News SanDisk, record labels introduce new music format

That's probably a little on the low side. I'd say around $12 or higher. Sometimes lower, but it just depends on where you're buying it and what artist(s) it is. I generally buy CD's online anyways, so that may be inaccurate.

 

$7 for an album? Plus shipping on something so small could be very low indeed, so the UK purchaser could really benefit. I'd actually consider paying money for it - if, as has been suggested, it came with a lossless FLAC version (similar to the recent NIN album, where they offered about 4 download options).

I appreciate a high bitrate - I've spent enough on audio equipment to make the most of decent sound quality (though confess the last few levels can be nigh-on indistinguishable, but at least with lossless you *know*!)

As for Steveo's "Phones, car hifi and most devices that use micro-sd are such low audio quality..." - Sandisk's own Sansa range takes MiniSD, and my Fuze, though not state-of-the-art, is actually pretty good, thanks!

A step in the right direction, let's hope it progresses logically

 

You can get 8GB versions of these for about £10 which is more than most MP3 players can store. I actually have a lot of my favourite music on one of these anyway to listen to on my Nintendo DS and my Zen has SD card support.

I like having a collection of CDs with cases personally. I'll probably keep these in their cases.

 

What's the point?

Don't we already have entirely too many flash card formats?

P

 

i've seen worse ideas than this. I'm no audio snob, so 320 is just fine for me (and most people too, I'd argue). I think it boils down to price/availability .. and like others have said.. they might be too easy to lose/break

 

Wooo! Been waiting 6 years to see this. And now it's a completely obsolete concept...
Bundle them with the albums on CD and you'll give customers the ultimate reason to still buy physical media. This will mean you won't have to rip or convert your bought albums. So if you want quality audio you use the CD and if you want portable audio you use the card.

"Letting" customers add content to the memory card is plainly a joke and more just hints at this being a superfluous format. If you want to create your own music flash cards then you'd rather buy a larger card and gather everything on that.

And hooray for the non-drm nonetheless.

 

Thats gonna change the world.

 

I like the idea. Only problem that I have is how do you know what songs are on what chip? You cant exactly write the name of an album on the tiny mem cards that fit into a cell phone.
CD's are old, its about time they get replaced. this is an idea that is just starting out. Give it a year or two to evolve and no one will want cd's again.

 

BARCODES!

heheheheh

 

Actually, that's sort of an interesting idea. Some of the moderrn "barcodes" (the weird square ones) have a fairly high data density. i wonder how long a barcode would have to be to encode an entire song.

 

[sarcasm]

Of course, the fact that Sandisk already makes MP3 players with MicroSD card slots has NOTHING to do with the chosen format.

[/sarcasm]

 

Options, options, options.
You can never have too many.
Tho I would like to see FLAC instead.

 

So does nearly every other MP3 player manufacturer...

I like the idea of lossless files being included and yes I would definitely pay 2-3$ more to get lossless + mp3. I don't see that happen though. SanDisk are not NiN after all or the record labels won't agree or they'd charge the customer (us) a hell of a lot of a premium.

The more I think about that the less I believe it's going to happen. Damn you, "thinking"!

 

What, and a big, spinning disk of plastic that is easily scratched isn't?

This micro SD solution doesn't fix all the issues with current music/film media, but it does address some of the key issues with a CD replacement : provides people with a "physical" medium that is stable, robust and interoperable and usable without internet access.

 

I am not entirely sure where you are coming from - you don't need internet access to play a CD and flash memory is less stable than a CD, lasting about 10 years instead of 50+ (50 is a figure I have heard for regularly used CDs)

 

even well stored pressed cd's will often degrade after 10-20 years. Given Cd's havent even been around for 30 years, i find the figure of 50 years fairly amusing (i know test conditions could be sort of generated to simulate 50 years, but i prefer real world evidence). You certainly cannot count on them to last 50 years, not even if you had kept 3-4 of the same disk.

As for the actual news item..... this is what they already were doing with movies if memory serves (except with DRM). Offer low quality media on a small capacity card. I dont see how either is desirable to the consumer.

 

Agreed. After a while, you'll just end up with hundreds of SD cards lying around, which is wasteful, costly, and pointless.

Just buy the CD, rip it, then put it on whatever media you want.


I'm just not seeing the point of this.

I've got CDs that I bought in 1983 when they were first available, and they're still fine. Who's to say that media cards will be working in 50 years time? CD, media card.. for all we know, they'll be so obsolete that you'll not have any equipment to play them on anyway. Making digital media last so long is pointless. We would have backed it all up onto whatever new media becomes available many times before the discs deteriorate.

It's data.... just copy it to your new devices as and when they becomes available. The fact is, my digital music collection on my hard drive will probably outlast the CDs they were ripped from, simply because it will migrate to whatever media I'm using at the time.