When the Walkman emerged years ago, it took the world by storm. An affordable music player with compact cassette tapes that you could take just about anywhere. SanDisk, with its SlotMusic player plans to do that again with a cheap player, tiny chips, and the same go-anywhere attitude.
Granted, the world has changed. With the iPod and other media players, you can fit your whole music collection on a player the size of a deck of cards or smaller. Why would you opt for a player+chips solution? SanDisk thinks it has the answer.
First, it’s cheap. At $19.99, it rivals the price of the knockoff cassette players in Walkman’s heyday, bringing the portable media players into the hands of anyone — kids would just have to save their allowance for a week or two to afford one. then build on their albums at $14.99 a pop. They could also play the music right in their microSD-equipped cellphone, no player required.
Second, the albums are cheap, but come on 1GB microSD cards. That leave a lot of room for digital liner notes (who hasn’t pored over CD liner notes while enjoying an album for the first time?) — something iTunes and other music subscription service do not offer.
Again, SanDisk is making a bold step that might turn out to be foolhardy, but with this cheap player and the greater value of the SlotMusic cards, they may just have something here.



