{"id":573865,"date":"2026-07-29T13:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/573865\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T13:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:38:08","slug":"litejam-neo-and-ap30-music-boy-are-both-hits-on-kickstarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/573865\/","title":{"rendered":"Litejam Neo and AP30 Music Boy are both hits on Kickstarter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kickstarter has become a reliable launchpad for music hardware over the past decade. This week, two more projects are racking up the pledges on the crowdfunding platform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/litejam\/litejam-neo-a1-the-worlds-first-rgb-acoustic-guitar\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Litejam Neo<\/a>\u00a0is billed as \u201cthe world\u2019s first RGB electric acoustic guitar\u201d, designed as an educational aid for people who are learning to play, courtesy of its light-up fretboard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/hidizs\/ap30-music-boy-the-first-truly-wearable-hi-res-music-player\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">AP30 Music Boy<\/a>\u00a0is more of a fun gadget: a wearable hi-res music player \u201cinspired\u201d (heavily) by Nintendo\u2019s iconic Game Boy handheld complete with a playable \u2018Retro Block Puzzle Game\u2019 (yes, the one you think, but not officially so).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both projects set deliberately-low targets of $10k for their Kickstarter fundraising, and both have already raised much more than that from pledgers: more than $128k of pre-orders for the Litejam Neo and more than $257k for the AP30 Music Boy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This isn\u2019t traditional crowdfunding: it\u2019s canny marketing, with the low targets (and often well-planned pre-launch campaigns) designed to make projects trend on Kickstarter, and thus pull in more buyers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the AP30 Music Boy may seem like more of a novelty, it does tap into a trend we\u2019ve clocked recently: \u2018dumb device nostalgia\u2019. People looking back fondly at the pre-streaming times: iPod but even mini-disc players and old-school Walkman devices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Streaming on smartphones remains the dominant behaviour, of course, but there\u2019s money to be made in hardware projects that \u2018de-smartify\u2019 the listening experience\u00a0\u2013\u00a0including for some younger people who were in nappies when the devices they\u2019re nostalgic for were in their prime.<\/p>\n<p>Related Stories\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kickstarter has become a reliable launchpad for music hardware over the past decade. This week, two more projects&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[36121,28398,61,60,36113,1884,80],"class_list":["post-573865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-crowdfunding","tag-hardware","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kickstarter","tag-startups","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}