Two physical music format flops from the recent past

Nice one Matt, couldn’t agree more about about music discovery and the mindless jabbering you get on the radio. Back in my day, if you wanted to discover music, you listened to John Peel

I don’t remember these, but I remember my first MP3 player with a 32mb memory card …. a 64mb was over £60 in Currys so I returned it and bought a minidisc 💽 😁😁

Interesting video.

Those SlotRadio cards remind me of the MP3 players they make for Alzheimer's patients. I wonder if the people driving up the prices on eBay have a similar idea. An ad-free, radio-like experience that the user can't screw up, might be really handy for certain people.

I bet that Motown one is 🔥

I wonder if these were sold at airports. The “radio” version would be good for long flights if you didn’t like any of the provided programs.

People on Reddit are talking about the Sony Rolly you had in the background (of a recent video), will you be doing a video about it?

For discovering new music I quite like https://reddit.com/r/listentothis/, I found quite a few interesting pieces there.

It was such a dumb format, and instant thoughts in the day was "this is HitClips 3.0" I still use the Sansa Clip+ to this day but the two Slotmusic albums are long lost. It was fiddly and just a plain dumb idea. If the card contents could have been COPIED to the Sansa, perhaps but it was a bad implementation all round. I was amazed it ever got released, even at the time.

"Jingle Ball" is, of course, a Christmas-themed playlist. :-)

What was even the point of the included SD reader? Pretty much every SD compatible music playing device at the time, be it a phone or MP3 player, doubled as an SD reader if you connected it to a PC with a USB cable.

I think the first thing i would have done back then was firing up my Linux box with that card inserted and then issuing "dd if=/dev/sde of=slotradio.img", assuming sde was the SD card reader, followed by "binwalk slotradio.img". My bet is on a second FAT32 partition with the hidden flag set. ;)

Very interesting. Both those formats completely passed me by. Agree with the curation angle to the slotRadio format. I do find that YouTube and Netflix have all become too tuned into what I regularly watch. Sometimes, I would like it to suggest something completely off-the-wall for me to try.

You think you've heard of all obscure physical formats, Techmoan finds another one! 👍🏻

Every time I think that must be the end of the music formats you find more! :-) Interesting as always, Mat. It's a pleasure to watch you because you very rarely make a video about something I already know about! :-)

I'd probably use a format like this, if it offered FLAC or one of the more exotic "high res" audio formats.

I think the slot radio , as a device isn't bad, especially the run time on a single battery. Shows how much the music companies were in control , no backwards skip .. explains why Spotify works the way it does

I'd never heard of either of these, but I can see the slotRadio as quite a good idea. Have you listened to one for any length of time - I wonder if there are adverts at any point? That would be the next logical step - it would keep the price down. Fascinating and well presented as ever!

Back in 2005 I took an MP3 player apart and installed it into the roof trim of my 1st smart car so all you could see was an SD card slot. I copied a load of albums onto low capacity full size SD cards and printed tiny CD labels to go on the SD cards, they looked so cool. The MP3 player auto played when you inserted the cards and outputted through an aux lead into the stereo. I still think back to how cool those cards looked. I had an SD card holding case with them all in. It was so futuristic compared to everyone else I knew who has massive CD folio cases with all of their albums in.

Also, big agreement on the issue of discoverability. For me, Spotify both addresses and exemplifies the problem. It's wonderful to hear about an artist somewhat at random and then go right out and sample their whole character. At the same time, the recommendation algorithms aren't sophisticated at all. I listen to a lot of opera and it now I only get recommendations geared towards ultra-conservative old farts who want something to listen to from their deck chairs, while they bark at the team of servants waxing their yachts.

I'm looking at my Digital Walkman with its microSD slot and amusing myself with the thought "OK, son: for your three-hour train ride to NYC, you can have either the card that contains every track and album you've ever owned starting with your first CD as a teenager, OR this other card that contains exactly one album. By Robin Thicke. The Robin Thicke card also contains a few sexy photos of the artist, if that affects the value proposition at all."

I'd be interested what the slotRadio cards look like when viewed on a computer, but that's just the file format nerd in me :p

Terrific video! SlotRadio to me seems like an offline version of me hitting shuffle on Pandora. I found myself agreeing with everything you said about discovery. A little while back I found a Pandora playlist for a short-lived rock genre called Paisley Underground (The Bangles being the only breakthrough artists of the style). I discovered at least a half-dozen bands that I am now a fan of. Also, regarding not being able to repeat or go back, I don't find myself doing that very much anyway on Pandora or on my old Digital iPod. I am more likely to skip than anything else. So it sounds like the SlotRadio concept was much more forward-thinking than the silly SlotMusic concept. Speaking of defunct music services, are you familiar with Personics? It was a "build your own mixtape" service available in the US via the Wherehouse Records chain. Curious if it ever got to the UK. Not sure if it's worth an episode of The Moan, but it was definitely a fun service that that seemed ahead of its time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personics

Now for my general comment. The first half kinda bummed me out. Just another case of the America recording industry shooting itself in the foot. But the second half was a lot more fun. In fact you could use it for background music cheaply. That ties in nicely with other videos you have done. :-) And I TOTALLY agree with you about music discovery. And yes, I am totally a fan of Cuba Baion. It outlived it's creator, so it may out live all of us. Seeing on a street organ was a HOOT! All Hail Tefifon. (I'll stop here. I had oral surgery and I think the meds are doing the typing)

I haven't watched the video yet, but I had a Sandisk Sansa Clip+ back in the day that supported slotRadio. I had no idea what it was. All I know is that I miss my Clip+ as it was the best portable music player I've ever owned. Protip: don't drop your Clip+ in the toilet.

I feel like this format was 3-5 years too late.

Extremely enjoyable video. Have nothing intelligent to add to the conversation other than wanting to wholeheartedly agree with your take on the "discovery" aspect of the format. For someone like me who enjoys hearing new music- but cannot possibly be bothered to seek it out as I did many years ago- this seems like a fun idea. I can see how this seems like a completely pointless format for this newest generation who don't actually "own" any of the media they interact with so don't miss the physical aspect of music... even if it's in the most tertiary sense.

I vaguely remember this format. It probably didn't have nationwide rollout at Wal-Mart. I recall Wal-Mart having some kinda kiosk that would "burn" your music onto an SD card (I think it was), after you purchased it via Wal-Mart.com. I'm not sure how wide that rollout was either. During the 00s, I was all over the country, so I couldn't even tell you what states I saw that in.

I reckon slotRadio would have performed better had it been launched in Europe. In the US, most people I knew paid for satellite radio (e.g. Sirius), which there was no equivalent of in Europe, so I'm sure it would have been popular in rural areas where there is limited choice of radio stations, at least here in Ireland. I've no doubt 1000 tracks is more than what most radio stations ever play. Try playing any music radio station over a month and you'll probably only count a few hundred unique tracks before it's all reruns.

I actually remember these! Well, never saw them in stores but I read a news article about them explaining how the music industry had "finally gone digital"... Yea, ever heard of CDs, mate? 😒

All your talk about discovering new music and how to identify it reminded me of the Sony eMarker. This may have been a Sony NA only product. Around 2000 Sony released this USB stick that had a single button. The idea was when you heard a song on the radio you liked, you clicked the button to bookmark it. Then when you got home, you plugged the stick into your computer and it would sync up with your favortie stations to see what was playing at the time you clicked it. I think it failed in less than a year, but an interesting little foot note in what was attempted before Shazam and other services.

Wango Tango is another music festival put on by KISS FM, a local Los Angeles Top 40 station.

I can't help but think that this was driven by the record labels, specifically by managers that had been around since they sold records with labels. Would sure be interesting to hear the inside story. If that was the case SanDisk probably said "Uh, sure. We can, uh, gin something up for you. Give us a week." slotRadio was a better concept (IMHO!) but again, it appeals to people ... ahem ... my age who pine for the days of listening to music on the radio ... back when there were enough listeners to allow stations to set ad prices to a point where they could provide a good product *and* make a little money. Yes, I was in high school when music moved from AM to FM. :-) Brilliant video as always, Mat.

I remember there was one micro SD card the had a album on the the beetles

I'm one of the idiots who bought a Pono Hi Res music player on Kickstarter. Doomed to fail as most people had problems with the Pono App they expected you to download from there store.

Were 1Gb cards looking a bit tiny by 2008? Was this a ploy by SanDisk to get rid of its smaller card inventory?

Good on SanDisk for taking innovative risks. At least they were thinking out of the computer box. Thank you for this; it's yet another format I'd not heard of. I always expect you to provide a comprehensive look at any topic; no surprise it ended up being a longer video than you had planned. It reminded me of a video you did that included a mention of a Beatles album on micro SD. (edit: oops, that was the MQS SD video cited in other comments) I have lost micro SD cards that flipped out of dashcams and trail cameras, and with the wasted time trying to find them I can see why this didn't work out.

Another fantastic episode! Jingle Ball is the name of the annual Christmas show KissFM puts on (other similar stations do the same thing in other cities). It’s a live concert with contemporary artists. PS - I’d be curious to see what the file layout of the SlotRadio card is. Like, how are the songs stored on the card. Individual files?

I have to admit, I'm really curious what the SlotRadio SD card does show on a computer, even though I have no doubt it's a whole lot of nonsensical filenames which are entirely unreadable due to the DRM aspect.

I was using my Sony PSP as a music player when this came out, if Sony had tried something similar and the device had a second MSPro slot I might've actually bought some.

I vaguely remember reading about the slotMusic player in the tech blogs and the articles would also wonder what the point of it was. The players could have served as a very inexpensive way to listen to your MP3s but SanDisk already sold MP3 players with microSD slots and even included screens for not much more money. Even though it was more successful, I don’t remember hearing about the slotRadio format. I didn’t like the thought of 1000 songs in a proprietary format and in a set play order but you made some good points about its appeal. Perhaps that’s why they go for so much money on eBay now. There’s probably a forum somewhere of slotRadio enthusiasts that want to bring it back, lol.

Great video but my initial thought was 'Hasn't he done something like that before?' A quick search revealed that I was probably thinking of the MQS SD.

Roger Daughtry haha! Another great video, Mat!

That was very entertaining. Never thought of the discovery aspect regarding these big compilations.

Dang, I could've pulled the SlotRadio "demo" track that played whenever selecting the SlotRadio menu option on my SanDisk Clip+. It's something like a 2-3 minute long MP3 file. Also saying this prior to watching the video

I remember buying a sandisk sansa mp3 player and they promoted it, I recall thinking "this is dumb and will go nowhere" just like the slot radio, its designed by boomers who are trying to take something brand new and selling it like something 20 years ago

Does anyone remember when they tried to make a format called Gruvi a thing?