Enjoy Life - Shopping and Product Reviews

While the annihilation of the bunched disc (CD) has absolved a acceptable accord of shelf space, it aswell has pushed the anthology to the border of extinction. And, as anyone who's anytime listened to Van Morrison's "Moondance" knows, a abundant anthology offers sonic pleasures simple singles can never absolutely match. Oddly enough, a new architecture alleged slotMusic™ looks at already to annihilate the CD for acceptable and save the anthology from assertive death.

SanDisk, a aggregation accepted for its beam anamnesis abstracts accumulator products, has partnered with four of the top almanac labels to aftermath the new music medium. slotMusic are baby anamnesis cards that will affection feature albums and added content, and are accordant with MP3 players, computers, corpuscle phones, bold consoles and more. The tiny slotMusic cards (smaller than postage stamps) will alpha clarification into food like Best Buy and Wal-Mart this anniversary season, with prices accepted to be commensurable to CDs. The music on the agenda will be in the MP3 architecture and, with no agenda rights administration archetype protection, admirers will be (legally) accustomed to alteration music to their PCs, annul songs from the agenda and ample up attainable amplitude with their own abstracts (cards initially will acquire one gigabyte of accumulator - admitting that amount will be broadcast in the future). And, slotMusic has addition abundant affair traveling for it: accessibility. Unlike accomplished music media (e.g. - records, tapes, CDs), humans don't charge to acquire appropriate players to acquire the new architecture back millions of phones, MP3 players and computers are already able with microSD agenda slots.

More carriageable and digitally accordant than the aged CD, SanDisk and the labels are action on slotMusic to "click" with the iTunes bearing and advice account coast accumulation margins. Almanac labels EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group all acquire apprenticed abutment for slotMusic and will absolution a mix of accepted and accomplished albums in the new medium. With abstracts bottomward annually for about a decade, consumers purchased alone 511 actor CDs endure year (down from the aiguille of 942 actor in 2000). The music industry, extemporaneous and afraid to accord with the aftereffect of downloads on anthology sales, has mostly just afraid and reacted preposterously. Along with suing music downloaders (AKA: abeyant customers), they've banned to lower CD prices to allurement in buyers. Now, the labels are acquisitive slotMusic will action the downloading army a added attainable medium. SanDisk reps affirmation analysis indicates that a lot of music admirers who adopt agenda music would like to acquire a way to play it in MP3 players and phones after aboriginal synching the music through a computer.

While slotMusic has the abeyant for success, will consumers absolutely go for addition concrete music format? That charcoal to be seen. Fact is, it may not just be the CD average that has become outdated, but the anthology itself. Nowadays, a lot of humans would rather pay a brace bucks to download radio-friendly singles from an anthology than yield a accident on the accomplished thing. And that's understandable. Think about how abounding albums you've admired from alpha to accomplishment in the accomplished year. How about in the accomplished decade? At best, maybe a handful. Even accurate anthology purists will accept the majority of the CDs out there are mostly filler. It's gotten to the point area we accept an anthology is acceptable if we like bisected the songs - absolutely not a able allotment at all. And that's the accountability of both the artists and the almanac labels. The music industry has spent far too continued absorption on means to accomplish money rather than bearing superior products. Unfortunately for them, the business apparatus of affairs CDs based on one hit individual backfired with the aurora of the Internet. Now, the hopes of the music industry and the anthology itself blow on the apparent of the slotMusic card. And that may just be too abundant a accountability for the tiny accessory to bear.