USB flash drives, the thumb sticks that store students’ classwork and other media, are becoming a new medium for purchasing music. Record companies are introducing the flash drives to market their music digitally. Matchbox Twenty released its new album “Exile on Mainstream” on a flash drive exclusively at Best Buy stores at a price of $35 in October, higher than the CD’s retail price of about $13. In the United Kingdom, where Universal Music Group began marketing this new format, releases from Amy Winehouse, Kanye West and Rihanna came out late this year. Jeanne Meyer, junior vice president of corporate communications for EMI Records, said her company is making music available through different formats and experimenting with new business models. The introduction of the flash drive is not intended to replace the formats of CDs, she said. The company is reaching out to its digital consumers who still want a physical format for their music. “We’re just increasing the number of platforms for making [our artists’] music available,” she said. EMI announced in November that Radiohead’s back catalog of full length albums, including the live “I Might Be Wrong” record, would be available on a flash drive for preorder and a Dec. 10 release. The flash drive, shaped like the Radiohead bear head logo, retails at 79.99 pounds or $164.65. According to the United Kingdom’s The Times, Universal Music Group started selling USB flash drives with singles in late October as a new format of music in the United Kingdom. Brian Rose, commercial director for Universal Music Group-UK, told The Times that USB drives “are aimed at younger 12- to 24-year-olds, who no longer believe that the CD is as cool as it used to be.” According to the The Times, Warner Bros. Records and EMI Records are on board to follow suit with this marketing idea. According to EMI, digital revenues grew 50 percent in the U.S. during the 2006-2007 fiscal year. “It gets down to a gadget mentality that the record companies are looking for when providing a tangible medium for their media,” said Stephen Beck, University music professor and head of cultural computing at the Center for Computation and Technology. Interest in physical media stems from customers’ concerns in storing and protecting their digital media, whether music or movies, he said. For consumers to move away from physical media to a digital media, digital formats such as online music stores, Internet connections and other network sources must constantly work, he said. “I don’t think this is going to solve the digital problem that the music companies are running into,” he said. “They can try a new package, but it all depends on what the bonus features package with it.” Beck said flash drives provide a way for the record companies to control the distribution model and form an interesting approach to add value to digital music. He said this approach to record companies’ digital distribution of their music may not work, and the online model is where the industry is going to end up. Jamal Saulsburry, biologY junior, said the format of the flash drives would be a good way to get music and share among friends. He is concerned about the higher price of the flash drives and whether there will be great sum of bonus content to make up for the added price. “I’d be inclined to get it if the drives had a lot of good content for just the single,” he said. “If a whole record would be about the same as a cost of a CD, then I may be inclined more to get it.”
—-Contact Adam Pfleider at [email protected]