What The Heck Is A Playbutton

What you're looking at is a Playbutton. Not sure what that is or how it works? Well:

That's right: those are my shitty earbuds plugged into the bottom of it. Playbutton is a new I guess media company out of New York, and they manufacture tiny little pre-loaded MP3 players with specific albums on it – the one I'm wearing is a record by a band called Bubbles, and they've got other albums coming out like a rerelease of the xx's debut record and the new Pains of Being Pure at Heart album, Belong, which is actually how I heard about Playbutton. They're built with lithium batteries that you can recharge the things using a little USB connector. I'm going to be talking with (I think) Jim Colvill of Playbutton for the next issue.