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Record in a button: The Playbutton

By Rain Noe - December 16, 2010

in Object Culture

This is kind of a bold step not quite backwards, but sideways in the development of portable music players: The Playbutton, a pin-on button containing a single predetermined album. You can pause, skip tracks and adjust the volume, that's it--no adding your own tracks or futzing with the playlist order.

The Playbutton is obviously not meant to be an MP3 player replacement, but perhaps a promotional item for a band, given that one side of the device is a printable blank circle. The lack of track choice harkens back to the days of vinyl, and this will probably appeal to music purists. I personally can think of only two albums I enjoy hearing in their entirety (Radiohead's OK Computer and the Black Crowes' Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, judge me if you will); what do you think of the Playbutton's "Desert Island" aspect?

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Kevin

14 years ago

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Neat idea...I think it would be way cooler if the hole unit was the play/pause button so you could just press it on and off when you are wearing it. The buttons as they are are very crude and the safety pin has that raw feel but would be a pain in the ass to use. the idea is great though
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slippyfish

14 years ago

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Its a great promotional idea. In current incarnation the interface looks terrible. The skeuomorphic form of a stamped metal button falls apart with white headphones. But the granularity of the music is appealing: imaging having a little case full of these buttons from different artists. Reminds me a little of an old OSX program called "clutter" which took all the album covers from iTunes and spread them all over your desktop, like the mess in the living room made by CD boxes.
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Tat

14 years ago

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I really like this! Is this by any chance in production or still just a prototype?
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Bill Horsman

14 years ago

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I like the idea a lot - assuming it is cheap enough. What about batteries? How many plays do you get?
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