Tom Vek’s Sleevenote player is entering its next hardware phase as a limited Day One Edition, a dedicated device for digital music people own rather than another endpoint for Spotify. The musician, designer and Sleevenote CEO is pitching it around album packaging, lyrics, credits and images that usually get little room in conventional digital playback.
Sleevenote’s official site says the Day One Edition costs £249 in the UK and $349 in the US. It is a pre-production run rather than a polished mass-market gadget: its own sales page describes 100 hand-assembled prototypes running beta software, with updates intended to follow owner feedback. Buyers are also told there are no returns.
The sales status needs a little more precision than the usual launch-page fog. Sleevenote’s homepage says pre-orders are closed and that the first units will ship in June 2026. A separate official pre-order page also says orders are closed, while listing an earlier estimated delivery date of March 2026. The Verge reported on August 8 that a final handful of Day One Editions were available for $349. Taken together, those accounts do not establish a single current availability or delivery date.
What does the Tom Vek Sleevenote player do?
The Day One Edition plays music files that owners transfer or sync to its 256GB of storage. Sleevenote says it will not connect to streaming services. It has an 87 by 87 by 27mm body, a four-inch square touchscreen, five dedicated music controls and a lock button. Output options include a 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth and USB-C digital audio for a user’s DAC, amplifier or speakers.
The screen is the point of the exercise. Sleevenote says artists can provide full sleeve and booklet artwork, as well as extra images, lyrics and credits, through its artist-upload system. The company also says the player can handle hi-resolution audio, though it does not provide testing details on the public product page.
Why is Sleevenote avoiding the retro label?
Vek’s idea is aimed at digital ownership, not a return to CDs or cassettes. The machine uses file transfers, a touchscreen, Bluetooth and USB-C, while its physical square shape borrows the visual role of a record sleeve. In a 2025 interview with Synth History, Vek said vinyl appealed to him chiefly for its large artwork rather than its “crackly” playback.
That distinction has been part of the project from the beginning. Sleevenote started as an app for viewing album art on a phone, according to It’s Nice That. Its 2020 crowdfunding-era design was nearly the size of a seven-inch record and proposed support for Apple Music and Spotify. That is historical baggage, not a feature list for the current hardware.
Vek’s stated rationale was that digital artwork had been diminished and that music played through multipurpose devices competes with other apps for attention. The product’s answer is a deliberately single-purpose player. Whether listeners will pay £249 or $349 for that narrower experience is still an open question, especially while the first batch remains prototype hardware with shifting public shipping information.
The Verge describes the current revision as smaller and cheaper than the earlier prototype. It also reported that sourcing square screens had delayed development. Chris Hipgrave, Sleevenote’s CTO, is listed as the software engineer on the project alongside Vek.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
