What Will You Be Listening To In The Future On Spotify? Only The 3D Printed TimeKeeper Knows!

I guess it just isn’t enough for Spotify to be showing us the wave of the future for getting and listening to music—as much and as often as we want. Now, should you wish, through a new device, your songs can be set up for the future too. And to make the whole process even more fascinating, these songs you don’t know about yet will be contained in glass marbles, just waiting for you when you are ready.

Domestic Data Streamers created the concept with the TimeKeeper, another project in line with their mission to ‘create meaningful connections between information and people’. Headquartered in Barcelona, the innovative company was founded in 2013. Currently they have projects going in San Francisco, New York, London, Jerusalem, and other cities around the world. The design firm’s team began working on this new device last year at the Sónar Music Festival, collaborating with Spotify.

Music lovers can look forward to songs being chosen just for them, depending on the preferences they have demonstrated in Spotify, and then played at a specified time later. The songs are ‘contained’ in a marble which is released on the date chosen. This is meant to offer greater meaning to the way we listen to music, as well as shaking up the norms of the listener’s experience.

In collecting data via the use of the TimeKeeper, the Domestic Data Streamers team noted that most music listeners are more open-minded to new music when they feel happy. They construe this as a direct connection between listening to music and elevated emotions.

The device holds a total of 1500 marbles, and at any time, 200 of them may be moving inside. The TimeKeeper boasts over 150 3D printed parts, with the design firm enjoying many of the benefits of the technology, to include affordability, speed in manufacturing—as well as being able to do so in a self-sustained fashion.

With 3D printing, the designers were able to create the complex TimeKeeper design easily through an iterative prototyping process, later manipulating all the parts of the glass structure together manually. They used a BCN3D Sigma 3D printer, and the materials of choice were flexible, to include PLA and colorFabb XT.

“Some of these parts had a long printing volume with 30 to 40h. It also contains examples of bi-material parts, combining rigid and flexible materials to fit the parts into glass softly and safely,” explained BCN3D in a recent blog.

With the progressive resources at hand, the designers were able to make something incredible, new, and special, showing off a variety of gears, and even automatic doors that let the marbles pass through.

“It is a great example of the power of 3D printing when building a functional prototype with a limited budget and no invest in tooling,” stated the BCN3D team.

Domestic Data Streamers and BCN3D worked together in creating the TimeKeeper, although the design firm does actually own four of the BCN3D Sigma’s on their own in Barcelona. Overall, more than 6,000 hours of 3D printing were required, with ten of the 3D printers in use. Discuss in the 3D Printed TimeKeeper forum at 3DPB.com.