Technologizer » slotMusic

A Week Dominated by a Phone That’s Not an iPhone

Harry McCracken — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:09:51 +0000

I still run hot and cold on the prospects for Google’s Android OS. With this week’s launch of the T-Mobile G1, though, I’m feeling fairly upbeat about it. For now, at least…

The T-Mobile G1 Gets Real
You can fixate on the ways in which it’s similar to an iPhone. (Big display, accelerometer, GPS, Wi-Fi, YouTube, app store, and lots more.) You can fixate on the ways it’s dissimilar. (Open platform, no multi-touch, no full-blown video player, lack of Exchange support, odd proprietary headphone jack, and lots more.) Whichever way you look at it, the T-Mobile G1, the first phone built on Google’s Android OS, is a significant product. It’s already been the subject of controversy, and there’s much we still don’t know about the G1 and Android in general. But you gotta think that T-Mobile ended up mostly happy with the reception so far–especially since it’s apparently already seling scads of them to existing T-Mobile customers on pre-order, which is the only way it’s selling the phone so far. (It goes on sale on October 22nd; your humble reporter may be among those in line to snap one up.)

Read more at: TmoNews, Engadget Mobile

The First Rule of iPhone
It’s become a familiar pattern: Developer submits iPhone application to Apple. Apple refuses to offer it through the App Store. Developer blogs about Apple’s explanation. Apple gets pummeled in the blogosphere. How has Apple reacted? By telling developers that the non-disclosure agreement they signed concerning the iPhone forbids them from telling anyone why their program was rejected. And the same NDA has left book companies afraid to publish books to teach programmers how to develop for the iPhone. A couple of months ago, the iPhone platform seemed like the most exciting thing to hit the tech world in eons; at the moment, I get depressed just thinking about it. This too shall pass, or so I hope…

Read more at: Macworld, Furbo.org

A Less Appy Windows
We still don’t know all that much about Windows 7, but news broke this week that Microsoft is stripping out Windows’ apps for e-mail, photo editing, and video editing, and will offer them only as free downloads. I think that’s a swell idea for both the operating system and the applications–I was never clear on why Microsoft often highlighted tools like Windows Movie Maker in Windows ads when they weren’t core to the OS, and apps bundled with an OS that’s only updated every few years are doomed to feel permanently stale compared to Web-centric rivals. I still think that Windows should evolve into a sort of DOS for the 21st century–a piece of reliable and unglamorous middleware. I’m sure that Microsoft isn’t going to follow that strategy, but I’m glad to see even small signs that the company is tippytoing back to basics.

Read more at: Cnet News

A New Way to Buy Music in Physical Form
I kind of thought that we’d seen our final new physical media for music. But memory card kingpin SanDisk has introduced slotMusic, which repurposes MicroSD into a format for album distribution. It’s got the support of major music labels, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart, so it may be a mistake to declare it dead on arrival. But the selection of albums on slotMusic at launch will be tiny, the cards themselves are so tiny that they seem like more hassle than they’re worth, and the format is arriving just as digital downloads are poised to render physical media irrelevant. Okay, on second thought I will declare slotMusic DOA.

Read more at: Computerworld

Steve Ballmer is Anything But Retiring
Bring out the cryogenic freezer! Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who had supposedly been planning to retire at 62 in 2018, has apparently said that he won’t follow recent retiree Bill Gates into that good night until Microsoft’s Live Search has a larger market share than Google. How does the race stand at the moment? Google has 63 percent share, and Live Search has 8.3 percent and dropping. I sorta admire the bravado behind such a pledge, but I don’t know if any number of developers, developers, developers will prove enough to close that gap.

Read more at: All About Microsoft

Like the T-List? Read it as a feed.

Share/E-Mail

slotMusic vs. CD: The Ultimate Comparison

Harry McCracken — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:25:46 +0000

slotMusic is an innovative new format format for music distribution. The tried-and-true Compact Disc is a quarter-century old. I compared ‘em point by point and found that the CD stacks up surprisingly well for an invention that predates memory cards, MP3s, iPods, iTunes, and music phones. Is it going too far to say that if the CD were introduced today, folks would hail it as a breakthrough. Maybe. But I know that if it went away right now, I’d miss it–and that I think it beats slotMusic hands down. Chart after the jump…

	slotMusic	Compact Disc
Introduced	2008	1982
Size	So small you might run it through the laundry by accident	Conveniently hand-sized, yet incredibly thin
Music selection	29 albums	Untold millions of albums
Availability	Major merchants like Best Buy and Wal-Mart	Every music store on the planet
Backed by	Four major labels	Every label
Price	About the same as a CD	Exactly the same as a CD
Sound	CD quality “high quality”	CD quality
DRM	None	None
Use on your PC?	Yes, with an adapter	Yes, either directly or by ripping
Use with a CD player	Yes, by transferring music, then burning CD	Yes, directly
Use with an iPod	Yes, by transferring music to PC and then to iPod	Yes, by ripping and synching
Use with a phone	Yes	Yes, by ripping and transferring
Chances you’ll be able to play it in 20 years	Not good	Reasonably good
Chances your spaniel will eat it	Alarmingly high	Reasonably low

Fair comparison? You tell me…

Share/E-Mail

The World Probably Doesn’t Need slotMusic

Harry McCracken — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:24:49 +0000

Music is about to get microscopic. Flash storage kingpin SanDisk is launching slotMusic, which it calls an “innovative, new physical music format.” Actually, what it is is DRM-free albums sold on MicroSD cards, along with a USB adapter. According to the New York Times, the albums may cost $7-$10 apiece; according to GigaOm, the format will launch with 29 (count ‘em!) albums. SlotMusic has the support of major labels EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner, as well as physical music behemoths Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

SanDisk presumably sees slotMusic (whose site, incidentally, barely mentions SanDisk) as an opportunity to sell millions more flash cards a year. For consumers, though, I’m not sure if the format passes the “why?” test. Here’s SanDisk’s pitch:

“slotMusic cards enable consumers to instantly and easily enjoy music from their favorite artists without being dependent on a PC or internet connection. Users simply insert the slotMusic card into their microSD-enabled mobile phone or MP3 player to hear the music – without passwords, downloading or digital-rights-management interfering with their personal use.”

Okay, so if I’m in Best Buy and see some music that looks irresistible, I can buy it and be listening within moments. If I bought a CD, I’d have to rip and transfer it; if I bought from an online store like iTunes or Rhapsody, I’d have to transfer.

But slotMusic’s instant gratification seems overwhelmed but its downsides, and by upsides of other music formats that it doesn’t have:

–The slotMusic cards are a gigabyte but contain only one album, requiring you to either swap them in and out of your phone each time you listen (clumsy!) or transfer songs off of the card (also clumsy, but in a different way!);

–Owning and managing multiple MicroSD cards sounds like a hassle; many phones aren’t really designed to have you swapping cards frequently, and any card that’s the size of your fingernail will inevitably get lost;

–If I had to choose between a format that offers instant gratification for 29 albums and one that offered slightly-delayed gratification for millions of ‘em, it’s an easy choice;

–When all is said and done, isn’t it more convenient to download music from home then to have to shlep to Best Buy, anyhow?

I’m joining the chorus of conventional wisdom here (here are slams from TechCrunch and GigaOm), which is always dangerous. SanDisk is a smart company–who’d have ever guessed that a memory-card manufacturer would end up in second place to Apple as an MP3 player manufacturer, leaving Sony, Samsung, and Creative in the dust? Then again, its earlier foray into putting content on flash storage, the Fanfare TV service, was a resounding flop, and the company killed it within months of its introduction.

Me, I’m unlikely to pick up any albums on slotMusic until you can buy obscure 1960s bubblegum music on it. And come to think of it, much of the music I buy isn’t available in digital format at all yet.

Here’s my comparison of slotMusic and the good ol’ Compact Disc. And it’s time for a poll:

Share/E-Mail