By Martin Vedris
SYDNEY: SanDisk, the inventor and leading supplier of flash storage cards, has launched its first slotMusic MP3 player in the USA to coincide with the launch of the new microSD card medium for selling music.
While an Australian release for this technology has not been announced, slotMusic could revolutionise the music industry by providing music on microSD cards, which are commonly used to expand the memory of mobile phones and compatible devices such as MP3 players.
Consumers simply buy a slotMusic microSD card, plug it into their phone or MP3 player and play. One thing that could make the format popular is the music will be free of Digital Rights Management, so consumers can easily swap the music between their devices.
The price of Sansa’s first dedicated slotMusic player is another thing that should help sales. The Sansa slotMusic Player went on sale in the USA today for just US$19.99.
The format also has the backing of artists and their record companies. Musicians from EMI Music, SONY BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group are making their debut on slotMusic cards. This month artists including Coldplay, Katy Perry, Leona Lewis and Rihanna will release music on the slotMusic format.
And Elvis is not dead either, he joins Abba and Jimi Hendrix as ‘retro-active’ artists with slotMusic releases.
In local news, SanDisk today announced the Australian availability of an upgraded family of SanDisk Extreme IV CompactFlash memory cards. The entire series of SanDisk Extreme IV high-performance memory cards has received a 12.5-percent speed boost up to 45 megabytes per second (MB/s) 1 and the newly-released 16-gigabyte (GB) 2 card is twice as large as previous capacities.
The 16GB SanDisk Extreme IV CompactFlash memory card is available now at RRP $450