From the San Francisco Chronicle –
The Sansa SlotRadio, which is being introduced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, comes preloaded with 1,000 songs organized into popular genres on a companion SlotRadio music card.
It’s akin to an iPod Shuffle, only users don’t have to go through the process of transferring music from their computer. They simply turn on the $99.99 player just like a radio and enjoy music – though without commercials.
Executives at the Milpitas flash memory storage maker believe the new players, which also come equipped with an FM radio, fill a hole in the media player landscape for music lovers who are slow to embrace the model used by Apple’s iPods and some of SanDisk’s Sansa music players, which require users to download music to their PC and then transfer it to a device.
“That’s a big friction point with that model,” said Daniel Schreiber, senior vice president and general manager. “Either people are not downloading and transferring, or they’re getting someone else to do it. That offers a huge opportunity to bring music to people for whom this model is not ideal.”
The article goes on to say that the plan is to have collections (e.g. 80’s music) of 1000 songs per card sell for $40, or people can buy the equivalent of a CD on micro-SD.
Seems the Senior VP apparently thinks that the MP3 revolution is bypassing a certain market segment. It is, sort of. He also sort of implies that this segment is technophobic or doesn’t quite get it.
People in my age bracket (adult, but not quite AARP material) tend to not want to have to sit through hours of sifting through old record collections and CD’s to pull the 2 or 3 songs per record worth listening to and translate these to MP3 format. Alternately one can browse iTunes or other other stores online. Still takes a lot of time. And that would be a lot of time that frankly we simply don’t have.
Hey, Senior VP Schreiber: It’s not that we don’t know how or can’t learn. We’re not stupid. We’re simply apathetic.
On top of this the idea of 1000 top 80’s songs or 1000 hits of the 60’s for $40 is rather appealing: I don’t have to go and look for these. I don’t have to spend hours that I don’t have chasing these things down. Moreover, it’s not like I define my life in terms of music. I’m happy to listen to 80’s stuff, but frankly I’m not willing to chase down all of these songs. I’m certainly not willing to spend the std iTunes price of $1 to hear Boy George, either. It’s not that I don’t like Boy. It’s that I’m not willing to spend $5 of my time and then another $1 in my wallet to chase him down. But if something he sings pops up on the Sansa player, why, that’s OK. I’ll probably like it just fine.
You people at Sandisk crack me up. You came up with a brilliant, million dollar idea, but how you got there was wierd. I’ll repeat — it’s not that we don’t know how or can’t learn. We’re not stupid. We’re simply apathetic.
Either way, as technology improves it opens up more opportunity for all. And that’s the memo.
