A Music Device That Can Play, Oh, 2 Million Songs or So

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SanDisk has joined up with Yahoo to add a new wrinkle to its latest MP3 player, the Sansa Connect. Skip to next paragraph The player, available for less than $250 at major electronics outlets, gives owners the ability to stream Yahoo Music’s catalog of more than two million songs without having to put the tunes onto a computer first. While the Sansa Connect has only a 4-gigabyte flash drive, the streaming ability sets up virtual storage via the Internet. As long as you keep paying your $12-a-month Yahoo Music subscription, and as long as the unit has a Wi-Fi connection, it can keep picking new tracks to play. The player can also stream music from Internet radio stations. When connected to a computer through a U.S.B. cable, the unit works in the conventional way of setting up playlists and copying music from your CDs. While Yahoo is the preferred service, the Sansa Connect will work with other online services, including Rhapsody, Napster and Urge. Sansa Connect is also a photo viewer that can show photos stored on Flickr. It does not play videos, but it does have a feature most other players don’t: a speaker to let others listen in.