Song lyrics on necklaces

Beautiful Cate, knowing that I’m a lover of all things musical, just flagged a site to me called Wear That There (which appeared in Styist magazine’s Emerald Street newsletter today).

The premise is simple; the company produces silver necklaces, charms and pendants with lyrics of your choice on.

Whether it’s a special track, words that are meaningful or an idea you respect, you can select the type of jewellery you want and submit your chosen lines.

This is obviously a young company with a great idea. You buy through Paypal (at £70.50 for a necklace including packaging) and submit your chosen lyric in the ‘additional info to merchant’ box.

Once it takes off, I hope to see them integrate some solid ecommerce functionality on-site. It’s just a lovely idea.

Sources

Hype Machine, for all things new

Spotify, for all things I know I already love – and for the recommendations of those I know

Soundcloud, for all things alternative – and for tracks I need to embed

Rollingstone.com, for all things mainstrream – plus new releases from huge bands and great interviews

Beatport, for all things I want to mix

Trackitdown.net, for everything I can’t find on beatport (and a new addition to my list thanks to Mr B)

thesixtyone.com – for all things unsigned

Fin.

Playbutton

I can’t remember where I first saw these, but I want one, immediately.

It’s a simple idea; wear your music.

(Talk about creating a social object).

With play, pause and skip functions, the Playbutton allows artists to dish out promos of your music in an innovative way. You’re protecting it at the same time as content is pre-recorded and can’t be changed or downloaded. That’s both a positive and a negative depending on how you look at it, but I think the idea is so appealling that the good outweighs the bad. Plus, if you’re giving away a couple of tracks, it encourages people to go and download more – and pay for it in the process.

As the website says, Playbutton’s audio output and charger are shared in one jack and the exterior of the ‘button’ can be covered with imagery or album artwork.

The Playbutton is reminiscent of Apple’s iPod shuffle, but without any of the mass-produced undertones and with something far more authentic and a hell of a lot more fashionable.

Pricing and orders available by emailing info@playbutton.co from November 2010 or check out the website.

Headphone craving

I’ve never been really into headphones, which is surprising as I spend the same amount of time listening to music as I do asleep – and I’m happy to invest in great sheets.

However, I’ve realised recently that I may have been missing a trick. The quality of sound that decent headphones produce over say, Apple’s super-breakable grey buds, is not only instantly noticeable – but knocks those little in-ear versions out of the park.

Two things have led to a bit of a rethink of late. First, this post over at Bitchbuzz showcasing some very sexy retro-styled beauties from Audio Chi in Glasgow. My head has been turned by this style before (circa Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation), but I’ve never truly bought into it. They look nice, but are a little bulky, and will they make a difference? Really?

In short, yes, yes they do. We’ve got some Sennheiser wireless headphones at home (courtesy of the lovely Jed from Wolfstar) that one of us can use when wanting to watch a film and the other is working. I never believed that the difference was that marked, but hey, sometimes you have to experience it for yourself. The same was true for sound systems in general, but then I sat through one of Bose’s demos and almost spent £4k on some shiny new speakers for our lounge (almost).

So now I’m stuck. I know I’m craving some new headphones (for mainly sound-quality purposes, but have nothing against them looking nice at the same time). How on earth am I going to decided which ones to go for other than trawling reviews online?

The search starts here…