Atonemo and NTS launch Radio Player with icon wheel for genre selection
Swedish tech company Atonemo and online radio station NTS have partnered up to produce a pocket-sized player designed for "omakase listening" – a curated music experience decided by "someone whose taste you trust".
The Atonemo NTS Radio Player is a small wireless music streamer that plugs into any speaker or amplifier and lets users select audio to match their mood using physical buttons, without reaching for their phone or computer.
Listeners make their choice by turning a wheel to cycle between NTS's 16 "Infinite Mixtapes" – human-curated music-only themed radio streams, each represented on the dial by an emoji-like icon such as a happy face, sun or microphone.
They can also hit one of two big round buttons, aligning to the live radio channels NTS Radio 1 and 2.
The Atonemo NTS Radio Player builds on the station's reputation for programming diverse, high-quality but little-known music curated by its community of artists, music producers, DJs and record collectors.
Atonemo co-founder and designer Noah Constantinou compared the appeal of the station and the player to the Japanese concept of "omakase", which is used in restaurants when diners let the chef choose the dishes, rather than picking from the menu themselves.
"We think of this as omakase listening: you hand over the decision to someone whose taste you trust, and you get something better than anything you'd have chosen yourself," said Constantinou.
"NTS has been doing that for over a decade. We just wanted to make sure you could hear it on speakers worthy of the music."
Like Atonemo's flagship product, the Streamplayer, the NTS Radio Player is designed to work with any speaker or amplifier, turning old technology that people have around their house or vintage purchases into equipment capable of streaming music from the internet.
It includes a 3.5mm analogue output and high-quality playback, with 24-bit resolution and a sampling frequency of 192 kilohertz (kHz).
Constantinou said that he intentionally designed the device to have a minimal look and invite touch through details such as a bowl shape to the buttons.
"I think people miss tactile objects," Constantinou told Dezeen. "We have become so used to putting screens on everything when it is in many cases not necessary, and even sometimes counterproductive."
"I never think about what something should or shouldn't have, but rather about what it needs to fulfil its function in the simplest way possible. And at the same time, being inviting and intuitive."
The icons around the dial echo the same ones used for the Infinite Mixtapes on the NTS website. These include a violin for classical music, a trumpet for jazz and a safety pin for post-punk.
A peace sign is the symbol for Memory Lane, a throwback playlist dedicated to counter-cultural folk, psychedelia and soul, while the lotus flower indicates Slow Focus, a stream dedicated to ambient, relaxing and beatless sound.
A waveform represents one of NTS's most unusual offerings, Field Recordings, with a listener-submitted archive of sounds they have recorded in their homes, suburbs, cities, gardens and jungles.
As well as playing music from NTS, the Radio Player is compatible with AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect for streaming from other platforms.
The Atonemo NTS Radio Player comes at a time when many music fans are trying to decouple their listening from the algorithmically generated playlists that are a feature of streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music and seek out more diverse, human-led experiences.
This has also led to a boom in vinyl record sales, which grew nearly 10 per cent in the US from 2024 to 2025, and the production of evermore creative record players, such as Waiting for Ideas' minimalist PP-1 and Brian Eno's light-up Turntable.
The Atonemo NTS Radio Player's wheel recalls another much-loved classic of physical media player design — the Apple iPod.
The post Atonemo and NTS launch Radio Player with icon wheel for genre selection appeared first on Dezeen.
