FEATURE:
Digital Vinyl
IN THIS PHOTO: Tom Vek has launched a Crowdfunder for a new playing device, Sleevenote/PHOTO CREDIT: Gabriel Green
Sleevenote and the Physical Music Device
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I am going to tie together…
PHOTO CREDIT: @fixelgraphy/Unsplash
two different ideas and theories because, with music consumption becoming more digital and less tangible, I do yearn for those days of the physical music device. With Spotify and other streaming services not offering artists a great fee and slice of the pie, I do worry about the market and whether artists will forego streaming sites because of the payment discrepancies – larger artists who stream millions are alright, but most artists receive hardly anything. I have always preferred physical music because, not only do you feel more money goes to artists – though one feels the labels get a big cut -, but the listener experience feels purer and engaging. In a similar vein, I love physical devices and playing music through a turntable. One reason why I connected with music at such a young age is because the social connection and exposure came through sharing cassettes and listening to music in a physical form. I remember owning a cassette player/boombox and playing albums with friends. I know a lot of people listen to music through their phones, but I think there is a big difference between experiencing music that way and the old-style devices. Whilst it is not a return to the past and the days of listening to music through hardware, I am interested in any technology that can help bridge the reliance and need for digital music, together with cool new pieces of kit.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sleevenote/Tom Vek
I was reading NME a little while back. They covered the news regarding a new innovation from musician Tom Vek. Sleevenote sounds like a real interesting idea:
“After six years away, Tom Vek has been very busy indeed. Today, he unveils the fruits of his labour by dropping his surprise new album ‘New Symbols’ and unveiling a new music playing device that he’s designed, by launching the Crowdfunder for Sleevenote.
Described as a “visual hi-fi” device and “the music player for album lovers”, Sleevenote is a stand-alone music player that “brings hi-definition, full fidelity album artwork to digital music” and allows the listener to fully appreciate and engage with an album’s sleeve and visuals. He’s launched a crowdfunder today to find the first 1,000 people to buy a Sleevenote and get them into production.
Hello Tom. How do your new album and Sleevenote relate to each other?
Tom Vek: “Over the last few years I’ve been working as a designer and met a software developer. That’s what led to the Sleevenote project. The excitement of that coming together is what spurred me into getting the record finished. I was excited about it being so unusual for a musician, as my interests have grown into design and product design, because I need that extra excitement. When I was a teenager, releasing an album was the most exciting thing. Now I’m quite excited that the album is part of a bigger picture. I figured that I’m going to have to go crazy on Sleevenote marketing-wise – and I can’t say that I’m a recording artist if I haven’t released an album in six years!”
PHOTO CREDIT: @blockerphoto/Unsplash
So, what does it do?
“It’s all about keeping each album’s identity going. When albums are presented inside a clean interface, it puts it behind a sheet of glass and inside a box to make for a more ‘tasteful’ user experience. Whereas with us, the character of the record is right up there and up front. It has interactive tracklist art where you tap the name of the song into the art to play it. That will be different for every album, so they’ll be in different places. We can also bring back the hidden track. Whoever made it so you could just see ‘hidden track’ on Spotify and iTunes, that’s such a joyless decision.”
And it’s just about the music?
“I like the idea of going back to listening to music on something that isn’t a multi-use device. You can just enjoy it without checking another feed or getting a notification or an email or whatever. It’s just an ideal setting for enjoying an album and getting lost in the art. You can look at this standalone thing and know that’s where your music is”.
In this feature with It’s Nice That, we get more details when it comes to the Sleevenote concept and what the physical product will actually consist:
“Album artwork has always been the handle, the grip to pin down the sort-of shapeshifting nature of music,” Vek tells It’s Nice That. “It’s like ‘that’s what it looks like, that album that has that song on it that I love’. The signifier is all-powerful, you see an album cover you like and it releases all these memories and feelings you have associated with the record, you can almost hear it.”
The device is square, almost the size of a 7” record, with a high-resolution display, designed to show covers in all their glory. It has a touch screen but also physical buttons on top, to keep the user interface away from the artwork. But the most important bit is the world of artwork it unlocks. The Sleevenote database already holds over 1,000 album covers and booklet artwork images, but Vek and his developer Chris Hipgrave have also built a platform for designers, labels and fans to upload album art. Once approved, it will automatically show up in the device and apps for everyone to enjoy. The player can also be used a “music vault” for your owned music, and supports streaming platforms Apple Music and Spotify, with more to be added on demand. It also uses Sleevenote API to source new artwork when requested.
“The crux of the product harks back to music and artwork being intrinsically linked. On the Indiegogo page, Vek says that digital music is “great for discovery but not so great for an immersive album experience” and that people usually listen to music on a multi-use device, where it competes for attention with other apps. In the transition to digital, album art has been “miniaturised and compromised” he says, and Sleevenote aims to lead “the digital album artwork revolution”.
On the £533 price tag he adds that prospective customers are “people with a certain amount of cash to invest in a cool bit of digital music tech, who have nice hi-fi gear, and also a nice bluetooth speaker, a Sonos setup, people who like minimal setups, who are digital-only, or still want a great place for stuff they can’t get on vinyl. If you like the idea of having friends over and saying “put some music on” and it being from your collection, not ‘hey find something, anything on Spotify’, or having those moments where you are like ‘what music I have liked?’, and actually liked, not what an algorithm thinks you will like. It’s great seeing the rise of Bandcamp, and I think it’s the perfect device for saying ‘I want to buy that album and get stuck into it, I’m going to put it somewhere valuable’”.
I do like the idea of Sleevenote and what Vek is trying to accomplish and, looking forward, I wonder whether there will be any other physical devices. I don’t necessarily like how there is so much reliance on the digital and, apart from vinyl, how often do we experience music physically? I think a lot of people who listen to C.D.s do so in their cars, and I wonder how many are listening to them through hi-fis.
PHOTO CREDIT: @thanospal/Unsplash
I think we will see a decline in non-vinyl physical music in years to come as more and more people are either listening to music through streaming services and their phones or, when they do listen physically, it is through a record player – which are, obviously, fixed and you cannot take them with you. Sleevenote seems like a great way of experiencing an album and artwork in a similar way to those who listen to and digest vinyl. Not that I want a return to the past when music listening was entirely through devices, but I do miss that experience of hearing physical music on the go and having that sort of connection! Cassette sales are rising, and I think it more than mere nostalgia. Maybe people do feel unethical streaming or paying so little for music, but I reckon many just want a more human bond with music. The long-gone days of the mixtape seems strange when we consider the number of playlists that are around. I wonder whether anyone will make a device that maybe embraces a digital mixtape. I actually like the new boom of cassettes, and it would be great to see a modern version of the Walkman produced – I think it is quite hard to procedure Walkmans now! Similarly, iPods and Discmans have gone out of fashion and, when digital music started to take hold, there was a waning demand for physical devices.
IN THIS PHOTO: The Sony Walkman TPS-L2 was first introduced in 1979
I feel the rise in people buying cassettes, vinyl and even C.D.s does signal that people want to listen to physical music. I think we would see a new generation experience music how I did – in a more physical and sociable way – if there was a resurgence in playing devices. Sleevenote, I think, is just the start of people coming up with new ways of staying current and modern but reconnecting people to the visual and physical aspect of music. Maybe it would not be a magic cure when it comes to funding artists and ensuring they are compensated, but I am fascinated by technology that looks forward but also takes us back. Maybe someone will invent a device that can combine vinyl and something more portable; perhaps a twenty-first century Walkman that also has a digital element, or a revitalisation of the iPod that would give people access to a digital library, but there would be new features (like Sleevenote) that expose and promulgate the importance of the album as an artform. I also like the concept of having a device that lets someone buy a song or album, but they can remix the song and isolate various tracks – a forensic approach to music where you can dissect songs and albums and maybe rearrange the track order. I am also still hooked on the romantic notion of a mixtape and whether a piece of kit could come about where one could buy tracks online from a device that would then instantly put them onto a cassette. I like the new-style SONY Walkman that, although not as evocative and special as the original, does at least keep the name alive. There are devices like Mighty that hooks the physical to the digital, and there are some good MP3 players around. There are not that many devices which encourage the use of C.D.s, cassettes and vinyl but bond it with digital technology – most of what is on the market is people streaming and downloading music and playing that through a device. I am interested to see what 2021 brings and, with great new releases like Sleevenote, I think more and more people will experience, explore and appreciate the album…
IN THIS PHOTO: The MYMAHDI M350 MP3 Player
AS a physical format.