SanDisk Launches Physical Mobile Music Format

SanDisk, with the backing of the four major music labels, is announcing on Monday an initiative called SlotMusic to put entire albums on MicroSD cards, according to The New York Times.

Apparently, Wal-Mart Stores and Best Buy have agreed to sell the cards, which will launch before the end of the year. Each microSD card will come with an adapter so you can listen to the album on a regular computer, but the main purpose will be to sell music that plays instantly on the millions of cell phones on the market that currently have microSD card slots.

It’s a bold move for any manufacturer to release a physical music format, in an age of declining CD sales and skyrocketing digital music services. But SanDisk may be onto something; they’re planning to sell the cards for $7 to $10 a pop, which is about what full-blown downloadable albums sell for. (If the labels actually let that price happen, that is.) Plus, the report said that customers will be able to erase the cards and use them for something else.

If anything, you have to give SanDisk credit for coming up with something that could result in the sale of billions of the company’s microSD cards. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one, even if we don’t have high hopes that it will succeed.

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