SanDisk slotRadio: 1,000 songs on microSD for $40

SanDisk's slotMusic system may not be tearing up the world in the sales department, but give credit to the company for trying to build a new paradigm for selling music aside from CDs and downloads.

Now SanDisk is innovating again, this time targeting the casual music listener who's largely content with turning on the radio instead of mucking about with a playlist manager and dealing with sync issues and (expensive) single-song music purchases.

It's called slotRadio, and it's a standalone music player about the size of an iPod Shuffle. The sell: It's $99.99 and it comes pre-loaded with 1,000 songs drawn from decades worth of Billboard chart toppers spanning a range of genres and years. Want more music? Pop out the microSD card and slide in another one. $39.99 gets you an additional 1,000 songs; seven add-on cards will be available at start, most with more of a genre focus: rock, country, hip-hop, etc.

With songs running 4 cents a pop (or just 10 cents with the player), slotRadio obviously comes with some restrictions: Music is of course protected by DRM that locks it to slotRadio cards, and, more importantly, you can't select what song you want to play at any given moment. Songs are sorted into a variety of channels, each with over a hundred songs available. If you don't like a song, you can skip it and go to the next one, but you can't tell the slotRadio player to play Mott the Hoople over and over again. In a nutshell, it's a lot like an offline version of Pandora.

The hardware is brain-dead simple: There's a small monochrome screen on the front showing you what you're playing and displaying a small visualization, plus volume controls and a skip button. You recharge via USB (and yes, you can play regular MP3s on it if you want). Standard earbuds are included. I had some hands-on time with an early unit and found it incredibly simple to work with; audio quality was just fine.

So, what do you think? It's a tricky proposition and one that hardcore music fans and tech geeks won't go for, but it would be the perfect gift for, say, my father, who wants to listen to music on the go but doesn't want to mess around with loading an iPod and buying songs. What slotMusic really needs to get kick-started? An add-on card full of nothing but oldies.