Majors’ New Strategy For Making Money Again: Selling Overpriced Crap

Matchbox Twenty is the latest band to get in on the USB drive gimmick; their greatest-hits package Exile On Mainstream is being sold inside a 128-megabyte drive that’s attached to a bracelet. The full list of preloaded content, from the package’s Amazon page:

All 17 tracks from Exile on Mainstream.The music video for How Far We ve Come PDF Booklet with Album Artwork, A video greeting from the band,Custom toolbar, desktop wallpapers and desktop icon.

The price tag? $34.98. Yes, that’s right: thirty-five dollars for a couple of videos, a “custom toolbar” that will probably stop working once matchbox twenty’s label decides to redesign its Web presence, and a booklet that you have to print out yourself. Not to mention the ubiquitous “wallpapers,” which every single music-marketing executive I’ve ever talked to seems to love as a concept, despite none of them actually ever having the damn things on their own desktops. And on a 128-megabyte drive? What will that hold, a Word document and a half? At least the also-overpriced drives that the White Stripes sold a few months back were cute, and they had four times the space.

Rockers Matchbox Twenty join the USB revolution [USA Today]