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Playbutton – The Badge That Plays MusicWe took our private jet out to New York to talk to Josh Penn of Playbutton about their natty badge music player. Rain – So, what’s it all about? Josh – Playbutton was founded a year and a half ago by Nick Dangerfield (great name). We saw...that with everything being digital, we’re all very physical kind of guys, our homes are covered in vinyl and books and films, not everything is on the computer and although we all use computers we’re still very much grounded in the physical. It became evident that things were going in an entirely digital direction and so Nick wanted to come up with a product that somehow combined a digital format with a physical item. With the button (or "badge" in normal language), the physical button itself is intrinsically tied into the history of rock memorabilia and merchandising – which is where the concept came from. Thinking of a way to meld a digital format to a physical product. Rain – was it a difficult product to get off the ground?  Josh – I came at it from a music background and had no idea of the difficulties involved in creating a technology product. There has been some developmental issues along the way. We’ve been improving the PCB in the device and working out ways to get better materials to get an all-in-all better product. The first one came out in February 2011 was called Love Songs which was a compilation made for “Opening Ceremony” which is a fashion brand here in New York, Los Angles and Tokyo, so we had a button specially made for them with a playlist that they had curated by artists such as Bjork, Vampire Weekend, Magnetic Field, a lot of pretty prominent indie rock bands – that was the first Playbutton release. Followed shortly by a local band in New York who were friends of Nicks, called Bubbles (white button with rubber duck smoking) which was our first official release.Rain – How is it being sold? Is it mainly as gig merchandise? Josh – It’s been entirely across the board. We’re coming at it from a music angle, which is one of the things we enjoy working the most on at a personal level – we’ve had a tremendous response in that avenue. We’ve done an EP release with Belle and Sebastian that was only available on their website - it sold out in one day. It’s definitely when the artist is able to come up with an interesting product, something people haven’t heard before and we’re able to put it exclusively on the Playbutton then we see that as an optimal release for everybody. It’s a great use of the button and giving fans the opportunity to hear the band they love and also wear it on their person so that everyone else knows what they are listening to and a little bit about them – a badge is an identity piece. That’s only one of the many uses – it’s our favourite. We’ve done a re-issue of the XX debut album, we’ve sold out of the first run of 1000 so we’re going to be pressing some more – that’s the sort of thing we love to see and do. Although we also understand that brands see it as a marketing and promotional tool and so we’ve been doing some work with companies and corporate clients as well. Rain – A while ago you were doing blank ones. Was that technologically difficult or was there some reason why you’ve stopped doing them? Josh – We called those the DIY Playbutton. We had a number made up as a trial to see what the response would be. It ended up being very popular and were on our online store and sold out really quickly. We’re toying with the idea still but we like to manufacture and curate for other people rather than creating an open ended device. Rain – Compression format is OGG, any reason for that?  Josh – We didn’t really want to use MP3 and become an MP3 player – that’s not what we do and we don’t see ourselves as an MP3 consumer electronics company and are trying to come from a more artistic angle. So by creating something that was locked, that people would not be able to take music off or put music on to it would differentiate us from other consumer electronic players. The sound experts tell us that OGG is the best compression format, and we always follow the view of the experts. It really does offer very good quality at a small file size. The Playbutton comes with 128MB of space which fits a whole album or an hour of music – and we can make them as large as you want but we found that at 128MB you could have an entire album at a good sound quality, and still keep the price reasonable.Rain – Is there a security system on the device? Josh – We have two cables, a white one is designed for charging and a black one designed for uploading and extracting files and so the customer only receives the white one. Rain – Tell us about the EQ settings. Josh – I know that Nick had requested EQ options which we thought with so many different variants on headphones and sound systems we wanted to give a little bit of freedom for people to find the best setting for their environment. Giving end users the best possible quality of sound was front and foremost for us in addition to making a physically beautiful product the sound was most important. Rain – Have you had many artists involved directly? Josh – More often than not we don’t deal directly with the band, but with some New York based bands we do have a closer relationship, such as Bubbles. Another one of our first releases was Mount Eerie from Washington who we dealt with directly. And more recently we released Bow Ribbons and Zs where we worked much closer with them and another came out this month by Hess is More and we worked direct one-on-one with them. Rain – Plans for the future? Josh – Right now our plan is create more of a presence so that people become more aware of the Playbutton and then look into creating new projects. We would love to move into audio books and also podcasts that I listen to being made available working with radio shows. As of right now we have no specific plans but these are some ideas we’re tossing around. Right now we just want to create more awareness and release more music. Rain – How have you faired in the current economic climate? Josh – We’re doing OK. It’s been a difficult year to create a new electronic product but the response has been really positive. We started in September 2010 and since then we’ve had about 70 different releases for both corporate clients and bands, about 30 album releases, which is about 150,000 units. It’s come along really well considering the size of company we are and we are hoping to have an even better year next year. Rain – Are you committed to staying independent? Josh – We love to release music by artists that we like and we love to expose people to music which might not be available right now. That’s not to say that we wouldn’t love to release a Madonna record. The company absolutely wanted to give exposure to artists that weren’t so mainstream and hadn’t been widely heard before but ultimately we just want to release good music. (Interviewed November 2011)  The Playbutton in use couldn’t be simpler – just plug your headphones in and it starts playing automatically – although you might need to give it a few hours charging first out of the box. The box is very cool, like a square match box and has a sort of vintage vibe to it, as does the badge for that matter. There’s a couple of buttons on the back – forward/back, play/pause, and EQ button and a reset button (it case it jams!). Volume is controlled by holding the forward/back buttons. But really, you just plug it in, pin it on and off you go. The most interesting thing is that I can’t remember the last time I listened to a whole album, as intended by the artist – it was really quite wonderful.You can order direct through the Playbutton website or via Rough Trade Records in East London. At £12.99 a go it's not the cheapest way to buy an album but it's certainly the most unique and stylish way of doing so. If you're interested in your own Playbutton release then from a minimum of 500 pieces they can sort you out - info@playbutton.co |