February 22, 2026
Flip, tap, jam
The Musidex: A physical music library for the streaming era
Fans feud over a 'Spotify Rolodex'—genius nostalgia or peak hipster clutter
TLDR: A creator built the Musidex, a Rolodex of album cards with QR/NFC that launches streaming. Comments split between nostalgic fans calling it a tactile listening ritual and critics mocking it as hipster clutter, while DIYers share their own card projects and vinyl purists argue it misses the point.
Meet the Musidex: a literal Rolodex of album art with QR codes and an NFC tap-to-play knob. The creator built two, curated to one album per artist, and mounted it by the speakers like a colorful shrine. The internet instantly dubbed it the “Spotify Pokédex,” and the comments went full split-screen.
Team Nostalgia is swooning. They say flipping cards beats doomscrolling, turning listening into a living-room ritual. One fan calls it “adult trading cards for albums,” another says it’s like giving streaming a backbone. The tap-to-play NFC is getting claps too—“phone goes boop, speakers go boom,” joked a commenter.
But the skeptics are loud: “If you’re printing QR codes to play Spotify, just buy vinyl,” sniped the purists. Minimalists called it clutter cosplay, and curators panicked at the ‘one album per artist’ rule—cue chaotic threads debating Radiohead and Beyoncé picks. Practical folks warn QR links rot; when albums vanish from platforms, your card becomes a pretty coaster.
DIYers rolled in to flex: PaulHoule linked his own music cards that he decorates and shares, inspiring plans for party decks and mixtape card swaps. Meanwhile, memes crowned it “Magic: The Gathering—Album Edition.” Love it or roast it, everyone agrees: streaming made our favorites invisible, and this puts them back in our hands.
Key Points
- •The Musidex is a physical Rolodex of albums combining artwork, metadata, and QR codes for streaming playback.
- •An NFC tag on the device enables a phone to connect and broadcast audio to living room speakers.
- •Scripts parsed an old iTunes backup and a streaming playlist to compile album metadata, URLs, and art links.
- •Musidex I has about 300 pages, two albums per page, a one-album-per-artist rule, randomized order, and some playlist-linked pages.
- •Challenges included curation, matching iTunes entries to streaming versions via an external service, and unavailable tracks that couldn't be included without a local server.