The Disposable Shuffle?

Over on Wired’s blog, Leander Kahney suggests that the final settlement of a dispute between Apple the computer company and Apple the Beatle’s music company could lead to the development of new physical formats. Leander says we could see cheap flash-card devices preloaded with music being sold by Apple (the computer company):

Flash-memory drives are now so cheap, software companies are starting to use them to ship software. H&R Block, for example, is selling the latest version of its tax-preparation software on a flash drive for $40 — the same price as the CD version. How much would it cost Apple to add a few music chips and some cheap earbuds?

Apple was prevented from doing this until now by the 15-year-old contract between Apple Corps, the Beatles’ music company, and Apple Computer. This contract precluded Jobs’ Apple from acting as a music company and from selling CDs or “physical media delivering prerecorded content … (such as a compact disc of the Rolling Stones’ music).”

Leander suggests that we’ll now see versions of the existing iPod like the Yellow Submarine iPod (we want, now) but suggests that there may also be a whole range of “dirt-cheap iPod shuffles” branded by artist, containing their new albums or portions of their catalogs.

Wired News: IPod Will Be the New CD?”

[Img from Shufflesome]