While our media players might be populated with album cover art, there’s just something about it that doesn’t quite match up to the good old days of vinyl and CDs, where they would actually be part of the room’s design. Granted digital music is cheaper and easier to consume, one designer from Paris, Ismail Salhi, felt that it was too “soulless”, which led to the creator of the Qleek.
Qleeks are essentially tiny wooden discs that sports a piece of artwork on the top. It also acts as a bookmark to your songs, so whenever you place a Qleek disc onto the player, which would be connected to your TV or speakers, it will be able to play the songs from the source. The device doesn’t actually store the files and like we said, they act more as bookmarks, so essentially you could be different Qleeks for different things, like an iTunes playlist, Spotify, Instagram, YouTube, and so on.
Also just like the good old days of actual album cover art, the Qleeks can be used to decorate your home with. You can place them on your walls and easily grab one of them to play with. You can stack them up, you can put them in a folder, it’s really up to you. Because they’re also smaller than CDs, they won’t take up too much space either. It’s an amazing idea and certainly lends some warmth to the surroundings.
However Qleek isn’t an actual product yet. Its designer is trying to raise money for it via Indiegogo and so far they’ve managed to raise almost half of their goal of $70,000. In order to grab yourself a Qleek and the accompanying player, you’d have to pledge $249, although there is an early bird special that is going for $199. It’s a bit expensive, admittedly, but if you’re looking for a new way of consuming your digital content, perhaps this is worth taking a look at.