Opinion: This music field is a ray of hope for a decadent tech trade

When Ben Drury was searching for his new child at a division retailer in London, he noticed one thing that made him grimace: A stroller on show had a holder for an iPad to maintain an toddler occupied.

“I remember having this visceral reaction against that, saying, ‘No way, this is really bad,’” he mentioned. In that second, Drury puzzled whether or not there was a know-how product he may create that was enriching for youngsters however not addictive.

That was 12 years in the past. Around the identical time, Drury, a digital music entrepreneur, additionally realised that with cassette tapes and compact discs now lengthy lifeless, the only means for fogeys to play audio for his or her youngsters was to open an app on a cellphone or pill with a touch-screen. A extra developmentally acceptable gadget would have bodily controls to assist little ones study to make use of their palms.

So Drury, now 50, and his enterprise companion, Filip Denker, 49, one other newly minted father on the time, started working making a product that they felt dad and mom desperately wanted: a music participant for youngsters.

The system, which might ultimately be named the Yoto Player, is a rubber-encased field that emits audio from a speaker when a toddler inserts a card right into a slot, much like a retro Nintendo that reads sport cartridges.

With thousands and thousands of units offered, the Yoto Player has since gained a cult following. Hundreds of its followers have even crafted Yoto equipment offered on Etsy, together with Yoto card organisers and cup holders for carrying the participant in a automotive seat. A competitor known as the Toniebox, one other screenless audio participant for youngsters, can also be gaining traction.

Yoto, which has grown to almost 250 workers scattered throughout the globe, makes a small revenue. (The firm, which earned about US$768,000 (RM3.12mil) in revenue in 2024, declined to share more moderen gross sales figures however mentioned it continued to be worthwhile.)

Yoto’s success might sound like a feel-good story a few mission-driven firm that’s being rewarded for doing the proper factor. But it’s additionally a tragic reminder of what Silicon Valley as soon as was earlier than the tech trade grew wildly out of contact with what individuals really need from know-how.

Nowadays, quite than empower individuals, most tech firms, of their pursuit of monumental progress and revenue, are extra targeted on creating merchandise that preserve individuals glued to screens and hooked on apps in order that they may ultimately take a look at adverts or pay a subscription charge for firms’ companies.

In the previous couple of years, widespread concern over extreme display screen time and the addictive nature of social media has culminated in cellphone bans in colleges around the globe, in addition to hundreds of lawsuits towards the tech giants. In March, a California jury discovered Meta and Google answerable for inflicting hurt by designing their merchandise to be addictive. Another trial associated to digital dependancy is predicted to start in July.

More just lately, synthetic intelligence firms like OpenAI and Anthropic have come within the crosshairs of kid security activists involved concerning the destructive impact of chatbots – which mechanically write essays, do homework and supply remedy – on training and youngsters’s psychological well being.

“Platforms built on algorithms and addiction are not built for children – they’re built for revenue,” mentioned Jim Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that evaluations merchandise for households. “The parental fatigue, the overall fatigue from tech, is very real.”

Yet the Yoto illustrates that there are nonetheless methods for tech firms to make a dwelling with wholehearted intentions. The product, which started in 2017 as a crowdfunded challenge on Kickstarter, began changing into a success in 2020, on the cusp of the coronavirus pandemic.

The firm now sells two sizes of the music participant, a smaller mannequin known as the Yoto Mini for US$80 (RM325) and the marginally bigger Yoto Player for US$110 (RM448). But it makes most of its revenue from gross sales of audio playing cards, that are offered via Yoto’s web site and shops like Amazon and Target. They usually price US$7 (RM28) to US$15 (RM61) every.

Songs and audiobooks reside on Yoto’s servers. Each card accommodates a digital key to unlock entry to the tracks. The recordsdata are then downloaded onto the participant for offline listening. Parents may purchase clean playing cards to hyperlink to their very own audio tracks that they add to Yoto’s cloud.

Popular playing cards embrace tunes from the film KPop Demon Hunters, the band Queen and even the Beatles, a serious feat for an organization this small, contemplating that Steve Jobs and Apple struggled for a few years to convey the Beatles catalogue to the iTunes Store due to a combat over the “Apple” trademark. (The Beatles based the media agency Apple Corps within the Nineteen Sixties, lengthy earlier than Jobs began a pc firm in his storage.)

It definitely helped that certainly one of Yoto’s buyers was Paul McCartney, whom Drury met in 2019 via his connections within the music trade. The Yoto Player aligned with McCartney’s pursuits as a result of the Beatles star had written a number of youngsters’s books.

When I obtained a Yoto Mini as a hand-me-down from a pal a few month in the past, I used to be uncertain I’d be impressed, till my 22-month-old daughter picked it up and started inserting playing cards. I used to be ecstatic.

She instantly grasped that every colourfully labelled card was related to totally different songs. This dad felt proud that his little woman’s favorite band was the Beatles. (Truth be informed, I used to be getting bored with listening to the youngsters’s songs mechanically beneficial by Spotify, like Baby Shark.) Above all, I beloved that she was including new phrases to her vocabulary, like “birthday” and “sunshine,” from songs she was selecting herself on the Yoto.

Yoto prominently markets its music gamers as “screen-free” units, though every has a miniature show. The tiny screens can present easy pixilated artwork and typography, equivalent to a birthday cake icon in reference to the Beatles’ “Birthday” observe or a chapter quantity for an audiobook.

Drury mentioned he known as this function a “pixel display,” as a result of it was not a display screen within the conventional sense that society had come to know one.

“Is it doing anything that’s in any way addictive or would require a kid to concentrate on that image?” he requested. “Could it display TikTok? Could it display YouTube? If the answer’s no, then it’s not a screen.” – ©2026 The New York Times Company

This article initially appeared in The New York Times.