UK Charts Company to recognise album sales on USB Flash disks
Enter the DMD (Digital Memory Device)
Exclusive The Official UK Charts Company (OCC), the organisation that maintains the UK's music sales tables, will include albums sold on USB Flash disks in its tallies from next Monday, 29 October, Register Hardware has learned.
In an email sent by the OCC to labels and seen by Register Hardware, the organisation gives notice that it will recognise two types of what it calls DMDs - Digital Memory Devices. "Standard DMDs" will have a storage capacity of no more than 512MB, enough for a standard album's selection of tracks and bonus songs and/or 25 minutes of video content. Standard DMDs can contain multimedia content too, just as so-called Enhanced CDs do today.
"Deluxe DMDs" will offer up to 5GB of storage for albums, videos, multimedia and other "added value" material pertinent to the artist. Think the equivalent of the CD box-set.
The OCC expects Standard DMDs to be pitched as "mid-price" products with a minimum dealer price of £3.76 - so around a fiver to the consumer. Deluxe DMDs must have a minimum dealer price of £8.20 - ten pounds to the customer - to count toward a chart placing, the OCC's email reveals.
Of course, there's nothing to stop labels releasing different DMD configurations, but only sales of these two forms will be added to an album's chart position. The OCC's rules give no guidance on the use of DRM technology one way or the other. Some labels are likely to use it - others, like EMI, probably won't, just as they no longer impose DRM on iTunes downloads, for instance.
What is interesting is the shift away from singles toward albums. It had been assumed that USB offerings would be singles. However, with the music industry concerned about consumers increasingly buying tracks on a one-off basis rather than in album batches, the album-centric focus of DMDs shouldn't come as any surprise.
COMMENTS
Stupid Stupid Stupid
How do these morons get such cushy jobs to get paid to think up the dumbest shit in the world??
Quality?
I use a USB stick with my car stereo - it's ok but occasionally a track breaks up and I have to reload it from the original.
Given the propensity of music distributors to use the cheapest components around (remember pre-recorded cassettes) people might find themselves with some fairly low quality tracks after a short while.
Of course if they are going to use MP3 format they will probably be OK - no quality to start with.
me wonders
Which evil company will release the first root-kit on one of these DMD's... and which will be the first to "accidently" have a virus on it.
Oh yeah, is it cross platform?? It would suck not to be able to play these on Linux or Macs.
Why
Um, why? What's the point of these? Couldn't they just stick the MP3 and video files onto a normal CD or DVD - which have equivalent storage capacity but a tiny fraction of the cost?
It's not as if you're buying something you can re-use, either - 512mb is piddly for a USB key, and if you do want to re-use it you'll need to wipe the content, which defeats the purpose of buying a hard copy in the first place.
I've tried to understand the benefit of these but really can't get my head round it - somebody please enlighten me!
What would make more sense - possibly - is if you could take your own USB key into HMV, plug it into the wall, and select what music and videos you want dumped onto it. Or just use the internet like everyone else!
Tally ho!
>"The Official UK Charts Company (OCC), the organisation that maintains the UK's music sales tables, will include albums sold on USB Flash disks in its tallies from next Monday, 29 October"
>>Tally, n, "A stick on which notches are made to keep a count or score"
No need for the notches, just use the tally stick to indicate a big fat 1. That'll be an approximation of the total number of DMD sales methinks.
