Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album | Hacker News Reader

Play Button: a wearable, uneditable album

playbutton.co

91 pointsmrspeaker40 comments

This is so close to being awesome. I threw this link to a musician friend of mine when it showed up on Metafilter a while back, and we felt like it was so ALMOST there.

We felt like it wants to be cheaper, and wants to have a USB port so you can put the album you just paid $20 for into all your other devices. (Or a one-time use code to download it.) Then you can stick it on your backpack like any other button, maybe loan it to a friend you want to expose to the act.

Either that or load them with a copy of the concert you just saw. $20 for an item only available at the merch table for a single tour isn't very different from t-shirts; having a physical record of the whole show would be pretty cool.

But as something sold over the Internet for $20+shipping? It's cool but that's like twice the cost of a normal album. The form factor just feels like it wants to be an impulse buy, with impulse pricing.

(And on the other hand... I just paid $3 for a digital download of the new Glitch Mob EP. But I could have spent up to $55 on it to acquire a poster, a T-shirt, and a vinyl copy along with my download. I could see a Deluxe Package that included a Playbutton. As a cool bauble for the True Fans with a really good cashflow, it's not so bad.)

(There is a good chance that they're also so damn expensive because they're made in limited quantities, possibly by the same people who run the site. I drew a Tarot deck a couple years ago; you can get it now for $20 because I found a publisher who got it printed in China, but when I was making the things myself I charged $150 for them.)

This 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 better yet on the phone I'm already carrying.

They could also achieve this via exclusivity: get small acts to release a new album only via this format for the first week, so people have to experience the album in order before it's on iTunes and everyone just buys the popular song.

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.

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).

I adore this idea. This product feels like it could be the modern day memorabilia, like records for some of the classic bands have been for some time now.

I can certainly see someone auctioning off their button, with few having been in production, for some huge artist, charity benefit, or something of that sort. You can't really do that with an MP3.

I love that music has become so portable that you could actually complain that this form factor takes up too much space.

Here's a list of album formats that were around before MP3s, all of which are larger in size than a button:

  CD
  Minidisc
  Cassette Tape
  8-Track Tape
  Reel-to-Reel Tape
  Record
  Wax Tube

With only one exception above, music storage has gotten smaller with every new format. At this point it's essentially zero. Still, if you told a kid from the 80s that his whole wall of cassette tapes would one day fit in a McDonalds bag full of buttons, he'd be pretty stoked.

Immediately reminded me of '1-bit Symphony': http://www.1bitsymphony.com/

Which seems much more awesome.

Would be superb for:

- Museums - Galleries - Silent discos - Selling on trains - Sharing - Free samples - DJ mixes - Children's stories

A 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.

I think there's something to be said for rebelling against efficiency.

I think it could be worth more than $5, if the music is composed with this concept in mind. I agree that listening to a pop album this way would not be worth very much. But maybe a symphony would make more sense. Something ambient would be worth about as much either way.

If you can compose music that has "in-jokes" based on something you can guarantee the listener has heard earlier in the "album", that would be very useful from a composer's point of view.

I wouldn't expect people to buy these in their thousands in shops. They're more about:

1) Sharing - giving them to other fans who will listen and pass them on.

2) Signifying - showing who you are listening to.

Seems like Urban Outfitters would be an obvious retailer to go approach with something like this. But I agree with others that the price is a little too high - I imagine that you'd want to collect these like some people collect vinyl, but since it's more of a novelty, something like $10 would be perfect.

Well I just think that website design is great

I 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.

I really like this idea, but $25? Ouch. Out of my price range. I think having a bunch of these clipped to your jacket would also be a nifty way to show off your music taste, too.

What does the power supply look like? I would have thought a standard micro-usb power input would make these better for distributing to others.

I think this could be huge after concerts, especially if combined with a recording of the performance the fans have just listened to.

My thoughts exactly.

I can't see this being a big hit with retail music. The main use in my mind would be as PR tools, either sending promotional badges to journalists etc or as novelty items containing already released music to be sold at events. It's hard to think how else people would be willing to put down $15-$25 for something so unnecessary.

Recording live concerts for release after the show, however, is something I've been interested in a long time. Given that track skipping isn't possible on a Play Button, you wouldn't have to slice the recording into tracks before release. I'd even be so bold as to say you could get these out on sale within half an hour of the concert finishing.

For bigger concerts these would make a great souvenir and a decent source of income for artists.

That's a good idea. But perhaps the same thing could be done with qrcode or NFC, which could be printed on a ticket, or linked from an eticket, and the content could be downloaded straight to your phone over wifi before you leave.

Ticketmaster and iTunes (e.g.) will already have your payment details too.

Wouldn't a quality live recording need some post production though? I would have thought it would at least need to be mixed by a pro.

I 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.

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.

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.

Art can only be art when it's scarce? I do believe you'll find a lot of artists that disagree with you.

They'd certainly disagree with the person who said that, but it doesn't seem to be me. Sorry for the snark, but you're putting words into my mouth: I said that scarcity has value, hence the popularity of 'limited runs' of prints and albums. No judgment about what is or isn't art included.

Partially. But you also said that:

>Treating these like talking greeting cards is like treating art as paper and ink.

Which is pretty clearly implying talking greeting cards are not art. And since I doubt you're claiming novelty == art, and the only other thing you mentioned was scarcity...

A weak connection on closer examination, I'll admit.

It is novel. So novel, perhaps, that people won't be willing to pay a lot of money for it. Coin cell batteries won't last long playing albums, and are expensive to replace. The value proposition just isn't there for the end-user except for very limited novelty purposes.

However, it might be there for people who essentially want to advertise their real product (perhaps a CD release, perhaps something else). Sell these at cost or give them away to promote your event or new album? I can see that.

Oh, I see one of the news articles says rechargeable lithium battery. That's good for short-term usability, bad for cost. And it puts an absolute limit on the life of the item at about three years, when all lithium batteries die permanently and it won't be replaceable.

"Hey kids, look what I found in the attic! This cool album from the 'teens, it's built right into a button! Let's see.... oh, darn, the battery is permanently dead and can't be replaced." {tosses into the trash}

The battery is rechargeable through the headphone jack. Quite ingenious actually.

Not read all comments, but a spelling mistake is obvious on the details images, that explains the button. It says it will turn on and of respectively. This should be off. That is all. Good product all the same.

I don't know that I see the point. Sure, buttons are cool but why not just carry buttons and the iphone/smartphone that already has all your music anyways...

Play Button: a despicable, unusable website

Damn these are pretty awesome... only problem is The Pains of Being Pure at Heart costs $24. A little much!

That is a BRILLIANT IDEA! Such a great way to swap/share music with people too. I hope it takes off.

It would be really great if the buttons had two headphone jacks for sharing with somebody...

"You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable."

- Steve Jobs (http://37signals.com/svn/posts/52-steve-jobs-just-put-it-in-...)

really love this idea.

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