Robbie album sold on memory card

Robbie Williams' Greatest Hits was released on CD on Monday

Robbie Williams' Greatest Hits album is to be sold in memory card format for mobile phones and hand-held computers.

It is believed to be the first time a major artist has sold music on the small, portable format.

The album will also come with video content and will work with high-specification mobile phones and many hand-held computers, such as the iPaq.

The card, at £29.99, will be available for sale at 600 Carphone Warehouse stores across the UK from next month.

Multimedia Memory Cards (MMC) can hold more than one gigabyte of data - the equivalent of about one-and-a-half compact discs.

'Next chapter'

Danny Van Emden, digital media director at EMI Music, said: "The UK is in love with the mobile and it's the one device that we know our artists' fans have with them at all times - so the memory card is simply the next logical chapter in the affair."

The Carphone Warehouse is already in talks with EMI to deliver more pre-loaded memory cards this Christmas.

Kevin Gillan, Carphone Warehouse's director of group business development, said: "We see pre-loaded music memory cards as the next step and part of a general consumer hunger for more mobile content."

A spokeswoman for EMI, Robbie Williams' record label, said there were "high hopes" for the new format but would not speculate on how many copies of the new format may be sold.

Former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman released an album using memory cards in 1999, which were inserted inside their own MP3 player.