The project got a lot of buzz during the last days after Creative Applications and TechCrunch wrote about it. I’m flattered about all the feedback and really glad that people like the project, so thanks for all the retweets, comments and articles about it! :)

Just to clarify a few things that started to get distorted.

- The concept is a standalone player that comes with 8 tags that can be linked to music. It can be for yourself, or to give it to somebody else as a present, giving you the chance to link music to the tags before giving it to that person… In a way, like we used to do with mixtapes, but now the “mixtapes” are RFID tags linked to music on Spotify.

- This is a working prototype that I built to show and test the concept, it’s not a final product. It is suposed to be a standalone player with its own speakers and wifi connection, but at the moment it has to be connected to the computer to play music. I can’t run libspotify nor play music from Spotify on the Arduino, but it would be possible on an embedded linux. It’s a prototype, not a final product.

- The RFID tags don’t store any music, they are just linked to a certain Spotify URI or search. Each tag has a unique ID, and each unique ID points to Spotify music. That’s it, the music is not in the tag, it’s on Spotify.

- It is obviously very inspired by the work of Dieter Rams for Braun. There’s no secret about that. Most designers will recognize the similarities at first glance. Giving it that look and feel was completely intentional. This project makes reference to the benefits of analog music devices. We’re now moving towards digital content, it was the intention to make it feel like a product we’ve seen before while making use of newer technology available and a music streaming service.

- One of the goals was to keep it as cheap as possible so more people would be able to afford it if it were to be produced. Something like this would cost around 50$ to produce instead of the 200$ people have to pay for a Squeezebox or a Sonos system, that costs even more.

- I would love to bring this project to life, but it is a BIG project. Even if I got funding from Kickstarter, it is complex. The glif, for instance, is “just a physical object”: no mechanical parts, no electronics… and still a lot of work. A device like this has electronics, needs support, software… I’ll do my best to keep it going, but at the moment it’s just a concept.

- Christian Wilsson (Art Director at Spotify) has been giving me feedback during the project. They know about the result and I’d be really happy if they want to do something with it. But again, at the moment this is just a final degree project.

I hope this post makes everything a bit more clear.

Thanks again!

Jordi