Playdisc: the single-album DAP

Remember back in the day when you used to have to carry a bag full of CDs, cassettes, or eight tracks if you wanted some musical variety on the go? Well we thought that the popularity of digital audio players would have convinced manufacturers that people prefer toting around less stuff to more stuff, but a company called Axxen Korea apparently feels that there's still a demand out there for lugging around albums on physical media. Instead of creating a new format to store music on, however, Axxen has come up with a strange product called the Playdisc that can best be described as a DAP whose playlist never changes. So if Slick Rick were to come out with a new album and decide to release it on one of these 128MB devices, you'd have to bring it with you anytime you wanted to listen to the tunes, along with the rest of the Playdiscs you might have a jonesing for that day. Now we can see the appeal of preloaded audio players for content like books on tape -- where you only want to listen once and then dispose of it -- but it seems ridiculous to store anything with replay value on separate, dedicated devices. Needless to say, we can't see this technology going anywhere, but if folks do start giving up their iPods in favor of cases of Playdiscs, we'll have to admit that we don't know as much about consumer preferences as we thought we did. Keep reading to check out the type of battery you'll need to buy in bulk in order to power a bunch of these things...

[Andy @ Oct 23rd 2006 1:42PM]

Wow, this is destined for failure for sure. The only way they could even begin to market this is for something like.... museum tours or something, where you could pick one up at the door, and drop it off on the way out. It could give you an audio tour of wherever you are with less of a chance that it would be stolen considering no one wants a useless DAP that's permanently loaded with a museum tour. Then again, I'm sure people would eventually hack it so that other stuff can be put on them.

[potato @ Oct 23rd 2006 1:49PM]

Actually that does sound useful for museum tours. Just make the visitor pay a $20 deposit or something... Even if it could be hacked, I doubt people will be "purchasing" this for $20, considering it's only 128MB and all...

Actually, on that thought, why not an RFID-triggered playlist? The DAP can contain tracks for different exhibits (and a RFID reader), and RFID near the exhibits can trigger each track as the visitor gets to it.

[Andy @ Oct 23rd 2006 1:50PM]

Now that's a good idea actually... Hmmmmmm.... haha.

[George @ Oct 23rd 2006 1:51PM]

mp3 is dead. long live lossless.

[Yenraf @ Oct 23rd 2006 1:59PM]

Preach it brother!

[potato @ Oct 23rd 2006 2:03PM]

Honestly, if I'm walking around a museum listening to a voice talk in the background, I really couldn't care less if it's lossless, 128kbps mp3, or 320kbps mp3. Hell, 64kbps mp3 would do JUST FINE.

[Danny Floyd @ Oct 23rd 2006 1:57PM]

Its a front. Just to sell to VCs. no one is this frickin stupid, well apparently investors are. if they have any.

[D @ Oct 23rd 2006 2:19PM]

As the ipod has proved, it's not groundbreaking technology or ideas that appeal to consumers. Its how well you package it into a shiny case and then market it like its the best new thing since canned ham. Based on that model, this thing might show up next to cd's in music stores.

[apeguero @ Oct 23rd 2006 2:23PM]

This is so freekin' stupid it's insulting! Are they running out of ideas?

Oh wait, I just got one. What about if they sell these in music stores where and are able to play them immediately without having to wait until you go home and rip the CD into your MP3 player? Say, you're running around in the "city" (be it NYC or Boston, or whatev's) and you want to buy that new Scissor Sisters CD but want to enjoy it on your way back home and don't care much for CD walkmen anymore. You could 1.) buy this, 2.) listen to it, 3.) then upload it to your MP3 player when arrive at home. If it's DRM'd then find the hack for it and repeate step 3. I think there might be a future for this technology after all. As long as the price is comporable to that of CDs.

[Chocolate Starfish @ Oct 23rd 2006 2:24PM]

Never underestimate the stupidity of the masses.

[Andrew Wood @ Oct 23rd 2006 3:02PM]

what if you could churn these out cheap enough to give away - say $5-10. Marketing and PR people would go mad for them... So they become disposable media players.

[John Stracke @ Oct 23rd 2006 3:49PM]

"what if you could churn these out cheap enough to give away - say $5-10." -- Might be possible. It wouldn't need flash memory; it wouldn't need USB; it wouldn't need a display. It might not even need a codec; if you can buy the ROM you need for less than the price of a decoder chip, then you can ship it with uncompressed audio.

For a single song, released as a promotional campaign, then, sure, you could do it. I could see it as part of the marketing for large-market albums: The Anonymous Pap are releasing their new album next month, so this month the record stores are giving out these single-song players with the lead single, "Off-The-Shelf Love Song".

For an extra refinement, you could try using 12-bit uncompressed audio to save on ROM costs.

[D @ Oct 23rd 2006 3:33PM]

Actually potato has a good idea. mmmmm potatoes

[Brian @ Oct 23rd 2006 3:36PM]

Are you kidding??? This thing is a gold mine!
It's all about the 'bling' or 'I've got more than you'.

Right now little Sally has no way of showing off her collection of 20k songs on her 1 iPud, but with this, she'll have hundreds of dangly MP3's to show off!!

It's brilliant! I want IN!

[IWantTouchScreen @ Oct 23rd 2006 3:43PM]

Sheesh, even in 2001 this stuff didn't fly. Let's move on, museums wouldn't buy this crap, what the hell are you guys thinking?

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,913

[andy @ Oct 23rd 2006 3:52PM]

At the field museum in Chicago, there is a king tut display.

They have dedicated mp3 players that you rent for 5 bucks. You walk up to each piece, type in the exhibit/track number, and it plays a history of the piece.

The only suggestion made on here so far is regarding RFID, which I think would be huge. Missing the little numbers or looking for them was a PITA.

[MrPumpernickel @ Oct 23rd 2006 6:48PM]

I have to admit to perhaps being a bit stuck in the past (I mean, I still use minidiscs), but something about this gets me hot and bothered. There's just something about having a physical entity which holds your data instead of it just being anonymous 1s and 0s on a memory card in some device, delete and refill to your heart's content. I can't be the only one feeling like this, but I'm rather sure that there aren't enough of us to make this thing fly...but at the same time, I hope that things such as the minidisc (though obviously next generation) would make it back at some point.

[tekdroid @ Oct 23rd 2006 8:27PM]

...at least with MiniDisc (and Hi-MD) you could (and can) record in quality better than anyone else for the price. And then you can put another disc in and record some more. With Hi-MD you are doing pretty damn well recording to 1GB blanks (in Linear PCM lossless if you choose) with great A/D converters and mic inputs, removable batteries, great battery life, editability on disc, etc.

As long as that's possible, Sony's little creation will always have a niche, at the very least.

This thing I'm not so sure of. No recording ability? Seems destined for failure at least as far as the masses are concerned. Good to see it has a standard replaceable AAA battery, though.

[Billy Bob @ Oct 23rd 2006 10:22PM]

Now this is stupid. Why not, instead of this, have a thing where, when people buy music, they just fill up their mp3 players?
o wait, they do...
its called ITUNES!!!

[brain @ Oct 23rd 2006 10:35PM]

this is actually big from a human factors perspective. It's a cd that comes with the player. But in light of ipods admittedly doesn't seem like it will have much of a market.

[JamieD @ Oct 23rd 2006 11:46PM]

It will never work. CD is on its way out, MD came and went. Anyone remember DataPlay? Adding a built in player to any of these wouldn't make them more attractive, and remember, even if they only cost $5 to make, it wouldn't be cheap enough to compete with a cd, which cost the duplication plants nothing by comparison.

[hanulbada @ Oct 23rd 2006 11:47PM]

Wow, they wrote "Spacial Grace" in Korean lettering. XD

[Tristan @ Oct 31st 2006 5:52PM]

gotta disagree with most of you - this is fucking cool. Love the design, Would be a wicked way to get tunes out rather than slinging out cd's all the time.

Aesthetically it's ace, who cares if it only holds one album? No-one buys the shuffle or the nano for their storage.

peas