IKEA and the popular DJ trio, the Swedish House Mafia, are collaborating to release a record player this fall.
Both brands, which are Swedish in origin, decided to work together and release a hardware that is inspired by the trio's music.
According to IKEA, the electronic dance music artists Swedish House Mafia work together to explore music and creativity in the house in order to make life easier for anyone who creates music, performs music, plays music, or simply enjoys music.
Yesterday, on June 9, at the IKEA Festival during the 2022 Milan Design Week, the Swedish furniture brand announced the upcoming release of their new collection. This collection will come out this fall and will include a record player, a music production desk, and an armchair.
IKEA and Swedish House Mafia
The collaborated record player is stated to be chunky-looking hardware. According to the IKEA designer, Friso Wiersma, "The solid, chunky design gives the player a presence in the room. It transmits the physicality of music in the collection, making it really claim space with the attitude of music woven into it - rather than making it blend."
IKEA and Swedish House Mafia have collaborated on this collection to explore the themes of music and creativity in the house with the goal of making day-to-day life simpler for numerous people who are inclined to music, whether that be listening or creating music.
This record player will be included in the IKEA fall collection 2022, called the OBEGRÄNSAD collection. In addition to that, this collection will also bring about more than twenty different home furnishing products.
The other pieces of furniture that will be released will also revolve around music. They will help living spaces become more suitable to the requirements of music makers and music enthusiasts all around the world.
Ikea's Record Player
The release of the OBEGRÄNSAD record player is stated to be in celebration of the timeless joy brought by the experience of listening to vinyl records. The record player is described as having a modern, sleek, and minimal design and is built with the ENEBY speaker.
The technical capabilities of the record player are a bit scarce. However, according to The Verge, the website provides a few descriptions of the product that slightly paints its upcoming feature. Some of these functionalities are the built-in preamp, that it is powered by USB, and that it offers a changeable cartridge and needle.
As mentioned, this will be enabled by the Eneby Bluetooth speaker. However, due to the fact that the player itself does not support Bluetooth, it will only function when connected to the speaker via a cable connection.
On the other hand, IKEA did not make it apparent whether the record player has speakers that are built-in or whether it can only produce sound through cable output.
The record player that Ikea has launched isn't technically the company's first offering in this category. IKEA engineer Carmen Stoicescu stated that, "We actually tried to do a record player before, so we could use the same supplier maybe."
It was revealed way back in 2018 that the company would be working with Teenage Engineering to create a turntable, and that they planned to release it the year after that.
However, one of the support pages provided by Teenage Engineering claims that the player was never included in the released collection of the brand.
