Tinker Bell Does MP3

The RED HERRING reports that Disney is entering the digital audio player market with its Mix Sticks MP3/WMA player.

The $49 player is geared for children 6 to 12 years old and has 128MB memory on board as well as a MMC memory card slot that can also take Disney Mix Clips cards, which come pre-recorded with albums such as "Radio Disney Ultimate Jams, Greatest Hits Volumes 1-6". The Mix Clips albums will be priced comparable to CDs.

David Card at JupiterResearch said, "Disney has tried this before with a branded CD Walkman and DVD players, and it’s never had a big impact on market share. I think the MP3 player is cool, and they will sell a few of them, but this will not reshape the MP3 industry. It’s interesting that you can copy music onto them, and Disney is also going to sell music on little cards [Mix Clips]."

"The reason the iPod is successful is because it is easy to use and people already had large MP3 collections. Six-to-10-year-olds don’t have large collections of MP3 files. You are not going to see a whole bunch of 6-year-olds ripping their CDs and copying the files onto these things. Perhaps the 11-year-olds will," he added.

The price point seems right for a mass-market audience, and Disney is hoping parents think so as well. It will also be a good test of whether there is a market for selling pre-recorded content on memory cards since the pricing and usage model seems to be more in line with the target audience than SanDisk's overpriced efforts....