Culture, Innovation and Technology, Trends and Insights

A New Medium?1 minute read

Robbie Williams released his Greatest Hits album on Monday, which was released on a multimedia card (MMC) format for the first time.

Is it the time to get excited?

Well I’m not entirely convinced. The point is that MMCs can be put into Palm PDAs, phones and a lot of other portable devices. But then again, all EMI have done is sold an MMC and the encoded album on it with a couple of extras.

MMC 64MB-1.JPG
New media or same stuff, different day?

So why not actually just sell a downloadable version of the album with all of the bits and pieces on it, lower the barriers to pricing by not having to sell people the actual card and sell more? The thing is, if you make people buy a card AND the album then it makes it very difficult for people to purchase it without having a very involved decision – it more expensive than buying the copyright in isolation.

On the other hand if you allow people the ability to buy the album online and download it into their iPod and their mobile or their MMC or their MemoryStick then it can be cheaper and more flexible. MMC is also not used in a majority of products anyway? Why did they choose MMC over any other format? Why go exclusively to MMC?

They may well be doing this already, I don’t know. If it is one thing that is good, it is that in the UK, the album will find a new, huge retail chain (Carphone Warehouse) who are selling music where previously they weren’t. That’s a positive.

Published by Constantine Frantzeskos

I help global businesses delight their future digital customers with user-centred digital strategies, innovations and ideas.