DataPlay has secured four major record labels, representing more than half of the popular music market, to support its new digital media, which promises to be far less expensive and offer higher capacity than flash memory.
DataPlay's blank media are very small, about the size of a quarter, but hold 500 MB of data. The company is aiming to put its discs in music players, digital cameras, digital camcorders, PCs, PDAs and handheld games -- but will start with music players.
While the standard compact disc has 650 MB of capacity and holds one hour of music, the 500 MB DataPlay disc can hold up to five hours of CD-quality music due to advanced compression techniques.
"Because we are a newer technology, we can use newer compression techniques," said Todd Oseth, a senior VP at DataPlay. "Compact disc can't do that because the legacy technologies in CD really hamper how much you can put on a disc."
A 500 MB DataPlay disc will hold 11 hours of MP3 files, five hours of CD-quality music or 500 MB of computer data. A DataPlay drive can be used with PCs like any other removable device. It connects to a computer through the USB port; all the user does is copy files to or from the DataPlay drive, just like with other disk drives.
DataPlay players, which will be priced between $299 and $369, will hit the market in May. Samsung, Toshiba and Matsushita are investors in DataPlay and will be releasing the players. In addition to the portable device, some are considering developing a cradle so the device can be plugged into a home stereo.
Because of the high capacity of the discs, music labels may use them for music videos and extra albums. The players will come with small LCD monitors, so music videos can be viewed on the player. Labels can also put a second, third or even higher number of albums on the disc and let the buyer listen to 30-second samples. If they like what they hear, they can connect the DataPlay unit to their computer and unlock the music on that disc with a quick download of a 128-bit key.
"That really is an excellent idea," said P.J. McNealy, senior analyst with Gartner G2. "It takes advantage of the existing medium for an impulse buy, and people don't have to go back to the store to buy a second record, and you can have several albums on one quarter-sized disc."
DataPlay was first introduced at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show and won the Best in Show award -- but it is only now coming to market.
Its first generation of players will hit the market with music from EMI, Universal Music Group, BMG Entertainment and Zomba Recording. Zomba is the home of Jive Records, the label started by music legend Clive Calder that features Britney Spears, NSYNC and Aaron Carter.
This is a level of support that Sony's MiniDisc format never had, even after a decade on the market. MiniDisc usually had re-issues and back catalog artists who were out of favor, not the top sellers.
"This music content really caters to the hot artists as of today," Oseth said. "Kids into that music will get into DataPlay." DataPlay will launch with 50 titles and expects to have 300 by the end of the year.
DataPlay discs are write-once, although new data can be continuously written to the disc until it's full. It comes with digital rights management for MP3 files and other digital media. If the MP3 file has a digital rights wrapper defining how many times it can be copied, then the DataPlay player will enforce that.
However, the DataPlay disc will not allow MP3s that individuals rip from their own discs or download from exchange sites such as KaZaA to be copied from the device to another computer. If there are no digital rights attached to the file, then DataPlay assumes none.
"If you start with a CD that has no digital rights management, the player has no way to know what rights you have," Osten said. "So it lets you play the MP3 on the player, but we're not going to allow our product to be your distribution point."
DataPlay has other potential uses for this media. Camera-maker Olympus is also an investor and is considering releasing a digital camera that uses the DataPlay discs instead of flash memory. It could also be used in a digital camcorder, able to hold up to two hours of MPEG-4-quality video, or in a PDA or handheld game unit such as Nintendo's Game Boy Advanced. But that's all speculation at this point.
Gartner's McNealy likes the technology but is unsure of its chances in the market. "This distribution method certainly has some potential over flash and other storage mediums currently being used on the market," he said. "It's always a challenge to get the market to change platforms. This one has the potential, but we're in a wait-and-see mode. We'll see how many consumer electronics manufacturers adopt it and how many media companies use it as a distribution medium."
