Music industry backing new memory card music
could CDs be replaced now by a fingernail-sized memory card? Perhaps not entirely, but SanDisk Corp., four major record labels and retailers Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are hoping that albums sold on microSD memory cards will at least provide an additional stream of sales says Sansa Reviews. The companies were expected to unveil plans Monday to sell memory cards loaded with music in the MP3 format, free of copy protections.
Called “slotMusic,” the new format is meant to address two intertwined trends. Most albums are still sold in a physical format _ 449 million were sold on CDs in 2007, while 50 million were sold digitally, according to Nielsen SoundScan _ yet CDs are decreasingly popular. Albums sold on CD dropped almost 19 percent last year.