Polaroid Takes Up Music With Speakers and Radio-Style Streaming
Polaroid International BV, the brand that's been a staple of still photography industry since 1937, sees music in its future.
On Wednesday, the instant camera maker unveiled four Bluetooth music players and an internet radio streaming service, Polaroid Radio.
Though entering into the world of music seems like quite a departure, Polaroid has long had music genes in its making, Polaroid Chairman Oskar Smolokowski said in an interview Wednesday. Shortly after joining the company in 2012, he discovered a concept sketch made in the 1970s showing the idea of incorporating music into Polaroid photos. Now, the 30-year-odd has finally taken a step toward making it happen.
“We need to be open to new frontiers in this world of creativity,” Smolokowski said at the Wednesday launch event in Manhattan, where dozens of speakers of various shapes, sizes and colors sat on top of a pyramid of red and pink plastic crates. “We felt like we got our footing a little bit with instant photography. We know what we're doing. But we wanted to go beyond that.”
Music, like photography, is at the intersection of art and science — the core of Polaroid's product design, he said.
The new line of products include four speakers, from the more portable P1 and P2 to the bigger P3 and P4, as well as an online music service called Polaroid Radio, which the company describes as a “FM-nostalgia” radio station.
Polaroid Players
About the size of an apple, with the weight of two baseballs, the P1 is the smallest and most portable music player the company offers. Priced at $59.99, the square-shaped model can easily fit into a purse or be attach to a backpack via a carabiner clip. It is IPX5 water proof, meaning that it's splash and spray resistant. P1 has
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