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Posted on 01-10-2008

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A Memory For Music

California-based flash memory giant SanDisk has tied-up with major music companies such as EMI Music, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group for a new initiative called Slot Music, under which SanDisk plans to sell Micro SD memory cards preloaded with titles from these major studios.

The idea behind the whole thing is very simple and aims to provide an alternative to people for internet and optical discs based content distribution system.

The Slot Music cards will have preloaded content on-to them that can be easily used with any new age smart phone or portable media player.

The company looks at it as a fast, convenient and high quality alternative; plus like conventional CD’s people would be able to easily copy music from these memory cards.

The company also wants to make sure that ther’s no DRM software involved, unlike the music available on online stores.

With the cost of memory cards falling day-by-day, we can soon hope to see more companies offering this, and more people opting to purchase music in this form. Millions of phones are being shipped every year, and practically speaking, the use of memory cards is bound to increase exponentially, as even entry level phones today sport the ability to play back digital music stored in said cards. The jump in portable media player sales is also going to fuel this initiative.

As of now it’s not quite clear as to what the associated costs are for the end user, but we’re assuming that they will be higer than online music stored. Once more companies start competing for this segment, the prices should fall.

San Disk plans to roll out their Slot Music cards in the US first, and will retail them in regular brick and mortar retailers such as Walmart and Best Buy, as well as online retailers. Plans to roll out the Slot Music Cards in Europe are in progress, and will be announced soon.