The SD Card Shortage: Will it Impact Music Gear Prices?
How worried should we be?
There’s an SD card shortage caused by the runaway proliferation of AI data centers. With memory prices shooting sky high, how will this affect us musicians and the music equipment that we use?
The SD Card Shortage
The SD Card Shortage: Crisis
Artificial intelligence is taking a lot. On top of the jobs, water use, and power demands, it’s also sucking up the world’s memory. Not the kind in our brains (not yet) but the kind in our devices. Memory-hungry AI data centers are hoovering up all of the world’s DRAM, leading to price increases and shortages.
I’ve been following this story for a while, mostly how it relates to RAM and musical instruments, but it appears it’s also affecting NAND flash memory, the kind that ends up in SD cards (including microSD cards) and USB sticks. SD card power users like photographers and filmmakers are already feeling the crunch, and I fear that musicians and producers may be next.
The SD Card Shortage: What’s Happening?
It’s true that AI doesn’t use SD cards. But SD cards and USB memory devices employ NAND chips, and these are made from wafers that come from the same production lines at microchip manufacturers. With AI companies willing to pay a premium price for the wafers, they’re getting diverted away from consumer products and causing price hikes and shortages. According to a recent article in Tom’s Hardware, prices have more than doubled recently, with a median price increase of 123% and some hitting as high as 261% over last year.
Some companies have even had to halt product lines altogether. Sony recently announced that it was suspending nearly its entire lineup of CFexpress and SD memory cards, specifically mentioning AI data center demand as the cause.
“The AI-driven demand for flash memory is the dominant factor,” says an article in CineD. “Enterprise companies building out AI infrastructure are purchasing NAND flash die at scale, leaving consumer and professional … products fighting for whatever remains.”
The SD Card Shortage: How Does This Affect Music Gear?
How does the ongoing SD card shortage impact us, musicians and producers? Basically, any device in your studio that uses an SD card or microSD is at risk of being affected. This will apply mostly to samplers like the ever-popular Roland SP-404MK2 and Akai MPC Sample, or digital audio recorders like the Zoom H5. If you’re saving digital audio, your machine probably uses a card.
The SD Card Shortage: DJs Aren’t Off the Hook
I’ve been talking about SD cards but USB flash drives are also in the mix. According to a PCWorld study (the same one quoted by Tom’s Hardware, above), USB drives are also feeling the pinch, with prices on both USB-A and USB-C devices rising dramatically over a one-year period.
This means that people who use USB flash memory often, like DJs, are going to start feeling the heat. For DJs, redundancy is the name of the game. You need two or three USB sticks with the same songs on them in case something happens to your main drive at a gig. Lose one or two, and you’re looking at a bigger outlay of cash than last year – especially if you’re buying large-capacity drives.
The SD Card Shortage: Will Gear Prices Also Go Up?
The same week that Sony revealed the halting of SD card production, it also announced a $100 price increase on its PlayStation 5, a direct result of the ongoing memory crisis. Will musical instrument manufacturers follow suit?
I spoke with a few different companies earlier this year about the related RAM crisis and whether that might affect the price that consumers will have to pay. Few manufacturers were willing to divulge deep business strategies like that, so I didn’t get detailed answers, but the gist of the responses was that they would do their best to make sure that, unlike with Sony, additional costs would not be passed on to consumers.
However, SD cards are a different issue. They’re not internal like RAM, so the price of a product probably wouldn’t be affected. What might change, though, is the cost of a bundle. If a device includes a starter card, you may see a small bump in your credit card bill. Or the company may decide to stop including that card to avoid having customers pay more.
The SD Card Shortage: What Can We Do?
While we probably don’t need to worry about drastic changes in musical equipment prices (at least for now), the fact remains that flash memory will be – in fact, very much is – being affected. If you rely on SD cards or USB drives for your musical output, you may seriously want to consider doing a few things.
First, if you go through cards often, it might not be a bad idea to buy a few extra now before prices go up even further, or more companies halt production.
Second, if you don’t need a big drive, think of purchasing one with a smaller capacity. There’s an indication that card manufacturers may keep smaller drives in production. “I wouldn’t be surprised if vendors like Samsung, SanDisk, et al. start offering lower capacities as a means to keep low-priced options available,” says PCWorld. “After all, if you’re just moving PowerPoint files around an office or getting a few photos over to your family via sneakernet, you don’t need terabytes to do it.” Likewise, if you’re occasionally saving a few samples to your MPC, a smaller SD card will suffice.
The SD Card Shortage: Weather the Storm
Though concerning now, this memory shortage won’t last forever. Stock up if you need to on SD cards and USB drives, but you don’t need to panic-buy. There are plenty of cards out in the world to meet current demand. As for where this all ends up, that depends on how AI pans out.
Should we be worried about the SD card shortage? I’d say stay mindfully concerned, at least for music production. If you also take pictures or make movies, that’s a different story.
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