According to this News BBC article, The Carphone Warehouse is going to be marketing the latest Robbie album on memory card format(MMC).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3754094.stm

This is a major breakthrough for memory card use in mobile phones, and will raise awareness as mobiles being used as an alternative to digital music players like the iPod. It can only be a good thing for the industry.

Questions that do spring to mind from the sale of pre-loaded music memory cards are:

• Is it risky to have your prime (and only copy) of a purchased album stored on a memory card (which is erasable format in non-SD form) ?
• Will purchasers be able to copy/backup the album material to another medium (like their PC or burn to CD) for safekeeping ?
• Does £30 represent good value for what is probably a 128mb + legitimate copy of Robbie's latest album.?
• Is it better to have a whole stack of small (128mb or less) memory cards with 1 album each or one or two big memory cards with a whole bunch of your albums stored on them which you have ripped from your CD collection..?

Personally, I still feel that the non-erasable and proven durability of CD format is a handy and secure backup for any music that you then convert (rip) for playback on on your mobile memory device (or digital music player for that matter).

But for those consumers who are, very lazy or tech-illiterate (and don't want to rip their own songs from CD), and don;t mind risking the loss of their album if it gets corrupted (which does happen with solid state memory) then this might prove to be a popular format for driving future music sales.

Let us hear your thoughts..