Musician Tom Vek is building the Sleevenote digital music player

Tom Vek burst onto the scene in 2005 with his album We Have Sound, which garnered a solid 7.6 from the tastemakers of the day over at Pitchfork. His undeniably catchy brand of dancy indietronica landed him an appearance on The OC and placement on the Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack. His follow-up, Leisure Seizure, had a lengthy gestation period, but arrived in 2011 to similar success, reaching No. 79 on the UK charts.

Vek has continued to release music at regular intervals over the last 15 years, dropping Newer Symbols in 2022. But in 2020 he started toying with this idea he had for a music player called Sleevenote. Inspired by vinyl packaging, it was his way of trying to bring some of the beauty and magic of cover art and liner notes to your digital audio. Securing parts, like square screens, proved difficult. Plus, the original prototype was enormous — roughly the size of a 7-inch single, just thicker and heavier.

Now Vek is back with a new version of Sleevenote that’s smaller, cheaper, and, for a little while longer, available to purchase. The last handful of the Day One Editions are available now for $349. As he turns his attention to the next chapter for his media player passion project, he told us about the essentials, his obsessions, and pet peeves as a musician-turned-entrepreneur.

What is your most indispensable tool (analog or digital, app or hardware)?

As much as I’d love to say my GMT wristwatch, because of all the communication we do with our friends in Seattle, and my love of wristwatches, the real answer has to be a MacBook. I’m either designing UI, designing graphics, retouching photos, or making videos, discussing ideas, implementing ideas, or hearing how my ideas go down. It truly is the motorbike for my mind. I have to see ideas to know whether I like them or not. I’m very fickle regarding industrial design of the tech I use and a big fan of the current “M” MacBooks, Apple kinda lost it for a bit.

How many tabs do you have open right now?

I get a lot of shit from Sleevenote co-founder Chris for how many tabs I have open, also in multiple Chrome profiles, you know, to the point the tabs get so narrow that you have to remember what it is from the favicon. I like coming back to things, as well as having a selection of regularly used things in a row. I find it useful for remembering all the social apps I’m meant to be posting my latest Sleevenote graphic to.

Which tech trend do you wish would go away?

This is a bit salty, but the trend for new retro-style CD players and cassette players. It is a great sign that people want offline dedicated music experiences, but I want to see new ideas. I’m specifically interested in ideas that push for digital music purchasing because it’s far better for musicians than buying that second-hand CD. I want my kids’ generation not to be stuck in a retro cycle, or a doomed big tech cycle. I want to see thoughtfully created indie tech products that could not have existed at any other time. Plus, I remember cassettes, they sound awful.

What is one thing you wish you had created?

I will answer this with a song: three years after my debut album, when I should have had my second album together, I heard “Jump In The Pool” by Friendly Fires, featuring one of the most stunning synth solos of all time. I would have loved to have created that song at that time. Especially since I’d pushed myself and my then manager fully-clothed into a pool around that time and hadn’t even thought to write a song about it.

What is your current obsession?
Been an obsession for quite a while but it’s still: carports in architecture. I’m a car guy, I’m a very visually-focused car guy. I’m not really fussed about performance or track racing or anything. My real love is the design of the automobile and how it’s an emotive expression of movement. The perfect abode to me has car(s) on show, not hidden away in a garage, but still protected, so the carport becomes this perfect idea. I’m obsessed with mid-century desert architecture which incorporated the automobile so well into the language of the house, but even in the rainy UK, being able to get in and out of your car without getting wet would just make me so happy, I think haha.

What’s the last piece of physical media you bought?
I buy lots of fiction books. I love a small paperback. I just picked up a book called The Cowards based purely on the cover. I’ve just finished a load of Steinbeck, so looking for something else. It’s funny that I often use the shortest elevator pitch “Sleevenote is a Kindle for music”, but I’ve never liked the idea of a digital book. Most people read one book at a time, but having all your music accessible at any one time is much more of a reason for a digitisation of a collection, it seems to me.

What do you think is worth splurging on?
Digital music downloads are worth splurging on. We’ve been led to believe there’s no point in buying anything digitally, but it’s standing in plain sight as the best thing to do with things like music. Not only does it send far greater support for artists, but it gives us music fans offline and time-stamped access to great art, and being encouraged to spend some time with a curated selection of art, we all know is good for the mind and soul. I want Sleevenote to enable this.

What would the tagline for your biopic be?

Encompassing all my work, I suspect it would be “Nothing But Green Lights”, the name of one of my songs, which I’d also apply to my work with other projects. It’s good, not always easy, to try to think there’s nothing in the way of going where you want to go.

What’s the last GIF or meme you used?