SanDisk sells music for people who don’t care about music
I was doing a little desktop research (fancy way of saying “surfing the web”?) to learn more about some of iPod’s competitors. Remembering that SanDisk had launched a portable mp3 player named “Sansa” awhile back, I checked their site and was a little disturbed by what I found.
The page opens to a video about slotRadio, a memory card preloaded with music, compatible with some Blackberry models and presumably all of SanDisk’s music players. The video features this guy…
…and here’s what he has to say for himself:
Nobody can remember all the music that they really like, all the bands that — I just heard three songs just now that I love, but I didn’t know the name of the artist.
Wow. That’s quite a statement, isn’t it? I’m amazed that SanDisk chose to associate their music product with this gentleman, standing outside a Blockbuster (a fact that already says nothing positive about his media consumption habits), in effect proclaiming “I am a music ignoramus.” Definitely a far cry from the iPod silhouette guy and ads that make not-so-thinly veiled attempts to associate iPod with indie music that only the musically elite will recognize.
With iPod, Apple has made a conscious, overt effort to make the brand stand for something that music fans can aspire to. In their eyes, owning an iPod identifies you as someone with otherwise unattainably cool taste in music. Someone to be envied because if you don’t own one, you can’t possibly be enjoying the kind of music—the kind of life—that they do.
With slotRadio, however, SanDisk is hawking Now That’s What I Call Music in a mobile-friendly format. If iPod is for music aficionados, Sansa with slotRadio is for people who want mp3 players but don’t really have any music preferences beyond “I like country” or “I like R&B hip hop.” (Yes, to the makers of slotRadio, “R&B hip hop” is one genre.) It’s more convenient than having to remember band names, or distinguish between indie rock and classic rock. So it’s different, but I’m just not sure that pursuing the “music for people who aren’t really all that interested in music” segment is any way to build a music-related brand. Then again, given sales of Now, maybe betting on the general public’s lack of discerning taste in music is a sure-fire winner?
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Sure, I’ll give you that, but would you buy a memory card full of songs of a certain genre in the hopes that SanDisk picked the same ones you would have? I guess it’s not just whether or not you know the artists, but how confident you are that your tastes align with SanDisk. The ironic thing is that if Apple offered something along these lines, I bet even the music elitists would consider it.
Good point about trying to push Apple into a corner, but seems to me like you’d do that with a distinctive style rather than a lack thereof. Chrome mp3 player, maybe co-branded with Harley, pre-loaded with good ol’ rock?
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Hey…wait a minute…I hear songs I like all the time and I never know the artist. Go easy on those of us who love listening to music but don’t necessarily love researching it.
At any rate, not necessarily to defend SanDisk, but I do think that there may be an opportunity for Apple’s competitors to position against the Apple lifestyle-of-desire in general. A good old brand along the lines of Ford or Chevy that portrays Apple as the choice of the ‘musically effete’. I mean, would a real man wear white headphones?
Or maybe I just fall in the category of those who envy iPod owners…
For the record, I’m typing this on my 5th Mac!