Remember when MiniDiscs were kind of popular? Then people decided that tiny CDs weren’t that cool after all. It was a faraway time, when Walkman still meant CD player and cars still came with cassette players.
Well, tiny music may be making a comeback - this time on microSD cards. As the Times reported, SanDisk is working with four major record labels to put entire albums on minute memory cards - an initiative entitled “SlotMusic.”
It seems that these cards will be cheaper than purchasing music via mobile music stores - most now set up through the vendor itself - and at least as cheap as buying music from iTunes. In fact, most music on mobile phones is sideloaded for a couple reasons: price and convenience. Navigating mobile stores for OTA (over-the-air) downloads is not only cumbersome, but at about $2 a pop, it can add up fast.
What does this means for music companies? Perhaps they can actually make money through music distribution again. It’s not mainstream music’s first date with mobile phones, or even a solid “solution”, but it is a next step that shows a willingness to evolve and, perhaps, a growing adeptness at following the trends.
On a broader scale: Imagine that you’re going to the grocery store. Check out is with your phone (mobile billfold). On your way out, you decide to rent a movie, so you stop at the kiosk which distributes recent films on microSD cards. Once home, you load it into your phone, plug your phone into the TV and kick back. Maybe after it’s done, you play some music through your home audio system - via your library of tunes copied from microSD albums and/or wirelessly downloaded. Maybe you stream news through your phone and listen to it on your soundsystem. As John McCrea of Cake sang, “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…”
Perhaps young people have moved beyond the album, though. To them, music is an experience, and they aren’t as likely to collect albums and CDs like their parents did. To “own” music is to have constant access to it. Can a convenient format like sideloading–one that works with their medium–change their minds? Or will microSDs get added to a heap of forgotten formats atop loads of Laserdiscs and MiniDiscs?
