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SanDisk, Music Publishers Push DRM-free SlotMusic Format
Strudelkugel writes "The LA Times and others are reporting the music industry is working with SanDisk to try unrestricted music files on microSD memory cards to improve sales of physical media: 'In addition to music, the slotMusic cards will come pre-loaded with other things, such as liner notes, album-cover artwork and sometimes video.' The important part: 'The music on slotMusic comes without copyright protection, so it can be used on almost all computers, mobile phones and music players — but it won't play on an iPod, which doesn't have a micro-SD memory slot. It has one gigabyte of memory, and the music tracks are played back at high quality.' Could it be the labels have finally recognized that providing features and convenience to customers is preferable to suing them?" Most computers also don't have microSD slots; according to EMI's press release, there will be a "tiny USB sleeve" packaged with each card, and the "high quality" format means up to 320kbps MP3. From the given description, it seems like it would be no harder to transfer the tracks to an iPod (via a computer) than to most other players.
Audio CDs are generally encoded as 48khz, 16bit, 1411kbps PCM audio
Minor correction, audio CDs are encoded with a sample rate of 44.1khz, not 48khz.
Around the time of the initial development of CDs, audio was often stored using video recorders, since hard drives were an impractical choice back then. 44,100 samples per second suited both the NTSC and PAL formats, so this format was common at the time, and that's why this non-round number was originally chosen for the CD format too.