I find myself amazed sometimes when coporations react so slowly to the way people do business. I read a story today that, quite honestly, should have come out a year or two ago.
Best Buy and Wal-Mart will reportedly start selling music pre-loaded onto microSD cards for people who have stopped buying CDs and want their music in digital format from the start. The packages will also come with a small USB attachment which lets you load the music on your computer.
This sounds like a great idea, albeit a little behind the times. CD sales do make up the large majority of music sales overall, but dropped 19 percent in 2007. A lot of people, myself included, have just given up the clutter of CDs and go right to the Internet.
My only problem with this news is that it doesn’t go far enough. They still have not made it convenient enough. The story I linked says they are using microSD because “many cell phones and multimedia players support microSD cards.”
Well, my new iPod doesn’t support them. I still do not have one simple step to get my music from the source to my personal player of choice. That’s a little arrogant, but it indicates to me that these music companies and retailers still have to learn the mindset of consumers.
If they really wanted to get people like me back into the music section of retailers, they would create kiosks where you could dock your iPod, swipe your credit card and buy music. An iTunes store in a brick-and-mortar store would make life much simpler.