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New Rolling Stones album to be sold on Flash cards
Gruvi cards from SanDisk to be sold with music on them, starting with A Bigger Bang in November.
The first Rolling Stones album in eight years will be available on Flash memory cards in November, a move that card maker SanDisk Corp. said will let consumers move content from device to device easily but with the security of DRM.
The album, A Bigger Bang, was released on EMI Music's Virgin Records in the US in August and will cost $39.95 on a Gruvi music card. But SanDisk officials said the card will let buyers move the album from a digital music player to a smart phone to a laptop with ease.
The cards will also contain albums from the Rolling Stones' back catalog, but those will be locked unless the user chooses to buy additional content already on the card.
"Once again the Rolling Stones have revolutionized the music industry by releasing the first album in our Gruvi music card format," said Pedro Vargas, SanDisk director of mobile entertainment.
The cards are based on SanDisk’s TrustedFlash technology, which was unveiled at this week's CTIA show in San Francisco. TrustedFlash incorporates DRM technology from NDS Group.
SanDisk hopes the new line of secure Flash cards will command the attention of wireless carriers and the like. SanDisk helped pioneer flash memory storage cards used in phones and digital cameras.
"By applying the NDS solution to the TrustedFlash platform, the same technology that protects over 50 million set-top boxes will now be available to mobile phone operators and handset manufacturers," said Yoram Cedar, senior vice president of engineering and emerging markets at SanDisk.
More than 87 million phones with memory card slots were sold in 2004, according to IDC, which forecasts that 164 million will be sold worldwide in 2005.
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