Need To Use SD Card On Music Shield?

I'm going to either use a VS1053 MP3 breakout board or a VS1053 MP3 shield with my Uno board. I only need one song for the program. Will I still need to use an SD card to play that one song, or can I upload it onto the Uno board itself? Thanks

The Seed Studios Music Shield 2.0 uses that chip and just copies data from the SD card to the chip a buffer at a time in the MusicPlayer::playSong() function. If your music will fit in FLASH (PROGMEM) you should be able to send it to the chip a block at a time.

Thank you for your response. We are trying to put together an Arduino package for highschool students and want to use MP3 shields. I was hoping to cut costs by not having to purchase any SD cards to go with the music shield, but it seems like the shield will need an SD card at some point. Am I correct?

Artie:
but it seems like the shield will need an SD card at some point. Am I correct?

That depends. How many bytes in your MP3 file? Which Arduino are you using?

7MB on an Uno board.

Artie:
7MB on an Uno board.

Hmmm. The ATmega328P on the Arduino UNO only has 32K of FLASH/PROGMEM. You will definitely need some kind of external storage for a 7 MB file. The SD card is probably the cheapest and easiest way to go.

Ok, no problem. I appreciate your help. Thank you