SanDisk Leaps into Music

As SanDisk takes a leap deep into the music industry, the portable media company is betting that consumers will choose easy and intuitive over free and illegal. And, this time, big players in the recording industry are buying in from the get-go.
Technology can often disrupt and re-shape an industry. Take, for example, the 18-year-old who decimated the profitability of a $40-billion (U.S.) a year recording industry. Sean Fanning, with the release of Napster, changed music distribution forever, costing the industry $5-billion a year.
More recently, it's been Apple Inc. that has reinvented music distribution – not any one of the four major record labels. Entrenched players have traditionally had little interest in shaking up the business ecosystem they have optimized over past decades. But, if SanDisk has its way, two innovations could put the music industry on the road for another – perhaps more friendly – revolution.
In 2008, of the more than one billion mobile phones that were sold worldwide, 750 million had microSD card slots. That convinced SanDisk, one of the creators of the Security Digital (SD) card format, to develop SD micro cards as a music format.

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Adding weight to this gambit, hip-hop artist Akon in December, 2008, released his album Freedom on CD and slotMusic format on the same day – the first artist ever to do so. People acquire music in their youth – and cellphone penetration in the youth market is the highest of any demographic – making Akon the most played artist on cellphones in North America in 2008.
The SlotMusic album comes on a 1 gigabyte microSD card and has no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. So not only can you play the music on your mobile – you can, using the USB adapter that comes with it, load the songs onto your computer. Phyllis Wyatt CIS-110