Forgotten memory? slotMusic & slotRadio
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2024
- Two of the more recent physical music format flops are revisited. As music gradually floats away into the cloud, I look at two of the last attempts made to sell people music in boxes sold in stores.
00:00 Let's go (and about 50% of viewers have done)
01:19 Talk-about...slotMusic
11:27 MP3 status in 2008
13:03 Why?
14:50 Obvious problems
17:30 slotRadio
19:53 Enforced limitations
20:26 slotRadio Demo
23:23 slotRadio to go price?
24:32 My opinion differs
28:14 Ahead of the game?
30:47 Patreon Credits
Yes, I have featured an SD card music format before - see the later MQS (not to be mistaken with MQA) in this video • MQS SD - The Newest Ph...
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Regularly asked question
Q) Why are there comments from days ago when this video has just gone live today?
A) Patrons / techmoan usually have early access to videos. I'll show the first version of a video on Patreon and often the feedback I get results in a video going through further revisions to improve it. e.g. Fix audio issues, clarify points, add extra footage or cut extraneous things out. The video that goes live on youtube is the final version. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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Whenever techmoan has covered all obscure music formats, the universe shifts to create another one.
Yes
*hits blunt* Duuuuuuuuuuude
I'm convinced that this never existed and only popped into existence a week ago. MP3s on an SD card? And music companies signed up for that? No chance.
Techmoan is not a person. It is a title, a role, a universal constant if you will.
@@gladspooky9455 I think that it could have worked… if it came out a few years earlier. And even then it would have been driven to extinction by Apple.
Sounds to me like SanDisk had a warehouse full of 1gb cards they couldn't shift.
Yeah, aside from having to pay for advertising and packaging design
@@stevenrais9360 I mean, Nintendo made the original Arcade Punch-Out!! specifically because they had too many CRTs in storage, so...
@@BrightSpark yep specifically too many CRTs for Donkey Kong machines and I believe a few of the donkey Kong machines were repurposed too
@@stevenrais9360 and, you know, all the licensing
@@ShockingPikachu : I think they were Radar Scope machines first. The game had been a flop in the States. Nintendo had spent a good chunk of money on them. It would have been cheaper to convert those into Donkey Kong cabinets.
"how are we going to compete with free unrestricted music?"
Record labels: "how about something really restrictive and very expensive?"
Neither of the formats here were expensive at all especially for the time. iTunes in 2009 was damn train robbery.
@@madeupfred I remember it was like 3 bucks a song when I was using it, long story short I pirated all my music bc frig that, for a library the size you'd see someone have on say Spotify you're talking thousands of dollars! Nuts
I'm annoyed nobody tried a full-size SD format for music. They're big enough to print album art, they'd be easier to handle, and you could have a collection in a wallets-sized thing, like they sell to hold Switch game cards. People go out of their way to use dedicated devices to listen to music without distracting notifications on your phone, and I'd have enjoyed a proper SD-sized format a lot back in 2008, especially if they had proper cardboard sleeves with good artwork! :)
@@AileTheAlien kind of reminds me of ds games tbh
@@xxportalxx. Yeah, I was going to mention DS (or even the original Gameboy) but I figured my message was already turning into a wall of text! :)
"Breakup Make-Up"
*Next Playlist*
"Wedding"
Sounds like there's a free reality TV story with every slotRadio card.
I'd lose my mind if I'm flipping music and this dumb voice is always there. Incredibly annoying.
What a load of crap...
"Wango Tango"
Who comes up with this shit?
I think the voice is good for blind people because they can't see what's on the card(s).
I think slotRadio creators underestimated my willingness to skip over 986 songs just to find that one perfect.
And everytime I think "Surely he's out of obsolete audio formats now", no, Mat finds another one. Brilliant.
I was Thinking about that the day before this was posted
I'd heard of these formats before and was happy to see Mat give them a treatment. 😁👍
He's gonna end up discovering some obscure failed early audio storage format that was invented before the wax cylinder and lost to time in search for every format that has existed
Ja hoor
Obsolete media, ummm...finds a way.
Back in the 1980s, us kids dreamed of the day when we our music would be stored on microchips. Cos is was all futuristic and stuff. Then 20 years later it happened and it never took off because it was rubbish. Oh well.
A lot of things that seem all futury and cool are actually mediocre or bad ideas in practice. It's basically "don't judge a book by its cover" with technology.
flying cars would be horrible
Must have missed the whole decade mp3 players dominated the music space.
@@totoroben yeah i mean i remember loving my mp3 player and that everyone at school had one. It was more compact than cd and a lot cheaper since everyone just pirated the music and shared it. This stuff was just way to late and misguided.
Acctuuually, if your medium is stored on flash storage, your music is stored on microchips.
I will laugh at nothing harder in life than how I did at Mat's palpable disinterest and then obvious disdain at seeing a Chris Brown slotMusic album (2:00). Lovely.
Not that I'm a huge Chris brown fan, but why doesn't Matt like him?
@@ForEternia Chris Brown's a domestic abuser
Chris Brown punched Rihanna once
@@ForEternia nobody likes chris brown
Yes, I remember that from 2009. That was pretty messed up. But since the video is about music, I assumed Matt didn't like Chris Brown for something else other than the obvious.
I’d imagine the word Radio and the inability to skip back simply enabled the record company to pay radio royalties to the artists which would be significantly less than physical sales royalties.
It sounds so far-fetched and evil that it is probably right.
Isn't that along the lines of how Spotify Free works
Yeah they really charge extra for being able to pick your song, I suppose a compromise dating back a long time from radio.
@@darkcoeficient Evil is as evil does. The recording industry has long been accused of exploitation. Then again, it employed (especially when physical media was sold) so many people that needed to be paid. The cut the artist gets could never 'sound' fair really could it.
It also seems reminiscent of how radio stations play songs "on rotation".
When you want "Wedding" but you accidentally hit everyone with the "Break up makeup" genre
"No downloads. *No subscriptions.* "
SanDisk predicted the future where everything is locked behind a subscription.
There were already paid “internet radio” services though
By the time this launched, Spotify and Deezer had already launched in a few markets.
The target devices for these were so-called “music phones” of the day. This is right about the time the iPod Touch first made its debut. A 1GB SD card was roughly the cost of an album so you could get music, an SD card, and a reader for cheap.
Back in mid to late 00s I had 1GB USB/MP3 player that contained over 300 songs so this would've been a great product for people like me who couldn't afford an iPod.
I had the LG chocolate and it has a music player on it and took these micro sd cards I loved it. I was able to bring my music everywhere I went. Then I bought a iPod video player and the charging port on the Lg chocolate broke.
@@kanedaku did that iphone spite ever wear off?
Brb plugging in an SD card reader to an ipod touch lol
Those slotRadio cards look like they have a hidden partition that contains the actual music. The BIN file is probably some kind of boot loader to tell the player to execute some code that loads that partition and go into slotRadio mode as opposed to regular MP3 playback.
I'm actually tempted to buy one and see if that's the case. Edit: Nevermind, people are charging up the ass for them.
Yep, and that hidden partition probably uses a proprietary filesystem.
I’d be interested what the partition table looks like. Perhaps a dd .img backup from Linux?
More likely a CDFS partition in the scurrility layer Encrypted partition like U3 Portable apps
TF Card - Micro SD Card have supported that Encrypted Security Layer for years
TrustedFlash v1.0 - microSD
8-year-old me on Saturday morning looked forward to hours of mindless cartoons on the television.
58-year-old me on Saturday morning looks forward to a new Techmoan video with just as much anticipation.
Seems like there was a silver age in the early 90s when Saturday morning cartoons made a solid comeback, and then they disappeared again.
@@MrTaxiRob They actually might have, if all the hypermoms hadn't collectively badgered the FCC into mandating 'educational content' into ALL children's programming.
I'm all for education, don't get me wrong. But this approach was pure wrong.
@@xaenon ngl, that episode of Adventure Time where they fix up the old truck was the first time I finally understood how an internal combustion engine actually worked, but idk if that was from the era of that policy…
@@kaitlyn__L Way, way back in the 1960s, there were cartoons that discussed how things work. Like a steam locomotive, for example. Of course, it was explained in very rudimentary terms that a six- or seven- year old could understand, but still.
The thing was, though - it wasn't mandated. It was just part of the show and hooked into the story of the cartoon.
The ones I'm talking about, though, were the kids shows that ditched the entertainment altogether and basically tried to replace the kids' parents.
@@kaitlyn__L Yes, just like how I learned about Testicular torsion from Venture Bros.
Back when the SlotRadio cards/players were first introduced, my dad asked for a player and one of the music cards for his birthday. Being the "tech guy" of the family I was skeptical of the format but once I looked into it I liked the premise for exactly the reasons you mentioned. So I bought it for him and he loved it. I feel like if Sandisk had come out with additional volumes for each genre the format would have fared better!
Yeah I still like this idea. Some people still like physical media. If back then they had made a bigger effort on it and better cases.(maybe like Nintendo DS) then this could have still been around today.
@@snesguy9176 nintendo is still doing this with their console by selling games loaded in memory cards. except the cards have proper labels.
22:14 Wango Tango is basically that radio station's big summer concert show in Los Angeles at an American football/baseball stadium or amphitheater; equivalent to Glastonbury in the UK, but narrowed down to the current pop of the era. Jingle Ball is the same...but in December, and with a bunch of extra Christmas songs held indoors. So they're sort of genres, but more just 'today's hottest hits' more than anything.
“Equivalent to Glastonbury”, except completely different?
@@that_colin_guy Zee wango... Zee tango! ted nugent.
@@that_colin_guy Glad I'm not the only one ... haven't lived in Southern California since 2005 and hearing that made me visibly shudder.
So how do you explain Jingo Wangle??? egghhh?? Eggghhhh??????
Dancing the wango tango is almost as scandalous as doing the donga conga.
SlotMusic, must have been a useful way to shift chips that have partial failures
That music discovery thing is exactly why I love picking up old cassette tapes and MDs that people threw out or are selling for cheap.
You never know what you might find! I've found music I enjoyed very much, but would never EVER have found otherwhise, interesting playlists, personal messages and love confessions, self recorded music and everything in between.
If this was launched 5 years earlier it might've made a dent in piracy. iTunes was already quite well known and the smartphone era was just beginning, which pretty much put the final nail in the coffin for the dedicated mp3 player market.
At the time, my friends and I were regularly using p2p (largely for stuff we owned in all fairness) and had amassed immense libraries.
I'd used a few digital players (Sony's A3000 being my favourite) and carried on using a Sony A818 for a time even when smartphones were on the rise.
Personally, I think if Apple had made iTunes universal - while possibly denting the perceived iPod capacity wow factor - piracy would've been minimised massively.
@@kalofkrypton I have a Sony A1000 (smaller version of the A3000). Such a lovely thing. I've been flirting around with the idea of using old Walkmans and iPods again in place of phones.
Not really. Around that time, my dad bought a couple of cheap USB drive MP3 players. It could play music for ages on a single AA battery, for a fraction of the cost of a IPOD.
Interesting side fact: That Hendrix album contains a studio version of 'Red House' you cannot find on YT.
There are multiple live versions of it, that with all due respect, sound like cats drowning once you've heard the studio version.
The Hendrix estate blocks everything on TH-cam, even people doing cover versions, so it's not surprising.
@@michaelv3340 what a shame. It should be illegal exploiting an artist's legacy like that after their death. 🌈
@@robertschnobert9090 Copyright law was explicitly updated to extend copyright beyond the creator's death, currently 70 years after death in the US. It was called the "widow's clause" to support a widow and children after an untimely death, but it's likely too long now.
Is this it? music.th-cam.com/video/q2L1KzrotM8/w-d-xo.html&feature=share
Normally I'd defend Hendrix's live tracks but you're spot-on. I don't remember when or how I got the studio version of Red House but it *kills*
Having few controls and no display, some people find the Sansa stark. I'll get my coat. :)
Slot radio had its merits - a low cost, long battery life music source that could come into its own where there's no access to wi-fi or even radio broadcasts - on a plane, or in the middle of nowhere, for example.
You'll get your coat,... cause winter is coming, right? I'll be following you :p
@@craigjensen6853 on long drives, AM radio is your friend. Especially Coast-To-Coast at night...
It seems like that's the market they were aiming for: people with no 'net access or that weren't tech-savvy enough to manage their digital music collections. Also, people who just wanted background music and weren't really enthusiasts (which is probably a majority of the market, to be fair).
@@craigjensen6853 I'm in San Diego and there is one really good Mexican station, sounds like a pastiche of 80s rock sans keyboards, but I have no idea what they're singing about. AFA am radio, night time is the best due to clear channel broadcasts bouncing off the atmosphere. I especially love the drive from San Diego to Phoenix, you get a nice view of the Milky Way without much light pollution while listening to some nutbag on Coast-To-Coast talking about aliens, lol
Spotify have offline downloads and it's on auto I think. Plus, I download my own music so I don't need internet lel (and the library currently less than 5k songs with half a thousand to be download)
I can tell you that value wise the card readers were hard to find in stores, and $10 for a SanDisk branded one was actually a pretty good value. I'm pretty sure I still have my slot music player somewhere around; I ended up using it for audio books, as a no screen sequential player with amazing battery life was perfect for the job.
I have an ancient Sandisk Clip with a bunch of Great Courses lectures on it that I still use. Hundreds of 30 min lectures, insane battery life, tiny format. Perfect for the use case.
@@qwkimball My Sansa clip is unfortunately greatly diminished in battery life. Thinking about trying to open it up and source a battery as I still love that little thing. Always enjoyed shoving in the faces of iPod shuffle people; same basic size and soooo much more capable.
After 3 failed cards in different devices I wrote off SanDisk, or maybe I'm just unlucky, but I've had no problems with other brands.
If anyone is wondering about the songs played...
22:43 - "Ex-Girlfriend" by No Doubt. 22:49 - "Forever" by Chris Brown. 22:52 - "I Do (Cherish You)" by 98°. 22:57 - "I Wonder if I Take You Home" by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam (with Full Force). 23:02 - I dunno, being on the "Jingle Ball" playlist I imagine it's a Christmas song. 23:07 - "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" by Backstreet Boys. 23:11 - I dunno.
Yes, Cuba Baion has certainly become a little more mainstream thanks to your discovery on the Tefifon. I've heard it used as background music on other videos, and I've used it myself. And then there's Anders Enger Jensen's brilliant cover. If more companies used Cuba Baion as their "on-hold" music, people might be a little less observant over the wait time!
I had a cheap SanDisk 'Sansa Clip Zip' Micro SD based DAP several years ago, which at the time was receiving a lot of praise amongst audiophile types due to its apparently very good DAC. It was a nice little unit, and there was a custom OS called 'Rockbox' that you could flash it with, which had tons of customisation features which weren't available in the stock OS. You could even run Doom on it.
Edit: It was a 'Clip Zip', not a 'Zip Plus'
Yeah, people are still running rock box on a lot of things. You can even run rock box on your Android phone
I used a RockBoxed Sansa Fuze for years. It was a great little player. I miss it. I'd still be using it but I dropped it and it got run over. (Only broke the screen).
I actually fixed it by frankensteining it with another Fuze that my kid drowned. It worked for a while, but it was flaky so I had to move on.
Have my Fuze with Rockbox too with 8gb card loaded with mp3s. The plastic back has gotten sticky though so I avoid touching it.
Ah, the Clip/Clip+. I had a Clip+ which I used for years with rockbox. Battery life was very good and the sound quality was excellent for a player that size. The screen suddenly stopped working at some point however and I've been using a Sansa e200 with rockbox on it since.
The Clip and Clip+ could not run Doom however.
I still have a Sansa Clip+, the little player with 2 colours oled display 2gb internal and SD slot. I bought it because was one of the very few to play also ogg vorbis file.
Your dedication to cover all the different types of musical formats is impressive! I'm never shocked with what you find to show off, but love seeing them, so keep them coming!
I remember having a SD card holder that had the cover of a Nickleback album printed on it. I found it empty in a house we were restoring. I never knew what it was, guess it was one of these
Your "discovery" concept is one of the reasons I utilized Napster 25 years ago. Not only to browse songs/artists I never heard of before, but also to find obscure material from artists that I did know and wanted more of, a function TH-cam performs today. Napster was an archivist and music enthusiast's dream. Long live Napster!
This is why I love Apple Music.
@@briangiles8979Napster was free
*_Next Time on Techmoan:_* Mat demonstrates a slotMusic / slot Radio changer!
From Japan.
That uses a different playback speed.
And was only used in submarines.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
With a ski-slope mechanism!
“TRY IT ON YOUR PHONE” had a bit of Ashens energy
Poundland intensifies.
It's just a slightly out of date music format... it'll be fine...
Celery!
I'd really love to see an Ashens+Techmoan collab.
When slotMusic was released, I had a bar phone with an 8 gig microSD card loaded up with AAC files as opposed to mp3 because not only could my phone support the format, but also for the same audio quality as my 156VBR mp3s. At the time I was using cd rips for music to keep sots down and because we had well over 500 albums on CD and that was just the legal stuff. The mp3s were what I listened to while working on art projects in the school. The omly thing trhat's changed in the intervening has been the size of capacity of the phone.
The Sandisk Sansa players prior to the cost-cutting exercise of the Sport/Jam/etc models were marvels of engineering. Fantastic audio specs and versatile hardware, as realised with probably the most successful Rockbox firmware ports.
They must have had a talented group working for them at the time.
"Wow, I just heard a great song. Here, take my earphone. I'll just press Skip Track 100 times so it comes round again..."
That’s the line that the original reviewers took - but that wasn’t really the idea. Instead here you’ve got 1000 songs to listen to. If you prefer to just listen to one of those songs over and over again - it’d be better to just go and buy that one song. Same as if you want to hear your favourite new song - waiting for it to randomly come around on FM radio might not be the more efficient way to listen to it. This is how the music labels will have looked at this too - hoping that slotRadio would encourage sales of the featured songs or artists…just like hearing a track played on the Radio.
Didn't really the iPod shuffle do that? And iPod shuffle we loved?
We got a Sansa player from the local Radio Shack that came with a sampler, I think it’s the Billboard 1000 collection. We had another, but she lost it… yup they are tiny chips. It’s s shame because they are valuable now. My wife managed a bank at the time so it was a mini Muzak machine for cheap. We would also rip our cds and Christmas music for the season to the internal storage then shuffle it all. It was perfect. Still have it, but could never rip the Slot Radio music out. Some day I’ll just record it all.
@@erik3371 you could go back in shuffle mode though
Chris Brown getting exactly the amount of respect he deserves, love to see it.
And I don't think I've heard robin thicke be pronounced with such derision ever before 😂
Bruh no.
thats what i thought too bro!
I like the guy's music in spite of his behavior
@@jacksonteller3973 im not one to support and promote illegal downloading music, but for fuckwads like chris brown that make good/decent music with shitty human track records. I have illegal downloaded every single one of his tracks before and after his bullshit and I don't feel guilty about it.
Actually, you will find that the original idea of the SD card was indeed to sell digital content on physical media. This is why the direct predecessor was called MultiMediaCard and it is why the specifications of SD card contain provisions for DRM (that's the actual reason why it is called *Secure* Digital).
And the SD logo came from a failed DVD format called Super Density Disc.
regular sized SD cards might have been better for this, they're easier to handle
@@MrTaxiRob and better lifespan, in digital and physical.
@@Stefan- For such a ubiquitous format is funny how weird it's history is.
For the life of me I don’t remember this format at all but watching how this format works you can make one yourself . Great video 👍🏻
I'm still amazed by the technology we have today. I upgraded the microSD in my phone to ½TB a few months ago. I have over 800 FLAC albums on it, and it's only a little over half full.
Exactly why I'll never buy a phone without an SD slot. 500GB will prob cost an extra $300+ from big fruit company, or one of their sealed up device admiring competitors, if storage that high is even offered.
Pretty pointless to use FLAC on a portable player IME (unless of course you have the ears of a bat, a player with exceptional DAC AND headphones you need a mortgage to buy), just convert to a decent lossless format and get atleast 5x as much on it.
@@ErraticPT I have an LG V20 and Sennheiser headphones. I sync my phone with my NAS, so the format is the same as my home system. Not much I can do about my ears, but use hearing protection around loud stuff.
@@ErraticPT What is not decent about flac? (I ask, as it is a lossless format (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
@@ErraticPT do you mean decent lossy format? If so I mostly agree - I carried my favourite albums on FLAC on my phone for a while but only when there wasn’t too much traffic could I hear any difference vs streaming. And now more of them are using Opus while staying at 320k which is, what, equivalent to a 600k MP3? So that’s good enough for outdoors. Especially if using LDAC or AptX HD Bluetooth rather than wired out and about, even if the headphones can distinguish FLAC when wired.
Well in hindsight, if I saw one of these slotRadio devices on sale back then, I would probably get one. 500 or 1000 songs would be quite expensive to purchase on iTunes store as any individual track cost around 0.99 or 1.99. I still remember I quite often decided to cheap out by buying my favorite tracks individually instead of purchasing the whole album. Getting 1000 random tracks for 40 would be a bargain at that time even if you don't get to choose what you listen to.
@Glacier
It's just an MP3 player with micro SD....calm down and go buy one. Stop using your radioactive cellular. Stop texting and viewing your phone while driving or working.🤕
Mate you ever heard of limewire 🤣
Isn't that nearly word for word what Mr. Moan just said in the video?
@@mimegaming3444 i have moral standards and I would like my money to go to artists I support. :)
@@joearnold6881 no it does. Even playbacks on streaming platforms contribute to artist.
Chris Daughtry started out as a contestant on American Idol. He lost but went on to be famous as the leader of his band called "Daughtry", they went on to have several top 40 hits here in the states.
I saw some Stones greatest hits album in this format at Best Buy somewhere back about 10+ years ago...
He also had an affinity for his hometown.
One could say he belonged there.
i love daughtry
I still remember my take on it, when I did see the introduction.
The idea is neat, but get me a 5++ slots player. Like a player with 20 slots would allow me to bring a useable collection (or upgrade as I get the cards).
Basically a player with 20 micro-SD cards slots under a cover, that is able to read from all of them. Even offer a multi-card shuffle.
In the end, I ended up getting none of the players/slot musics. Nor did I see any major multi-slot players..
Yesssss, thank you so much for this video. I thought I just made it up in my head. I had gone to The Walmart with my mom and while she was shopping I was walking around looking at video games and I saw these next to the cds and wasn’t quite sure what it was but then after getting home I told my dad they had “SD card albums now” or something. A few days later my dad says let’s go look at this SD card thing, as he was a bit of a techie, and they weren’t there anymore and I couldn’t remember what they were called to look it up
Listening to random playlists is also my favourite way to enjoy music these days. They were onto something with this player.
I really miss iTune's 'Genius Playlists'.
For my money, this is THE most enjoyable (and relaxing) YT channel around. Top marks, me boy. Thank you!
"me boy"? are you matt's da?
My dad bought a slot radio device and card full of 70s music for his 40th class reunion in 2010. I remember him saying people enjoyed the music on it. I think he still uses it to this day. It was a cool concept for older folks at the time… long before Pandora, Spotify were mainstream.
I'm very surprised you're not already an aficionado of Wango Tango, John Peel's favourite genre 1982 onwards. It's best described as a moist, aromatic genre. Some people credit Frank Zappa as the pioneer in the genre but really it took The Grunter's "Let's Wango" to establish it as a legitimate entity in its own right. Taking the best of Viennese waltz, soft rock, hair metal and power ballads along with music concrete, it was particularly popular in Estonia for years.
I remember around 5th or 6th grade, everyone thought this was gonna be the future of music. But oddly enough no one actually had a slot music album or player.
This is a fascinating video - thanks for putting it together. I bought one of those slotRadio device on a trip to the states back in the day. I think I paid 70 dollars at an airport shop. It was utterly fascinating but a bit terrible... Some of these intros sound like something Mitchell & Webb might say.... was waiting for Numberwang!
I thought an Airport would be a good place to sell them, I had a bit where I mentioned this…but dropped it for length. So it’s good to know that I wasn’t talking nonsense for a change.
This content was uploaded a few hours.... how did you comment on it yesterday? What kind of dark magic is this?
@@alanb.morphman8675 Patreon donors get access to videos early.
@@Savannah_Simpson What is a Patreon? And how do I donate one?
@@alanb.morphman8675 Theresa link in the video description. Long story short is a service that allows you to donate money to a TH-camr which helps make up for the awful ad revenue. You k join and set up to donate a set amount each month .You can get rewards such as early access to video depot the donation tiers a particular person has
When you note that record companies in 2008 were struggling to imagine their business without a physical media to sell, I think it's worth unpacking that a little.
Since the beginning of publishing, the publishing of art works has had clearly defined roles. The artist pay the costs of producing a work of art. Then they deliver the completed work to the publisher who pays for duplication, distribution and marketing. This is the case for books, paintings and recorded music.
With downloadable digital music, the value of duplication and distribution is diminished to (arguably) almost nothing. Music publishers struggled to imagine where they fit into the downloadable digital music market because their role was legitimately being substantially reduced.
Ahh yes. The good old “this system is too good for the price so we have to deliberately gimp it in some way” trope. Never change, record labels, never change.
Your completely missing the point. As Mat explained in the video, the price was only what it was *because* it was gimped. Without those limitations they wouldn't have been able to negotiate those prices.
@@ryanmitcham5522 oh, no, I absolutely understand the point. I’m just saying that record labels are corrupt, because they are.
I can see the appeal in "get a thousand random songs grab bag" concept if you're into "surprising yourself", but in its entirety, the "music delivery" industry of 00's feels like its stagnating desperately because it's a solved problem. "Let's just take some open media, stuff music into it and DRM it to shreds"
There's flash cards, MP3 nuggets, iPods, smartphones, dumb phones with player capabilities; and you don't have to be too technically adept to casually do a CD rip, in many ways possible.
Then there's internet services for the ones willing to pay for owning bits and bytes. Bandcamp even, perhaps, where from some artists you could still get stuff on actual media.
Minidiscs were on their way out mostly, audio tapes were mostly dead (not that there's anything wrong with them), but CDs were and are still there with us, keeping that compromise of good uncompressed PCM audio quality, and sort-of compact size. And vinyl for those who are into it.
IMO, compact discs are "eternal", given that they were produced correctly and don't suffer from bit rot.
(but I guess, that's the industry's problem with them. And PS4 owners, idk lol)
arent basically all CDs susceptible to rot?
@@LOLHICRONO I mean, only time will tell, but in my case, my dad's entire audio CD collection (200 or so commercial pressed ones of different age starting since early 90's, and a few CD-Rs from the 90's) still works fine.
All those CDs, however, are very well taken care of; no or very little scratches, dirt, stored indoors at room temp., etc.
AFAIK this production defect affected laserdiscs a whole lot more.
Granted, there's also a whole lot of error correction built into CDs (as opposed to LDs which have none at all) so they could age "gracefully"; But I've recently serviced a CD player and decided to check raw RF waveform (what the sensor "sees") with a scope. For many of those discs from that collection it is still in spec, which means CDs (and the player) are still in good condition.
So, I'd say, CDs can manage to live at least 30 or so years, and probably many more.
I agree. CD was so advanced, so technical superior, so well thought, designed and put together, that still now (it's almost 40 years...) we really don't need anything better for our ears and our convenience. I mean, in your home you listen to the CD with true hifi quality and you could put a 64gb or 128gb SD card in your phone for few Euros/Punds/Dollars and rip ALL your CDs to 192kbps (not really worth a higher bitrare to listen on the go with earbuds or at a party with a Bluetooth speaker/boombox) and have your music collection available without paying anything more to streaming service and data connection.
@@LOLHICRONO I thought so too but from looking it up it seems to mostly be an issue with burned CDs and old PS1 games. Perhaps an asterisk of *properly manufactured CDs* is in order?
I've definitely had CDs physically fail from the plastic on the inner edge falling apart but that's a different issue. I've only personally had one case where I think the CD might have been degraded, it was a copy of Geinoh Yamashirogumi's Ecophony Rinne. I couldn't get a good EAC rip off it, but IIRC it was an unopened import.
Huh, had no idea TH-cam had markup! Neat. Also by that line about unopened import, I just meant I'm confident it wasn't scratches or oils or data layer damage
I was only aware of slotMusic thanks to your video about a more recent micro SDs with flac files on them. But at least those had album art and not so disposable packaging.
I've never heard of slotRadio and that's probably for the better.
I've been making my way through your back catalogue of videos and was very glad to see a new one, and as always, it did not disappoint!
I actually bought several albums for my wife when it released. She thought it was such a cool format and it was interesting. I actually was sad when the format died.
It was peak torrent use, it was bound to fail.
I had several SanDisk Sansa MP3 players back in the day, and really liked them. They didn't have the capacity of an iPod, but were tiny and easy to take anywhere. I kinda wish I'd hung onto them, although the internal batteries probably would have died by now.
Mini Clip and Mini Clip +, those things were great for listening to music while exercising. Super small and as the name implies it came with a clip on the back of the device so you could just clip it onto your clothing. It also had a fm radio which I used alot to listen to sports radio. And as you said the batteries were an issue. I used mine some much the battery would die and not be able to charge. They were so cheap though you could just buy another one if for instance you accidentally left it clipped on your close and put it in the washer 😂
I got a Sansa Fuze when I was eight. I broke it in 2013 so Dad gave me his... which I broke a year later.
I have two, and used one op to a year ago when the battery quickly degraded to last about 15 minutes.
Well I have one SansaClip+ since 2012, and still use it dayly to hear FM Radio conected to a pair of cheap PC amplified speakers.
Battery life is still acceptable. And when it dies I think it still will work connected to the power source I use to charge it.
I miss my first-generation Fuze. That thing was built to last -- I used it for probably 6-7 years. And the physical wheel control felt so whimsical compared to an ipod (though it was probably less robust...)
I think the reason why these exist is to sell Sandisk Sansa players. They were good for what they are and in the infancy era of digital distribution, some might prefer inserting these instead of buying music from iTunes.
But we all know that a lot of people just rip their CDs or downloading music illegally and it's much better to buy real microSD instead
@Rod.Tod
You thought wrong. They exist for people who aren't cellular phone addicts. They exist for people who want aight weight music player,. especially while being active, not a office desk worker, or couch potato 🥔 🛋️🍠 They also exist for people who don't want to be constantly exposed to cellphone radiation.
Thank me for educating you.
Big Brain 🧠 High IQ 🤓 Good genes 🧬 Strong Body muscles💪🏾
@@Keepskatin proving nutters are everywhere
@@stevenrais9360 You and your likes are proving simpleton linear minds like you are the masses.
@@Keepskatin You're lucky the downvote button is disabled. You would be invisible by now.
@@firesurfer The down vote video is invisible for you, because TH-cam flagged you as a troll....which you are, and a racist.☝🏾
Love the Sansa line of mp3 players, been using them since 2010. I still daily drive a Sansa Clip+ with Rockbox for work. I always wondered what the slot music tab was in the menu, but never bothered to look in to, neat video!
Great video! I remember the slotMusic format but not the slotRadio format. Of the slotMusic cards I saw at walmart, the Katy Perry release stands out in my mind. Three quick comments. At 6:28, techmoan has a SanDisk clip sport without an Micro SD card slot. Sandisk makes an player with a micro SD slot and it. The player is called the clip jam. At the 20:27 mark, techmoan mentions KISS-FM. They are a popular radio station in California and the Jingle Ball is yearly Christmas concert they hold. At the 30:04 mark, he mentions the high prices for these cards on eBay. I suspect the high prices could be due to fans wanting to collect items by their favorite artists.
Didn't even know this was a thing really fascinating. Thanks for doing a video on the subject!
Talk about...slot-slot-music. Talk about...slot music.
All around the world
Wherever you are
Dance in the street
Anything you like
Do it in the car
In the middle of the night
I miss Pop Music on VH1. . . The little blurbs were always interesting.
Downloadeo killed the slotRadio star
The way he listen's to music is exactly why I use Spotify now-a-day's. Their Daily Mix playlist's are basically the only thing I use. Allow's me to hear song's I like while also finding new ones at the same time.
Now here's a person that loves the apostrophe.
yes, the balance of familiar and new is good in those
This feels like one of the laziest music formats I have ever seen, the opposite of how I feel about this video. Stellar work as always Techmoan!
I've always used 8-track cartridges for 'music discovery', my current favourites are "The Scottish Accordion World of Arthur Spunk" (think of the Captain Pugwash Theme) and "Beautiful Black Girl" by Quincy Jones.
Though I often have the same problem of identification as the labels often fall off or fade beyond recognition !
It might seem obvious, but if you can't ID a song because there's no label, searching for part of the lyrics tends to turn up results. That's how I find songs that I hear on the radio.
@@roberte2945 Try putting it on TH-cam and waiting for the claim.
Shazam is your friend here.
I'm still using my Sansa Fuze from 2008, it works fine, especially using a 32GB sd card. Over 6000 songs i loaded onto it myself, it's not difficult.
Hi
Fascinating! I would definitely love to own one of these, if there were decent classical/baroque offerings (i.e. Bach recordings from top recordings/artists). A brilliant idea that could have caught on given the right audience and variety of genres
I was still in HS when these were out, i remember seeing them in Best Buy and Circuit City but I also wondered what the point was even back then, the slotradio looks a bit more interesting
I remember when best buy sold one of these that had all the Beatles songs ever made on a card for 179 dollars and art work with a book.
I'd say it was a brilliant idea, i mean it did not have to and most likely never aimed for any great popularity the real point is they could just dump lower spec, low capacity cards instead of trashing them...
another great video! really enjoy the way you present the info. ✌️
Finally,
A device from a time when I was old enough to enjoy music...
Let me think how I got my music...
We had a DVD player, and we bought bootleg DVDs with 3-4 movies in one DVD, or CDs with like 200 MP3 songs.
That was the norm.
I remember seeing these weird CDs with only like 10-20 songs, I didn't understand why people would even buy them.
In hindsight, probably because it was legal...
Itd be cool to see a format like this reemerge. It sounds stupid at first, but these days you could sell an entire discography in FLAC on a single card.
One wonders, if you could make your own slotRadio disks, that would work as intended, sans DRM, on those players.
Also, kinda thinking, as well as albums on a flash card will work, I figure Compact Flash might be a better form factor. Easier to handle, not much smaller than a minidisk, and has some real estate for album art.
Easier to sell box set Albums - those readers digest ones in a CF format ! ( the book would have been bigger !)
I mean, those devices were compatible with normal SD cards for music as well. At least their MP3 player models anyhow, and since you could load on your own album in the extra space, I'd imagine it would work on the dedicated slotRadio players too.
So you could just put 1,000 songs on a larger SD card if you want, and then there you go.
@@wesleyswafford2462 slotMusic had no DRM, slotRadio on the other hand had heavy DRM.
@@etekweb I think there's some coding, and DRM stuff in the device for it to function as a, skippable radio. Might be just an ini file or such. I suppose I wonder if one could replicate that sort of, set and forget functionality. Not much purpose with one's own music files, admittedly.
There is a DRM system built in to SD cards. That's what the 'secure' in 'secure digital' stands for: It's not for your security, it's for the security of the copyright holder! But I've never heard of any product actually using the DRM scheme CPRM. It was a commercial failure.
Its speaks for the CD how much it just did right 40 years ago on it’s first try when you see all these forgotten formats that came after it.
A bone fide late century classic.
Agreed! I still buy my music on CD where possible, but I also have a collection of album reissues on Blu-Ray. Where neither are available, I would opt for a FLAC download, such as from BandCamp.
Also, I still use my old 60Gb iPod 5, except I recently swapped out the hard drive for a 4x SD card adapter and installed 4 128Gb SD cards (which cost £12 each), so I now have an iPod with over 470Gb capacity!
"Daughtry" is a guy, namely Chris Daughtry who was on American Idol. I saw him perform at Bush Garden Tampa theme park many years back and he actually put on a good show. Mind you, the concert was free so I didn't pay for it, but still enjoyable enouh.
Great video as always, I had (indeed still have) one of the clip+ players and always wondered what the slot radio menu option was about, now I know!
I find it kinda funny, I've bought a number of MicroSD cards with the SD adaptor and a case; the little case holds the SD adaptor and the MicroSD reasonably well. Worse yet at local dollar/pound store.
I think this is about control. People like to feel in control of their music selection at the OUTSET and slot radio takes this away in an overt way. Curated lists on Spotify do something similar but the control remains with the user.
As alway, a great vid. Thank you Matt.
That bit you mentioned about music discovery through listening to a randomly curated playlist is perfect. I'll never forget back in the day when I'd put on the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Playstation 2, 2002) disc in the console just to listen to all the different radio stations and discover new music that I still put on to this day.
I was doing just this a few days ago on Vice City. Been going through my emulators and had a blast then left the game on for a bit cause Michael Jackson came on 😂
I vaguely see the logic behind these formats, I imagine it was easy to persuade music labels onboard as they would have had the data to show a significant portion of the market wasn’t accessing online MP3 stores and it would have been reasonable to provide a format to appeal to them. Of course what they didn’t predict is that CD would remain a relevant format right up to the present day, making stuff like “MP3s on SD cards” seem somewhat unnecessary in retrospect.
Aren't vinyls literally massively outselling CDs now?
I'd say thats pretty well dead.
Just because artists are still releasing music on a format doesn't mean it isnt dead/dying.
@@stitchfinger7678 Artists releasing music on a format is the definition of the format not being dead...Vinyl may have overtaken CDs in revenue, but that's because LPs are collectable band merch and CDs mostly aren't.
Good god, the voice for those SlotRadio playlists alone would make me want to hurl the thing in the bin in very short order!
Yeah for me it's big booming voice or not my choice. Think 80s 90s rock and pop radio.
2000s teenage crap.
My favorite physical music format is CD. I can buy used CDs on Ebay or at a record store. From there I can listen to them on my hifi, rip the CD, or record it on to mini disc for on the go music. It's a cheaper way to get music. If something happens to the MP3 files I can just rip the CDs again.
My favorite way to discover music is Pandora. It's not uncommon for me to be listening to Pandora and say "Alexa what song is this?". I found some great artists this way. It's also nice when I don't have any particular song or artist in mind. I just pop on the goth station and off I go.
Always informative. I never knew of this format. I guess you could load multiple card contents into a larger card for your actual usage and just store the originals where they would be safe in a small container. The biggest risk would be losing the original cards.
I vaguely remember the SD cards with albums being sold, but I don't recall hearing about slotRadio until today. Seems like it was an interesting idea. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out to pick up that Hendrix album for my collection.
There are a lot of people, including me, that really enjoy the randomness of music. That is why I listen to Sirius XM most of the time. Even on a station where I normally know all of the music like Lithium, the frequently play a song from that era that I missed back in the day and really like.
Yeah
Its awesome when you've been hearing like Matchbox20 and Marcy Playground and suddenly they drop "Detachable penis" by King Missile
I have exactly the opposite listening habits, I pretty much only listen to entire albums. I have a specific music player (Shuttle for Android) that allows me to shuffle albums (select an album randomly, play it all the way through, select another album randomly, etc).
I can only enjoy music made from the cries of the Tibetan fox recorded on a solo cup.
@@stitchfinger7678 Great song, other people always seemed captivated when I'd sing it at the bus stop.
@@CarrotConsumer I liked that but then the fox went commercial and the music suffered.
🎶🎶🎶🎶Talk about slot music,talk about slot music,slot slot,slot music🎶🎶🎶🎶 Excellent and fascinating video.Thankyou
I was searching for a comment like this someone got the reference 😁
Always amazed by how many different formats are out there!
This just dug the incredibly deep recessed memory out of my brain that one year for Christmas I got a Sansa slotRadio player. Never used the damn thing because I was gifted an ipod shuffle the year prior which was obviously superior.
I still use my old Sansa e200 series player running Rockbox in a little dock hooked up to a bookshelf mini stereo system. It's been running nearly 24/7 for years now.
Check the card with the disk utility or some other software that can show all the partitions. Looks like it has a hidden partition likely formatted with another file system. You should be able to mount with osxfuse or under linux.
Great video I remember seeing these in the store and couldn’t figure out what these were and why I would want to buy it. FYI I have been in the computer industry for a very long time and an early adopter of MP3 players. Also an early day Audiophile and still am…due to you I bought a direct drive Denon turn table … the same one you showed in one of your earlier videos. Now my favorite music format is lossless streaming on Tidal sorry I pick my Artist and Album more of music that I have always liked. Keep up the great work!!
One word. No ads on radio so gotta love that. I agree I love exploring music and discovering new musics that I may have missed but without track info it hard to learn what song it is unless you pair speakers to Shazam. I’ll still on a lookout for certain musics that I’ve heard but still cant find that particular version/edit.
One of my favorite things about this channel is when you already own some odd device that fits right into whatever oddity you are covering.
I wish labels would start releasing albums on USB sticks similar to this do it on by order scale. The music being 24 / 192 for us folks that still want physical media Instead of streaming and there are plenty of us out there.
Just buy CDs.
Some groups do, Einstürzende Neubauten has a few usb sticks for sale
@@vorrnth8734 CD that is not 24/192, and a SACD player and a separate DAC that has an HDMI in, and a headphone out is way out of my price range.
@@Nomad-Rogers you cant hear the difference anyway.
Yesterday I saw an ad that said "radio for sale, only $1. Volume stuck on full". I thought, "I can't turn that down"
Super interesting video. I had no idea this format even existed. Thanks TM.
Oddly enough, I have a ton of pen drives in my car for the stereo as it's safer than looking down at my phone when selecting artists
I think there's a big glaring issue with the comparison to streaming music: At least on a streaming service, you can personalize the stream to your tastes, and at least in my case, there is literally not a single track or artist on any of these slotradio compilations that appeals to me, let alone a random hodgepodge of 1000 tracks. It might be a bargain from a mathematical point of view, but it's pretty poor value for most individuals I'd say - unless your personal tastes just happen to align with the choices of the music labels.
(edit: this is, by the way, a well-known problem called the 'paradox of popularity' - even exceptionally popular media and artists are going to be disliked by the vast majority of people and are at best neutral to the remainder, so once you put a lot of 'popular' music together, it won't actually cause the sum of its parts to be liked by more people ('there is something for everybody'), but rather hated by even more people (everybody will at least hate one track and thus turn it off))
I think the entire logic behind it was that you use it as a radio (hence the name). It was never about picking a few artist or song that you like. But there were different cards for different genres so at the end you had some choice.
As I remember there was not many streaming service that time that was able to create personalized playlists based on your listening history. Pandora and last fm maybe, but they were tied to a pc or mac as they were running from a browser. There is not really a point comparing it to today's streaming.
of course streaming is better than any form of physical media in 2021. but in 2009 there _wasnt_ streaming, the best was iTunes which you had to purchase the song or album you wanted to listen to
record labels and music publishers were REALLY against streaming at the time
@@itemushmush Except for Spotify, which was already around in 2009
Never heard of the "paradox of popularity" term, but I've definitely observed it -- everyone would always complain about the music at school dances (prom, homecoming, etc), but as soon as you try to change it, some other group hates it even more, so the same-y music is the only real option because that's what people expect.
Woah my favorite band wango tango! Loved their hits such as living guy’s get together, completely regular chemistry, well known death, and more than a lad, daniel goblinman is so cool
I was a little shocked when you said that you liked the format. But when you explained yourself, I was inclined to agree.
It's what I do these days on Spotify. The service will make playlists for certain genres that it thinks I'll like, and I'll gladly listen.
It's how I've expanded on my music tastes over the years.
A lot of phones have the SIM card and SD card in the same little tray. So good luck swapping in your Daughtry album or whatever. I also recall that back then I had several phones where you had to remove your battery to change the SD card.
trays weren't really a thing back then
Sidetalkin’ on your Nokia N-Gage!
@@Laurabeck329 back then many phones had the SD card slot under the battery so hot swapping was not feasible with many phones.
@@LouisSubearth I know but that's not what op said
@@LouisSubearth no they didnt really. Only sims. All nokias that were sd ready were hot swappable. Even before micro sd existed, SonyErikson phones took msproduo and had a door on the right side. Most didnt even need the battery cover removed because they had a side door. Nokia E series and N series had SD doors.
Always enjoyed your videos with the different music players, just did a search on your channel and can't find if you did one on Microsoft Zune, they are much maligned but I loved them, pity they didn't catch on, the ipod was a lot to compete with, I had all the Zune models, but the Zune HD I thought was the best, but destined to fail I guess, it worked with an Xbox music subscription and was a great way to discover new music. well this message will no doubt be buried in here, but just a thought for a future vid, cheers Dave
I remember I had a Sansa Clip+ and I always wondered what the slotRadio option on the menu meant. Thanks for sharing this rushed-looking strange format!
I worked for the music distributor that supplied Walmart, Sam’s and others and remember this like it were yesterday. I finally got rid of my (free/promotional) slotMusic player and a bunch of albums away at a garage sale a few years ago. I had to install dedicated 4ft sections in the music departments at many Walmarts and it never did anything. The players were also merchandised in the same 4ft areas. We were definitely trained to promote these as easy ways for the lazy to jam into their players/phones and avoid the hassle of ripping CDs or downloading.