The sad SanDisk's Sansa SlotMusic Player

I was trying to come up with more "S" word for the title, because even the manufacturer and its products are all start with it. ;-p

Many open source enthusiasts, especially those "hankering" Linux die-hard fans must've jumped on their couch when SanDisk announced SlotMusic. With DRM free MP3 packed inside a microSD card, toss around for world wide sharing with love and kiss from generous open minded people around the globe; who's not going to like it? Heck, if someone is not sharing his/her, then it's easy enough to snatch the small memory flash card and put it inside your pocket in one-two swift finger movements.

With that in mind, and along with sharp witty prediction from the famous Om Malik (GIGAOM); which he think the SanDisk SlotMusic Cards are destined to fail *ouch!* SanDisk still stays on track to release the SlotMusic player in Europe sometime in 2009.

And for Walmart and BestBuy frequent visitors, you can take home the SlotMusic card for about $14.99. There are already around 35 artists available including todays well known singers such as Coldplay, Leona Lewis, Keane, Rihana, etc. Once purchased, you can plug the card into your mobile phone or computer. Or, to instantly listen to the newly bought SlotMusic card, you can use SlotMusic Player. For a SlotMusic Player costs $20, and the artist-branded player costs $35 each.

With that kinda price, the SlotMusic Player is disposable. And it also comes with minimum features, which mostly MP3 players have nowadays. There's no shuffle or repeat mode, autoresume, but it supports high-capacity microSD cards up to 16GB. You can imagine listening to that much music with no screen or shuffle mode... --read the good review by Jasmine France at CNet.

So what's the sad part of SlotMusic? Wolfgang Gruener from TG Daily pointed out nicely that with the price of “traditional” digital downloads (typically go for $9.99 per album), a SlotMusic filled with an album priced at $14.99 is considerably expensive. His closure is spot on: "Over time, you may be collecting lots of 1 GB memory cards with lots of storage space you have no use for."

Or perhaps you prefer a more sarcastic point of view, which is taken from Saul Hansell's article (NYT) comment: "...This is Sandisk’s foleo moment. They are blinded by their desire to sell more flash memory." ;-)

[blogged with my Treo 750v]