A while back Sandisk came out with a new way of marketing music. They put 1000 songs in predefined playlists on a micro-sdhc card, developed an interface to play the songs back on enabled devices, and called it slotRadio™ . The device could be a phone or one of Sandisk’s MP3 players. There’s a catch to it though… You don’t know which songs you’re getting, the songs are played back in sequence with no way of rewinding, altering the playlists, shuffling songs or copying the music off of the device. You can however pause and forward to the next song. You get 1000 songs for about $40 (4 cents per song) which is a huge discount compared to iTunes and other online music outlets, but you have to live with the limitations. Obviously this has to do with the manner in which the music was licensed. Sandisk would say that it’s like listening to the radio with the added “features” of being able to pause the music or forward to the next song if you don’t like the current song. In a sense, it is, but you have to pay for it.
Apparently this concept was created to target the less technical who don’t know how to download music and people who just don’t have time to deal with downloading music. That audience seems to appreciate the concept. If you’re like me and don’t mind downloading the music it may not be worth the price even at 4 cents per song. I need to control my music.
Even though it’s not right for me, this just may be the perfect way to deliver music to cancer patients who don’t have their own mp3 player. I have a large music collection but can’t legally share it although I wish I could. In cases where we’re not not going to donate mp3 players, but rather loan mp3 players to treatment facilities, I’ve been struggling to find a way to load the players with music since it would be just too expensive with traditional methods. Enter slotRadio™. We recently purchased three Sandisk Sansa Clip+ players (which we have listed on our Amazon store) and three slotRadio™ cards. We have one Classical, one Country and one Oldies. I also managed to find a bunch of free relaxation music that I loaded onto the devices which I’ll discuss another time. We purchased several earbuds and traditional headphones, a dual USB charger, a case for the mp3 players and a container to hold the entire kit. My plan is to loan or donate a kit like this to cancer treatment centers.
So I’m going to give slotRadio™ a try. On paper it’s perfect for this application but we’ll have to see how people react to the limitations of the concept.
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