I remember building an paper, origami record player, with and a needle (actual sewing needle or pin). You'd spin the record with your fingers. The sound could be faintly heard, amplified by the paper structure.
How did they think they were going to monetize this?
It has no way to obtain user information, to send back to the vendor, and to track their listening preferences.
I bet you don't even have to register an account to use it; it looks some "local first" thing.
EDIT: I figured it out. The equipment for making records was prohibitively bulky and expensive for individuals to own; no copying was possible. There is always a catch!
I guess they also had the benefit of there being very few players to compete with, and the competition space being too large and too confusing to fully dominate, making it sadly a win for consumers. Its a damn shame that all players are fully visible in a modern marketplace
Wow, that reminds me of the soundwagon[0]. I always wanted one, but they are known as 'record/vinyl killers' as they essentially destory the record as it plays.
Wow, that actually sounds better than the RokBlok someone mentioned in another comment! Ok, it's a shellac record, so don't expect Hi-Fi, but at least it's able to keep a more or less constant speed, which you are also able to adjust...
Actually the very first phonographs by the Edison company, which used wax-covered cylinders, could record as well as play back. For music consumption, the "records" quickly became "read-only" (I assume because the "read-write" version was much less robust), but the wax cylinder survived in the Dictaphone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictaphone) which was used for, well, dictation. There were also versions that recorded on discs ("Voicewriter" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictation_machine), however these were replaced by magnetic tape in the 1950s/60s.
BTW, according to Wikipedia, the very first Edison phonographs had electric motors, which were however powered by "hazardous, high-maintenance wet cell batteries" and made the devices very expensive, so they were soon replaced by wind-up spring mechanisms.
> The name "Dictaphone" was trademarked in 1907 by the Columbia Graphophone Company, which soon became the leading manufacturer of such devices. This perpetuated the use for voice recording of wax cylinders [...] Dictaphone was spun off into a separate company in 1923 under the leadership of C. King Woodbridge. [...] In 1947, having relied on wax-cylinder recording to the end of World War II, Dictaphone introduced its Dictabelt technology.
So the company used the wax-cylinder technology for 40 years, and then continued with other technologies until 1979, when they were bought up by Pitney Bowes. Doesn't sound like a failure to me...
https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/but-wait-theres-more/a1875...