SLEEVENOTE INSPIRES A RETURN TO A DECENTRALIZED MUSIC SCENE

I first saw Sleevenote on Substack. It’s a new music player with no streaming option, playing only music files you’ve bought and own. From their website:

The time has come to get serious about supporting music makers and valuing the music you love. Audition stuff on your phone and what you LOVE, you buy and put it on your Sleevenote.

I’ve been emailing with CEO Tom Kell a bit, and we’ve definitely hit upon the irony of the statement “nobody buys music,” and that everyone just does streaming now. Says Tom:

The statement “nobody buys music” is not true with the relatively healthy vinyl resurgence. The thing is people aren’t buying things that they don’t need to buy, and when buying vinyl (and to a lesser degree merch), music fans are often compelled by the motivation that they are “supporting the artist” with these purchases, and getting some form of physical and tactile experience (for however fleeting) in response. When subscription-based music access came along it cut the legs off the need to buy digital music, for a like-for-like experience – music on your phone. With Sleevenote, all our efforts are going in to making digital music feel more special, and now our ethical responsibility is, if we’re helping make it feel more special, it should now be worth more, and we do everything we can to put friction in the way to achieve that. In the topsy-turvy digital world, people pay for the removal of friction, ads are added so an ad-free version seems valuable.

What challenges are there to include streaming options into a device?

We’ve worked on several products using DSP APIs and while immediately it seems too good to be true, that you can tap into a huge amount of content, you soon realize the limitations to firstly build a business of your own around it, but most importantly to have any reassurance of the service agreement, in short; Spotify could pull the music from your service for any reason at any time. We don’t want to build products on this shaky ground, especially when they aren’t bringing any cultural value to the table.

What would it actually take to build the “perfect” ethical service?

After seeing several failed attempts, I’m broadly of the belief that it is actually impossible to build the ethical streaming service that could have broad appeal, and that’s not saying broad as in users, it’s broad to cover most average music fan’s broad taste.

Even the hippest music fan will like something owned by Universal. The only way it will happen is with an unbelievable amount of cash or influence, TIDAL could probably do it if they really tried, seems like Qobuz is promising.

But broadly I don’t think my listening habits exactly reflect my actual music appreciation. Yes I want to give the artist soundtracking my drive more money than when I’m cooking, I want to give the artist who’s album I actively put on to listen in its entirety the most. The best filter for this is buying what you really like, and sure, pay to stream the rest and audition stuff. The physical separation of Sleevenote as a device is useful, there’s a literal barrier in the way, so if you like something a lot, you pay to get it on your Sleevenote.

How does decentralization shift power back to artists?

I’m a fan of the decentralized nature of digital downloads, it gives fans the choice of where they like to buy from, and more importantly artists the choice of where they sell their music. The conundrum of whether to boycott a service with a monopoly of users is just something we need to eradicate as quickly as possible. We’ve worked on other products dealing with “verified editions” so we have some ideas there too.

Instead of building the impossible streaming alternative, I see a cultural evolution for music being built on its own, to the point where between supporting curated radio stations you love (like NTS) and being able to audition music on sites like Bandcamp, music fans might wonder why they’re even paying to stream at all.

As I’ve said almost a year ago, “maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.” Having just one or two services (like Spotify and Apple Music) control the digital distribution of music is not ideal, which is maybe why we need to stop sending all our fans to those services.

This post isn’t sponsored, I just really like this product, and I believe this is a solid step in the right direction for the independent music scene.

Learn more about Sleevenote on their website: https://sleevenote.com