Just as vinyl once gave way to compact discs as the main physical medium for music, could CDs be replaced now by a fingernail-sized memory card? Perhaps not entirely, but SanDisk Corp., four major record labels and retailers Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are hoping that albums sold on microSD memory cards will at least provide an additional stream of sales. The companies were expected to unveil plans Monday to sell memory cards loaded with music in the MP3 format, free of copy protections.The problem with the music industry is that they are losing control over their products (technology has made it to easy for consumers to get songs without having to pay for them). Switching from CDs to memory cards is not going to reverse the problem.
To combat this problem, the music industry should stop selling albums and downloads. Instead, the music industry should switch to exclusively selling the rights to play songs to subscription services such as Rhapsody. If they were to change their business model in this way, they would be able to regain total control over their product.
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