Music On Flash Drives: Bad Idea, Or Worst Idea?
It seems artists and labels are attempting to reach out to their consumers, trying to find some value-added proposition that will entice the user. The newest scheme is music on flash drives. Everyone, from J-Lo to Matchbox 20 to The White Stripes, is trying this new distribution method in hopes of luring a few more people away from the vile pits of P2P sharing.
Prices on these flash drives can get up to $35 for an album though! People are having a hard time swallowing a $9.99 iTunes dowload, what make these label think that people will pay $35 for an album? That's a $25 novelty tax! The problem is really who do you market these too? The people that are purchasing music aren't likely to be looking for flash drives, and the people looking for flash drives are likely not concerned about pre-loaded, DRM protected files.
What do you think? Is anyone here really interested in these little gizmos?
Do Music Lovers Buy Albums on USB Drives? [Gearlog]
Jesse James
Posted to In Your House, In Your Pocket, On Your Desk on 9 November 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: Flash Drives, J-Lo, Matchbox 20, Music, The White Stripes
If it ain't broke... cease production. Right?
Great idea, poorly executed. I actually like having a physical media over a digital one (I have lost a lot of songs from crash and reformats). And I don't want to be forced to rip a CD. Plus it is nice to see the designs and everything that comes with it. But I will never buy something that restricts my ownership of it. If they were 5-10 dollars, DRM Free, high bitrate (or have custom one made at the store. Like choose Lossless encoding and have them load it on one for you) and came with other forms of media on them (i.e. videos, wall paper and icons) I would consider getting it. I guess the drives would be kept as backup once you put them on your MP3 player.
If the flash drives are rewritable and it is ever used as a selling point, I will giggle my pants off.
I just can't wait until my CD rack is replaced with a shoebox filled with a million flash drives!
Which (in all seriousness) would be a space saver, but I am not sure how easy it would be to dig through a whole music collection of drives.