🔵 Playing with the Sleevenote digital audio player

A better way to enjoy your music?

Hello everyone -

Last week I attended the excellent MIA (Music Is the Answer) event here in London. It’s a networking affair, bringing together tech startups, smart people, marketing folk like me and all manner of other movers and shakers. It also has some terrific DJing going on.

At the event I bumped into Tom Vek, someone I’ve been chatting to via email for some time now. Tom runs Sleevenote, and the company’s latest development is a dedicated music player. I’ve seen the blurb about it on the website, but my ears pricked up when Tom mentioned that he had a prototype player with him if I’d like to play with it.

So I did. And I got photographed by Tom whilst doing so:

bearded man (possibly the author) plays with Sleevenote

The device itself is a square, with the artwork taking centre stage as one might expect, given the company’s name. Swipe down and you can see the tracks on the release. Swipe up and you can see your collection, all arranged as cover art, which you can then flick up or down through to find the albums of your choice.

Swipe left and right, and on the four inch screen you see the other artwork around the album - the rear cover art, the sleevenotes etc.

Simple then, and yet something I couldn’t stop playing with.

yours truly, playing with the Sleevenote player

I think at this point I wouldn’t be shocked if most of you are reading this thinking “meh - who needs another player”, and I think that’s an understandable position to take. This kind of player is - at the outset certainly - something of a luxury purchase. Once it breaks past the prototype run, Tom tells me the price could come down fairly substantially as the economies of scale kick in, which would certainly be positive for sales.

What really stuck with me though was just the experience of this all. I’ve written about my move to Qobuz this year, and how I felt the experience of that was superior, largely due to its uncluttered approach and general design elegance. I would argue the same applies to the Sleevenote player: it is something that, whilst digital, does everything it can to engage you with the artist and their art. In most respects, it’s an update to the era of sitting in your room, 12” sleeve in your hands, nosing the liner notes and generally soaking up the vibe and aesthetic as the music plays. On some weird, deep level, it very much took me back to caring about not just the music, but the artwork and the whole aesthetic being presented. It’s been a long while since that happened.

That, to me, is a powerful - and deeply underrated - thing in 2025. Emily White’s recent piece about the growing (re)adoption of iPods among younger demographics speaks to this, and on a personal level I am seeing more and more people speculate about a more offline existence, favouring ownership and offline access over the convenience of Spotify et al.

Is Sleevenote the next zeitgeist gadget? No; I’d argue it is almost a luxury product of sorts, in that one has no need per se to own one, given your phone can play MP3s, and everyone owns one of those.

But that is to miss the point here. This is about the experience of enjoying music, and what I loved was how it got me admiring the artwork, reading the notes and generally immersing myself back into everything. Bizarrely it got me thinking back to those days of ‘iTunes+’ albums, that featured more liner notes and artwork etc on iTunes-only releases.

In 2025, I find myself craving that connection back to the music in this deeper manner, and Sleevenote really spoke to that. I could see myself playing songs, reading artwork and… that’s it. Not flicking through socials, not checking my email - just listening and enjoying that connection with the music and the art. Less distraction, more connection.

I wish them all the best. It would be great to see this as a mass-produced device. In the meantime, I’ve ordered one of the prototype models. Call it a pre-Christmas treat. We should support things we believe in, so I’ve put my money where my mouth is.

Have a great day

D.

🎶 Listening to “Timeless (25th Anniversary Edition)” by Goldie. I actually bought this a couple of months ago at Raves From The Grave in Frome, Somerset. When I pass indie record stores, I feel a karmic need to go and spend some money in there. This whole industry gave me my career, and I feel that need to pay something back. So, I bought this, further reinforcing that I am an appalling blagger, given Because Music (and until recently London Records) are clients, and I assume procuring a gratis copy might have been possible. But I digress; I still proudly own the original album, and couldn’t resist grabbing this for the instrumentals and remixes. Random fact: I saw Goldie performing this live at a festival in Brighton back in about 1996. The toilets for the event were all around the back of the Metalheadz tent, and as I queued to use the facilities, the sub bass dropped so heavy and hard that a man just fell, utterly dazed, from the metal portaloo as if someone had struck it with a sledgehammer. I was laughing for days.

📺 Watching “Dry The Rain - live on KEXP” by The Beta Band. God I love this band. I love this song, I love the Three EPs comp, I love everything about them. Nothing more to add. (Just realised that Because Music also now own this release too… and once again I failed to tap anyone up for freebies. I’m either a saint or an idiot. Probably the latter.)

📖 Reading “Body of Work” by Keith Jopling. Keith was kind enough to send me a promotional copy, which I’ve just started on, and so far I am loving it. This is arguably a love song to the album as a format, and perhaps in that sense its timing chimes well with that Sleevenote player experience above. Pre-order your copy now, and whilst you’re here, consider subscribing to Keith’s own substack. He’s a great writer - to such an extent that he also holds the (possibly dubious) accolade of being the first guest contributor to Network Notes back in September of last year with this gem.

---