UK Charts Company to recognise album sales on USB Flash disks

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 …

[Dave Morfee]

So let me get this right..

Ill be able to buy an album on a 5gb flash stick for £10ish. Hopefully I will be able to format it and get a cheap flash stick :)

Kimbie

[Ian Ferguson]

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!

[W]

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.

[Law]

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.

[Colin Millar]

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.

[Dave]

Stupid Stupid Stupid

How do these morons get such cushy jobs to get paid to think up the dumbest shit in the world??