I have Sonos speakers in my flat. In combination with Spotify, this allows me to play just about whatever music I want, in whichever rooms of the flat, simply by opening the Sonos app on my phone and searching for the artist. The biggest challenge is deciding what to listen to.
I also have a record player in my flat, and a number of vinyl records, in nice sleeves with nice cover art. Even though putting on a record is much less convenient than opening Sonos on my phone, I still get a lot from having them around – primarily the ability to wonder over and flick through a big pile of album art to help decide what I want to listen to: something which is lost by music streaming services.
I had an idea for how I could combine the two; keep the convenience and low cost of music streaming, but also retain a physical presence for my music collection (in my case a pile of records).
The solution is built using a webcam and some Python code (using SimpleCV, SoCo libraries) – take a look at it in action.