One from Olive

The Olive One is a ground-breaking, all-in-one, networked music player that its makers hope will revolutionise the whole process of playing music in the home.

It will stream music off the owner’s home network, off the internet from sources such as Spotify, Pandora and YouTube, or play music from their smartphone, PC or Mac. An optional hard disk will further allow the unit to store “up to 6000 albums in CD quality or 20,000 HD tracks”.

Olive’s video below tells the full story of the One:

The stylish One is circular in shape and is constructed from Glass and Aluminium.

Says Olive: ONE is built on an open architecture and we have therefore launched it through the popular crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. This allows us to engage music lovers, artists and app developers early in the development process. We have set up a sophisticated voting system that allows backers of the project to participate in all key decisions we make regarding the product.

As part of the crowdfunding process, Olive is offering “entry tickets” to join “the biggest music revolution since Apple’s iPod“. Its customers can get $50 and $100 gift cards that can be applied to the purchase of an Olive ONE later, and entitles the owner (or gifted) to participate in the development of ONE.

Announced in December 2012, The Olive ONE is expected to be offered for sale in the summer of 2013, for $399.

About the Author

Malcolm Steward Writing about audio professionally since the mid-1980s has been a fantastically enjoyable and satisfying task but also a hardening one: it has forced upon me an honesty that I feel compelled to share with my readers. This has not made me popular with those manufacturers who rate success and wealth above integrity... and there are a few of those! I can live with that, though, because the gear the 'good guys' produce more than makes up for all manner of ills! Stereo is still fun, even after forty years... Thank God!