Cute. I think the main market is for promotional items - freebies, giveaways.
Have to bring the price down as low as possible for that to take off. A regular button costs maybe 10-25 cents.
Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
11–20 of 42 posts
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#12This will only work if they can cultivate collectors, either for their products specifically, or from the artists they work with. Because they take up so much space, they have to be something you'd want to show off. In other words, because they are obviously functionally deficient, there has to be some other mechanism to make them desirable. Obviously I can listen to an album all the way through on a small iPod, or b…
Also it has to be un-rippable, which i don't think is even possible.
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#13I hope that the music industry does not think that this is a cure for their problems with digital distribution. Having a separate optical medium for each album of music is wasteful enough (compared to storing the content digitally in your hard drive), but having a ROM chip, a DA converter, a headphone amplifier and a battery per album is insane waste of resources.
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#14A low price would be crucial for the play button to really take off and become something bigger, badder than an interesting artistic experiment. $5 for a fully autonomous album anyone?
It's an interesting experiment. But aren't we already spoiled with mp3 players that can play gigs of music? Having to carry tens of "badges" and swap them every time you want to change the album will become a nuisance, when the novelty wears out.
You're right, it's not very green/minimalist, so the hipsters might frown upon it.
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#15This will only work if they can cultivate collectors, either for their products specifically, or from the artists they work with. Because they take up so much space, they have to be something you'd want to show off. In other words, because they are obviously functionally deficient, there has to be some other mechanism to make them desirable. Obviously I can listen to an album all the way through on a small iPod, or b…
Also it has to be un-rippable, which i don't think is even possible.
I don't think so, the point wouldn't be to completely lock it down or something. The music would probably get on the internet, which is fine (to me, at least). But for most consumers who choose to buy music, they would have to choose between buying the "collectors edition" or waiting a week to get it on iTunes.
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#16This will only work if they can cultivate collectors, either for their products specifically, or from the artists they work with. Because they take up so much space, they have to be something you'd want to show off. In other words, because they are obviously functionally deficient, there has to be some other mechanism to make them desirable. Obviously I can listen to an album all the way through on a small iPod, or b…
You have a great point here, limited availability would work here (only 1000 copies made), and would be more meaningful than limited runs of traditional media (which is more easily duplicated).
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#17Well I just think that website design is great
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#18I really like this idea and it looks like they're getting cool artists. My problem with this is that it creates unnecessary trash but I suppose the same can be said for any band shwag. Anyone saying that this is too expensive to sell should see those books that Mt Eerie was selling for like 200$. I think they're probably sold out. Anyway, my point is that with a captive audience, something a bit more expensive and off the wall like this could work. Bands sell tshirts and vinyl for 20$ all the time. 8$ extra for something completely novel? Sure.
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#19Cute. I think the main market is for promotional items - freebies, giveaways. Have to bring the price down as low as possible for that to take off. A regular button costs maybe 10-25 cents.
Why? What they're selling is not just the novelty, but the scarcity of an object. Treating these like talking greeting cards is like treating art as paper and ink.
Re: Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album
#20Immediately reminded me of '1-bit Symphony': http://www.1bitsymphony.com/
Which seems much more awesome.