Looking retrospectively, the popularity of iPod line led to a whole new trend in music industry which was inspired by a will which people had to buy, download and listen their music on their portable device. For Apple, this led to iTunes store and high profits, but for music and IT industry, this led to thousands of different mp3 players, digital stores and streaming services, as well as introduction of cloud computing paired with music-related features. All of this created a chaotic situation where you have your iPod or any other mp3 device, and you buy music from iTunes, import your own music from CDs and most of use also use at least one streaming service. So it is pretty much clear how difficult it can be to easily bring all this music to a single device and to effortlessly manage it.
Currently, there are several companies which are working on a hardware and a software solution to this problem. Some are offering applications whose mission is to import all your local and cloud music, while some are building more advanced hardware units which also feature wireless speaker units.
Recently, a small start-up company unveiled their plans for a new device which is actually a HD music player which simultaneously streams music from several different sources. This product is called Olive ONE, and is currently in a fund raising stage by a San Francisco company called One Media. Even though this music player is still in a fund-raising phase, during which you can also contribute – as a future user, it captured a lot of attention. Many popular publications wrote about it, such as The New York Times and Wired.
Olive ONE is a relatively small circular device, which features sleek and elegant contours. It will be made of aluminum with a glass hub, which featured touchscreen display. Its connectivity options are Bluetooth 4.0 as well as Wi-Fi (802.11n).
This device will be able to automatically stream music for services like Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Songza and many other services, as well as music that you own in your iTunes library, as a local copy. This way, you can use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to stream music from your computer, smartphone or tablet and play it through Olive ONE. Later on, there are plans to introduce a bigger cylindrical wireless speaker which could added beneath Olive ONE, so it creates one bigger product.
Since this is quite an interesting device, we suggest you to visit its fund raising page on IndieGoGo website, where you can read more about it and donate in case you like it. This will also give you an option to get a customized Olive ONE once its hits the shelves.
The “small start-up company” you are talking about (Olive Media) is actually quite a big name in streaming HiFi equipment. This company has launched some very well-acclaimed streamers in the last few years, like the Olive HD-series.
Hi Bufiku, thanks for your comment. Maybe their usage of indiegogo.com made us think that they are a startup
That’s not an excuse for not researching your story. Olive isn’t just about jumping on the iTunes bandwagon, they support 24/192 files and their DACs are capable of making music from iTunes sound like the overpriced abomination it is. Most Olive users actually rip their CDs as either full WAV or FLAC files. Even the most recent Olive products didn’t support ALAC, so their products seem to be for music lovers, not the iTunes crowd. Maybe this is why you had never heard of them.
Yes, we definitely belong to the group of iTunes users
Since we usually only review the products and not the company, there has been some confusion this time. We will try to avoid this in future articles.