SanDisk's slotMusic albums and $20 Player now ready to be ignored

When you're digging a hole for yourself, you might as well keep digging in hopes of emerging from the other side. Today SanDisk unearthed its Sansa slotMusic Player -- specially designed for those ill-fated slotMusic microSD cards pre-loaded with DRM-free music from "dozens of popular artists" (a bit over 3 dozen to be exact) at $15 a pop. It'll also play your self-loaded music on microSD cards (currently maxing out at 16GB) just as long as it's loaded in either MP3 and unprotected WMA formats. The tiny, display-less, 2.8 x 1.4 x 1.4-inch (that can't be right, but that's what the press release says) player sells for $20 (or $35 for artist branding and 1GB slotMusic card album) and is available immediately along side a smattering of accessories from US shops like Best Buy and fittingly, Wal-Mart. Headed to Europe and other global destinations sometime in 2009 assuming the whole format isn't scrapped after disappointing holiday sales are tallied.

Read -- slotMusic Player
Read -- slotMusic Artists

[Mr Morgan Posted Oct 15th 2008 10:01AM]

umm.. fail?

woo hoo.. now that we have internet distribution it's nice to see that we're diving wildly back into the past to invent a non internet distribution method. this will lose. mark my words.. this will lose. maahahahaha

[Some Guy Posted Oct 21st 2008 4:59PM]

protip- RTFA before commenting, you can add songs on a normal micro sd (3.50$ from Dealextreme shipped for 1gb)

[LloydChiro Posted Oct 15th 2008 10:09AM]

I would never buy a micro-SD just for the music on it; well, maybe I actually would, but I haven't bought music in years...

But tell me why the music play sucks. Is it because I should be paying more for an mp3 player? Is it because Bose doesn't make a docking station for it? Is it because a proper mp3 player shouldn't use swappable memory?

I'm not sure why this product is a failure.

[JoeNES Posted Oct 15th 2008 10:20AM]

Dibbs on www.slotmusicfanboy.com!

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 15th 2008 10:30AM]

How's the sound quality? $15 per album is high-priced at CD-quality, let alone compressed MP3s.

For all the Shuffle comparisons, remember that the first-gen Shuffle had the best audio quality of ANY of Apple's MP3 players, current generations included. I haven't heard any reasons why Apple chose not to keep that technology in their latest offerings.

[hotpuck6 Posted Oct 15th 2008 10:33AM]

OMG!
This would be a perfect evolutionary step in between the Cd and the ever so commonly used digital distribution of these days!
Too bad we now have huge digital audio and video players and this is a serious step backwards.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 15th 2008 11:52AM]

By the way, Robin Thicke is actually *really good*... he's got a retro soul/disco thing going on.

[Bemused Posted Oct 15th 2008 3:32PM]

Not Lossless = FAIL

I would consider buying (DRM free) music on flash media if it was encoded with FLAC and priced at or below the price of a CD.

Of course, I'd rather sit at home and download DRM free, lossless music than have to schlep to Wally World for it.

[Ishcabible Posted Oct 15th 2008 8:13PM]

As much as I'd agree with you, lossless wouldn't appeal to the general consumer who uses stock headphones. It would just be a waste of space for them, and they couldn't tell the difference.

[Bemused Posted Oct 15th 2008 11:58PM]

True, but they are going for bigger fish than just the PMP market.

If they are trying to become the dominant media format for prerecorded music, going backward in quality is unacceptable.

If I'm going to put these files on my HD and stream them to my living room stereo, I want lossless.

It's not like like there's not plenty of room on a 1GB microSD.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 18th 2008 1:12AM]

Wow...I had one of these 20 years ago, only it was called a "Pocket Rocker"!

If only this thing were backwards compatible so I could listen to my 2 inch cassette single of "Dead or Alive" one last time.....