Dammit, MP3? Why can't it be an open format like vorbis or FLAC? That way they wouldn't even face the possibility of paying licenses, and the music would sound better. They're touting this standard as DRM-free anyway so they don't have anything to lose. Also maybe then more portable hardware would support those formats (but to be honest, I don't see this slotMusic being taken seriously either). On their site, they claim that the USB sleeve makes this compatible with Win/Lin/Mac, but some Linux distros don't support MP3 out of the box for the licensing issues.
Besides, 1GB for storage of MP3s? What are they going to sell, an artist's entire back catalogs? Music, videos, and photos? There's nothing innovative about any of that, and it's so vague. That doesn't sound like a new standard so much as a common consumer practice being made into a business practice.
Let's be honest, this isn't a tactic to sell more music, this is a tactic to sell more -microSD cards-