Hello, for this use (mbed acting as USB Mass storage device - like flashdisk) You can use one half of USB cable with USB A connector if low on budget. Simply connect white wire to D- pin, green to D+ pin and black to GND pin. If you will not use battery or any external power connect red wire to Vin pin and mbed will be powered from PC if connected via this cable. But as I understand You will connect mbed to PC only to load new track.
As Mathew wrote, in this program mbed is USB Mass Storage device where SD card is used only as storage space (because mbed itself has only 2 MB) also it is like USB SD card reader but if You change program You can use both ways, load track to sd card via USB from PC or load track directly to SD card from PC.
As I remember Christian Lerche started thread about audio player with capability of loading tracks via USB but he uses AT45DB* flash chip via SPI. You can find it here http://mbed.org/forum/mbed/topic/2867/ Christian said he will share code after clean up so it may help You because it seems it is very close to Your project with only SD card instead of flash chip. BTW SD card is implemented in example link above so very much of work is done.
If You will want to use mbed as USB host, You will be able to connect flash disk or kb, mouse to it but loose the capability of connecting mbed to PC an loading tracks via usb. For this You can use half of USB EXTENDING cable and to get USB port. Here You will connect red wire to Vusb pin to power device connected to port, black to GND, green and white must use 15K pull-down resistor each if using mbed as USB host - specified at BlueUSB program http://mbed.org/users/peterbarrett1967/notebook/blueusb---bluetooth-and-usb-host-controller-for-mb/. There is also http://mbed.org/users/igorsk/programs/MSCUsbHost/5yfq4 USB host for flash disks only.
Hope this can help You
I am currently working to make an alarm clock which you can customise the songs, so you can load your songs into the sd card which should be connected to the mbed. And your PC can read the sd card via the mbed. I am just wondering how can you program the mbed to make the pc realise that the sd card is connected to the mbed. And also, how can you make the usb host coonect to the sd card. Hope i made myself clear enough. Thanks :) and really looking forward to your reply.