The curious tale of Bhutan's playable record postage stamps (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The curious tale of Bhutan's playable record postage stamps (2015)

thevinylfactory.com

165 pointsseverine30 comments

> For decades, the stamps were dismissed by the philatelic establishment as tacky novelties and were, correspondingly, as cheap as chips, [...] valued at around £17, the equivalent of £28 at 2015 prices. But following their recent discovery by collectors of rare vinyl, particularly in the US, you will be lucky to pick a set up for less than £300.

I love how one group of collectors goes "tacky novelty!" and another group goes "amazing rare find!" over the same thing. It all makes sense, but it's still weird.

“Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story; others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.”

This happens with splinter groups within record collector circles. I've seen LP collectors say "I would never go to the Allentown show, it's strictly 45s" and the 45 guys pick up a Public Enemy LP and you can kind of see on their face they're thinking "this is cool, but I would never buy it"

As another curiosity, the link comes courtesy of Metafilter's 404 service, which provides interesting links during maintenance downtime.

Metafilter: Cool even asleep.

Metafilter is a gem.

Since the exact dimensions are curiously not mentioned, here's my service to answer your questions:

The stamps have a diameter of typically 69mm, while larger ones are 100mm.

(Source: http://www.megaministore.com/stamps/asia/bhutan-stamps/bhuta...)

A similar interesting usage of a exotic medium for pressed music are the bone records or "rib records", apparently used to smuggle western music into Soviet [1]. I've also heard of pressing music into postcards, but cannot find a good source on that at the moment.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2016/01/09/462289635/bones-and-grooves-w...

Wow, thank you!

Rib records are an even deeper rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribs_(recordings)

On vinyl postcards, there's at least one current label pressing them: http://www.vinylpost.co/releases/ (not affiliated).

There goes my morning...

In Poland in 60s, there were also some post-related records sold: http://www.lukpac.org/~handmade/patio/misc/postcards.html

Wow, this is wonderful. How large are they actually? The article says miniature but, surely, a vinyl record would weigh a substantial amount even at a tiny size.

The designs on these are really intricate as well, I know that vinyl lovers tend to say that the addition of pictures hurts sound quality but in this particular case, a novelty set, I feel like it's more than justified.

I haven’t seen them, but I expect them to be similar to the records they used to give away as marketing gimmicks: so thin that they weren’t rigid under their own weight. You could roll them up.

If you decrease their diameter, weight would go down even further.

Edit: these are called Flexi Disc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc). you can even make records out of plastic-coated carton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardboard_record

There's a pic here: https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/listen-these-tiny-v...

Oh, that's downright tiny. I can see how that could fit easily on a regular package.

As if the Kingdom of Bhutan couldn't get any cooler!

- - - -

I remember an advertising gimmick in the 90's, plastic ribbons with tiny ridges that you attached to balloons and then you could pinch them and draw your fingers down, running your thumbnail over the ridges. The result was that the balloon acted like a speaker for the sound waves encoded in the ridges.

Techmoan needs to do a report on this. It's right up his alley. For those that don't know he's a youtuber with some very interesting technical factoids. Mostly about audio/video.

He goes well beyond factoids. Many of his videos feature research of contemporary trade press about the equipment, real-world tests, and simple repairs.

https://www.youtube.com/techmoan

I found him years ago looking for Dashcam Reviews.

He's good for entertainment, but his videos almost always amount to "Here's a cool thing I bought on Yahoo! Japan, and here's some advertisements about it I found on Google Image Search." Followed by a tedious walk-through of the product manual.

Occasionally he does a repair video, but they're only the most basic of "repairs" like replacing a belt.

It's chewing gum tech. Not exactly high-thinking.

And then occasionally he talks about stuff he knows nothing about. For example, when he called the United States backward for still having FM radio stations, completely ignoring the fact that in his own country, the vast majority of radio broadcasting is on FM.

Then in another video he talks about digital radio in his country is sparse outside of the major cities. Meanwhile, the United States has continent-spanning satellite and terrestrial digital radio.

http://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/onebhut.html ORIGINAL article here, found after 3 different blogs cited each other.

web2.0 was a mistake.

> web2.0 was a mistake.

Can you elaborate on this statement? I don't understand what this refers to

I suppose it's the blatantly openly html table based layout on the page they shared.

The vinyl factory post contains images not present on the wfmu.org page.

In what was is that the "original" article, and why the dismissive tone, as if OP ought to have posted that link? The one linked is significantly deeper, with more information, images, etc.

Thank you Tom. Always appreciate an original WFMU link. The number of times they've had their content ripped off and repackaged..

I would love to get a link to the full version of that music in the link. I know it's a version of Bhutan's national anthem "Druk Tsendhen" but couldn't find that exact one on YouTube.

here you go: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H0DXyCiKbDI :)

Thanks, man! Appreciate it. :)

Without a familiar object or a ruler in the pictures, it's difficult to tell how "miniature" these are.

we had same thing in yugoslavia.

How whimsical! I love it.

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