast as limewire, but I could download full albums easier and much less chance of finding a virus.

 

[paperfairy]

Cough.

Owned, good sir.

 

[bell02+]

You can combine them. One card can hold a couple of different albums.

Did it actually explicitly say that you could do that? I'm not confident in the music industry to do something like that when they can just as easily (and it'd be significantly cheaper to them) to not allow the carts to be writable.

Which is why there is an issue of holding onto so many. Still I also worry about not being able to keep track of where they are or which is which. I just very much like the idea of having a physical copy of an Album with a design on top to tell disks apart; and if I was looking for more individual songs I have a significantly easier time of paying a $1 on iTunes to where my songs are tided to an account so if I even loose the computer, I still have access to the songs.

I just think it's too little to late for something like this to catch on and I don't see it moving past a novelty phase. Part of the reason is that there is already technology like this in this form on the market now with Disney. They've been releasing singles and clips of their tween artists to be used in their MP3 players and it's not something that you see much hype around.

The only thing that has potential to replace the CD is the digital media format in general, not the micro SD cards.

 

[nickstr]

Something like this has been done in the past, remember Hit Clips? But those were just cartridges with short samples of songs which were about 30 seconds each and the quality sucked. This could work but like others I am worried about the size of the cards they just seem too small and too easy to lose. Also, there are people who don't own MicroSD based devices I personally have most of my music stored on a Memory Stick Pro Duo card and also on the hard drive of my computer. Over all I like the idea of distributing music in formats like MP3 and AAC as long as DRM is not attached and you are not tied down to using one storage format for them or one device. Some people don't refer to CDs as a digital format when in fact they are. The music or speech is stored in a format known as PCM at a bit rate of 1,411 KB/s and at a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz along with in some cases digital data. Examples of which for hybrid CD audio/CD-ROM are Enhanced CD and Hyper CD which have been used for many years but I am not sure of recent releases in these two formats.

 

[Turtle Tamer Kammy]

As Sato already mentioned, this is just another minidisc. Remember when that was the big thing?

 

[GrnMarvl14]

As Sato already mentioned, this is just another minidisc. Remember when that was the big thing?

Big difference is that SDs work with current technology. You don't have to run out and buy a mini-disc player (actually had a friend who swore minidiscs were going to replace CDs).

Asked whether he sees the format taking the place of the CD, Caraeff said, "I think we would certainly hope that would be the case, but I don't think we are so tied to that."

Also, there are people who don't own MicroSD based devices

These new albums will come with a small USB dongle that lets buyers use them with computers, too. [The USB dongle will also enable users to transfer the songs to iPods, which don't have memory-card slots, via a PC.]

Which is why there is an issue of holding onto so many. Still I also worry about not being able to keep track of where they are or which is which.

If you have a DS, think of them like you do those games. Admittedly, they are a touch smaller, but I used to worry about losing DS games...and haven't yet.

Seriously, tiny format... easy to lose... totally not a good thing. Also, does anyone know if this bullshit is going to be some lossy format, or actually lossless?

[The files will be MP3s encoded at a bitrate of 320 samples per second, the highest possible setting ensuring roughly CD-quality sound.]

 

[$aturn¥oshi]

Well, I don't think discs will crash and burn any time in the near future. Plus, they're also talking about doing this to movies. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't care to watch a movie on a handheld device.

 

[bell02+]

If you have a DS, think of them like you do those games. Admittedly, they are a touch smaller, but I used to worry about losing DS games...and haven't yet.

Actually, that was how I've been picturing them. I have a lot of DS games (probably between 70 and 100) I've lost probably around 5-10, unfortunately... (Hopefully I'll find them someday)

I also have SD micro and mini cards (I have a phone and camera that uses them). those things are small, and barely have any room for a cover design. The DS carts barely have room for a color design. Very easy to loose (especially when you have large music libraries like myself) and not that much space to make a design to separate one card from another of the same type.

Like I said in your topic, I'd prefer them the standard size as I don't think physical media should much be less than an DS cart in size for a minimum.

 

[Eredar Warlock]

MP3s and formats like iTunes are already killing CDs, and are far more manageable than what these folk are preaching.

Also, I thought that CDs were considered digital.