Ongoing History Daily: Have you ever heard about this weird digital music playback device?

Around the turn of the millennium when digital music was still a very new thing, no one knew how this new technology would play out. What format? What devices? How would piracy be controlled? There were plenty of attempts to figure this out.

Bill Wyman, the ex-bassist of the Rolling Stones, launched one of the more interesting (and doomed) ideas. In September 1999, he became the first major artist to release an album on a personalized digital MP3 player. The thing—it cost 50 pounds—was about the size of a matchbox, so close to a choking hazard. The music was encrypted using a made-in-UK system to prevent piracy. Only four tracks were available with two tracks split across two eight-megabyte memory cards, meaning you had to swap out the cards (which WERE choking hazards) after listening to just two songs.

The device was really just a proof-of-concept thing, but it didn’t catch on. The iPod changed everything two years later.