Contact George --Email: glang@opubco.com. Phone: (405) 475-3385.
SlotMusic obsolete from start
BY GEORGE LANG
Published: October 20, 2008
Some people just don’t like the way the world is turning and think that if they go as fast as they can in the opposite direction, like Christopher Reeve’s Superman, it will spin their way. Last week, a coalition of four major labels announced SlotMusic, their latest attempt to sell consumers on a new music delivery format, and it looks like retail Kryptonite.
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The idea: SlotMusic consists of albums loaded on 1-gigabyte microSD cards — the fingernail-size storage chips that are compatible with cell phones, personal digital assistants and a few mp3 players such as the SanDisk Sansa. According to SlotMusic.org, the cards deliver songs directly to a phone or a digital music player "without being dependent on a PC or Internet connection.”
Perhaps I’m being elitist — I used "perhaps” instead of "maybe,” so it’s possible — but how many people own digital music players of any kind without being connected to the Internet? Is this truly a growth demographic?
The cards will retail for $14.99, hardly a bargain considering compact discs at Best Buy or Walmart — the first sellers who signed up for SlotMusic — often go for much less. I randomly selected one of the first 30 titles offered on SlotMusic, the debut album by Los Angeles slacker hip-hop duo Shwayze, and compared it to Best Buy’s retail price for the CD. It was $9.99 on disc.
Worse yet, it is incompatible with the iPods and iPhones, also known as 70 percent of the digital market. But this is the year of harebrained music biz ideas. In January, Sony put the Platinum Music Pass in stores, allowing consumers to buy what was essentially a dedicated gift card that would only buy one title, such as Alicia Keys’ "As I Am.”
These passes are not a runaway success, since they add at least one unnecessary step to a purchase process: go to a store, buy a card, go home, get online and download. Why not save fuel and buy it online? As an alternative, Platinum Music Passes are available for purchase at online retailers, offering consumers the pleasure of hitting the Web, buying the card, paying for shipping, waiting for it to be sent in the mail, and going online again to download the album.
It’s like Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter is in charge of digital music marketing. Look for SlotMusic on the nearest scrapheap of digital music history.
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The author of this story missed the whole point of the SD card. Its just another way to get the product into my home. Its another pipeline that is not currently tapped. I purchase SD cards all the time. I do both professional photography and videography. They are so cheap that I can purchase new SD cards for just about every project. I rarely ever use the cards for final printing because I always edit the photos in some way. I also print up a final DVD of original, unedited photos and the edited versions. In my final package I provide to the client, I give them the original SD cards. Since I have to buy the cards anyway, if I received some music on the side, it would be another bonus as I pass along the card cost to the client.
Sparky (Mark), Oklahoma City - Oct 20, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I have wondered about this medium for a long time. Lang, as usual, is spot on! If there was a moment for this kind of delivery, its time has already passed. The music industry really needs to look at itself critically and decide what it really does best. ~ Certainly it can cross distribution off of its list and move on!
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