Ongoing History Daily: Selling music on microSD cards? There was an attempt.
Technology moves so fast that we tend to forget the things that didn’t work. We’re all pretty much locked into MP3s and streaming now, but as recently as 2008, the music industry wanted us to buy into another physical format.
Back in 2008, all four major labels (yes, there were four back then) along with Wal-Mart, Best Buy and even Rogers cell phone stores wanted to start selling music pre-recorded on microSD cards. You know those thumbnail-sized flash memory things that you might have in your digital camera? They called it “slotMusic.”
Why? Well, the reasoning goes that many cell phones of the era came equipped with a slot for a microSD card, so why not make music available for them? Sell albums on microSD!
And yes, the plan was a total failure.
