TG Daily, a Technology blog, has the first review of SlotMusic (those USB cards that the music business thinks will save them) and the results are pretty much what everyone expected: the things are inconvenient, hard to find at stores thanks to indifferent and uninformed salespeople, and the packaging makes them indistinguishable from CDs. The writer generally believes the things could be the future, but those previously mentioned problems are set up to make the things disappear. Here’s the final opinion:

That leads over to my biggest complaint: The packaging is virtually invisible when placed between regular CDs. You can’t just expect people to start buying a format that may or may not be in the spot where you normally would be looking for a CD. What exactly is the problem with creating dedicated space for this format? It almost seems as if Best Buy has no interest in selling SlotMusic.

 

The way how SlotMusic is launched into retail is a clear example how to set up a product for failure. Sandisk, music publishers and retail stores have to figure out a way how to distinguish this format from a traditional CD. Otherwise, SlotMusic will disappear as quickly as it came.

This isn’t necessarily surprising news, but you’d think that if the music business really did want to save itself, they’d pin their hopes on something other than USB cards, and make sure that the stores they’re shipping them to are actually trying to sell them. [TG Daily via Coolfer]