Plug-and-Play Model Offered by the Card-Plus-Player Format Radically Lowers the Entry Barriers to Enjoying Digital Music, Ushering in a New Medium for Digital Music Consumption
SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the inventor and world’s largest supplier of flash storage cards, today unveiled the new Sansa slotRadio™ player and companion line of slotRadio music cards designed especially for the casual music consumer. The Sansa slotRadio player is a small, stylish, portable music device that comes bundled with a slotRadio card preloaded with 1,000 songs handpicked from the Billboard charts, and professionally arranged into a variety of genre-themed playlists.
“slotRadio’s unprecedented simplicity will have even the most time-pressed music fans enjoying a huge range of music in no time,” said Daniel Schreiber, senior vice president and general manager, SanDisk. “1,000 handpicked songs in your pocket with zero downloads makes enjoying digital music easier than ever. Never before has music been this accessible.”
The immediacy of the plug-and-play model offered by the card-plus-player format ushers in a new way for consumers to enjoy music. To date, portable music devices typically required software installations, followed by time-consuming music selection and file-by-file downloading, topped off with cable connections and synchronization.
“slotRadio dramatically lowers these barriers, offering a genuine alternative to existing options,” said Noam Kedem, vice president of product management, SanDisk. “This makes slotRadio a perfect player for the pressed-for-time mom, the harried traveler, the can’t-stop-now fitness fanatic, as well as anyone who just wants to kick back and discover new songs, or re-discover a timeless favorite.”
The player comes bundled with a slotRadio mix card containing 1,000 songs. It features a variety of playlists from Billboard’s charts, including rock, contemporary, country, and others organized into themes such as “chillout,” “workout” and more. While songs cannot be removed from the card, users can easily navigate between the playlists, and skip through songs at the press of a button.
“slotRadio offers a uniquely uncomplicated portable digital music experience, combining the music discovery aspects of radio with consumer choice in genre selection,” said Susan Kevorkian, Program Director, Consumer Markets at IDC. “Solutions like slotRadio that offer competitively priced, straightforward new ways to acquire and interact with music will play a key role in driving demand among new and existing digital music device and service users as those markets continue to evolve.”
Priced at $99.99 (MSRP)–including the 1,000 song card–the die-cast aluminum player also features a 1.5″ OLED screen for viewing artist and song information, an FM radio and even an integrated, handy belt clip for hands-free listening. Additional 1,000 song, genre-specific and themed slotRadio cards will be sold separately at $39.99 MSRP.
The Sansa slotRadio player is expected to be available for purchase online at sansa.com and at more than 4,400 RadioShack stores nationwide in early 2009.
The Sansa slotRadio cards are designed to be interchangeable with any slotRadio player and will also be compatible with the Sansa Fuze™ line of MP3 players.
The Sansa slotRadio Player expands SanDisk’s Sansa audio/video product family, which includes the recently introduced slotMusic™ player and cards for avid fans, the popular Sansa Fuze™ and the small Sansa Clip. For more information on SanDisk’s Sansa audio/video product line, visit www.sansa.com.
About SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation, the inventor and world’s largest supplier of flash storage cards, is a global leader in flash memory — from research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail distribution. SanDisk’s product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. SanDisk is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales outside the United States.
