Today’s a really special day for me, because today we break cover and announce what we’ve been working on for the last eight months at Lume.

It’s actually been a lot longer than that. The very first conversations I had with my co-founders Dunc and Justin were like three years ago now, and at least for the last two years we’ve been meeting regularly to kick the project around. Then we brought on our fourth co-founder Tim, assembled a small team of mighty avengers, and decided to go for it in September last year. It’s been an absolute labour of love.

I’ve never considered myself a “serious” music person because I grew up in that warped and gendered way that said there was a heirarchy of cool and the pop and musical theatre I loved was right at the bottom. But I’ve loved music since my parents’ vinyl collection introduced me to Simon & Garfunkel and Creedence and The Beatles, through the family road trips where we graduated from thrashing The Muppets soundtrack to Linda Rondstadt and the Travelling Wilburys in the car. My first albums were cassettes from Tiffany and Madonna and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. I skipped out early on an exam to see Michael Jackson’s HIStory tour at Mt Smart. My first ipod was full of limewire downloads of mashups by 2ManyDJs and Danger Mouse. There was The OC soundtrack era. And more recently (as I’ve cared less and less what other people think) there’s been Carly Rae, and Beyoncé, and Taylor, and Harry, and Lorde.

And at the heart of all of it is the thing I care about most: my fellow stans. I’ve had some of the best nights of my life at concerts — singing my lungs out alongside tens of thousands of others caught up in the same ecstatic joy. I’ve shared that anticipation of a new album from a fave. Of wanting to put everything down and listen from the opening notes to the last and just concentrate on that gift that an artist pours their heart and their soul into and then pushes out into the world.

And I’ve felt it as more and more people turn their attention to fandom as nothing more than an economy. We just talked about how fans are more than their wallets. The relationship you have with a musician or band you really care about isn’t just transactional. And it sucks when the parts of it that have to be transactional (like tickets and merch and meet&greets) feel more and more extractive.

Our vision with Lume is to put the album front and centre again, in an era where so much of our music experience is passively consumed on tiktok and through streaming playlists and algorithmic feeds. Artists spend so much time and care and thought into crafting an album. They think about what tracks make it and in what order. They design artwork and videography. They care about the lyrics and liner notes. And then we so rarely get to experience that whole world as they intended it because it’s chopped up into reels and singles and trending sounds.

So we want to give it a proper digital home. Not just the core album, but everything around it that an artist wants to share. No two Lumes are going to look the same. We have artists in the office scanning their notebooks and scrolling through their photo roll to dig up treasures. Lume lets them add alternate versions or demos or stems. It lets them add interviews they did on radio, or live versions or covers. The kinds of things their most dedicated fans have always wanted to see, together in one place. A deep, immersive experience that does the album justice. Queue, not feed. And the best bit is, as a fan, you buy it once and own it forever.

Here’s the cool part. For every Lume sold, 80% of the net revenue goes to the artist and their partners, among the highest rates in the industry. Buying a Lume is the same financially as around 3000 streams. You know the money you’re spending is going where the artist wants it. And for the first time when you buy an album, the artist is going to know that you did. They can contact you (if you let them) and let you know about presales and listening parties and new songs or whatever it is that they want to share. We’ve built this from the ground up for artists and every meeting we have with them gets us more excited about the plans we have for the future.

We’re starting deliberately small with a launch slate of incredible musicians from Aotearoa New Zealand next month. We want to be sure everything about the experience is working for both artists and fans before we expand, first to Australia and then (hopefully) everywhere. If Lume sounds like something you’d be into for an artist you love, you can follow us on insta and sign up to hear more on our site.

And don’t worry, this newsletter will continue to be its own special mix of gay hockey players and bad tv shows and musings on the future of the internet and pictures of the moon. Now you just know what I’m doing at my day job as well.

more good stuff

• staying on theme, loved this art installation where washing machines were repurposed as jukeboxes in laundromats to play unreleased “c sides”.

  

• Jack Antonoff on the And The Writer Is podcast, describing singles as pathways and the album as god.

• This great NYT story about Cue the Record, a vinyl listening club in Brooklyn where people gather to listen to an album all the way through.

  

finally, in my lego city

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