HOWZAT

“Most non-iPod MP3 players already have card slots in them. Music-capable phones with card slots are selling at a rate of 750 million a year,” said Daniel Schreiber, a senior vice president at SanDisk.

He agreed that albums sold on CD were falling - sales of albums on CDs dropped nearly 19 per cent last year - but insisted physical formats were still popular.

According to Nielsen research 449 million were sold on CDs in 2007, while 50 million were sold digitally.

“The CD is dying, but rumors of its death are perhaps somewhat premature,” Mr Schreiber said.

But despite the impressive backing for the new format, many commentators said yesterday that the market, especially among younger music lovers, was switching decisively to online downloading of songs via sites including Apple’s iTunes.

Earlier this year the iTunes Store surpassed Wal-Mart to become the largest music retailer in the world.

Perhaps crucially for the success of the new format, Apple’s market-leading MP3 players - the range of iPods and iPhones - are not capable of playing SlotMusic cards.

Also the SlotMusic format does not address the growing trend among downloaders to buy only the songs they like, one at a time, for about 79p each.

The big music companies are hoping the format will provide an extra revenue stream while they struggle against illegal music sharing.

Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal Music Group’s eLabs digital music unit, said: “We want to provide the benefits of digital music to people who go to physical retail environments.”

Asked whether he sees the format taking the place of the CD, Caraeff said, “I think we would certainly hope that would be the case, but I don’t think we are so tied to that.”

A Sandisk spokesman said that the slotMusic format would be available in the UK by the end of the year. No pricing or featured artist details were available yet, he added.

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