There are lots of different ways of sharing your music. This idea, created by Andrew Pairman of the Digital Interaction Design at the University of Dundee, is definitely unique. Each user has a wooden token that contains an RFID chip, on which you’ll find a personalized playlist. The Social Jukebox does the rest.
Users place their tokens to play tracks randomly from their lists. There isn’t a skip function, forcing everyone to listen to all of the music being played. That could be both good and bad, I suppose. Good for discovery, bad when you don’t like the current tune. Andrew says that this was like when people listened to music on a jukebox decades ago.
The device is controlled by an Arduino board and a servo motor. The RFID tags are linked to a Spotify playlist.
The idea sounds interesting, but I’d like to see a device that would work through Bluetooth and connect with everyone’s smartphone to play music that’s on there through a centralized amp and speaker system.
[via designboom]
