Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Albums on Flash Drives

In what appears to be a first-ever attempt, a music group is opting to replace the CD with a 128MB USB Flash Drive for distributing their next album. Costing at around $30, the re-usable flash drive, for its first album release, will tote 29 songs in mp3 format along with having photos, album art, video clips and apparently more. It seems that 128MB might be incorrect, as squeezing 29 mp3 songs along with other content would be very difficult on a size that small, but the very idea of releasing an album in this way is completely novel. Based on whether or not it is DRM'ed beyond usability might make this become the saving grace brick and mortar music sales. The popularity of online downloading is only increasing, but with a gadget like this, smaller than a CD and more functional, it's definitely piqued interest.

I would buy more albums, if they came that way. You can never have too many thumbdrives and it would be a cool way to add extra items like wallpapers and bios from the band.

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