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Spotify enables music lovers to listen to the song of “their future moment” thanks to the 3D printed Timekeeper

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Domestic Data Streamers and BCN3D teamed up to create the TimeKeeper as part of the mission to ‘create meaningful connections between information and people’.

Photo: Pep Avila

As far as their collaboration with Spotify is concerned, the concept enables people’s songs (they do not know about yet) to be set up for their future. According to makers, they will be contained in glass marbles waiting for their owners to be ready to listen to them.  

In other words, these songs are chosen for Spotify’s users, depending on their preferences on the platform, and then played later at a specific point in their lives on a date they would have been previously defined. The purpose is to give more meaning to the way users listen to music.
This is due to the fact that listeners are more open to new music when they are happier, according to Domestic Data Streamers. For this team, it is a direct connection between listening to music and emotions.
TimeKeeper manufacturing process
For BCN3D team, the TimeKeeper “is a great example of the power of 3D printing when building a functional prototype with a limited budget and no invest in tooling.”
The manufacturing required more than 6 000 hours of 3D printing including 10 3D printers among which BCN3D Sigma 3. The designers realized the design of the device through an iterative prototyping process by working manually on the glass structure’s parts. A wide range of materials was available; this includes PLA and ColorFabb XT among others.
BCN3D explains that “some of these parts had a long printing volume with 30 to 40h. [The timeKeeper] also contains examples of bi-material parts, combining rigid and flexible materials to fit the parts into glass softly and safely.”
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