Spine aims to restore a pleasure music streaming stole – but the vinyl and CD revival already accomplished it

Technology is always trying to reverse engineer the small pleasures that advancements in the sector took from us. It was only after music libraries went digital and music streaming services began to dominate that people realised they actually quite liked scanning the shelf for something to put on, when nothing immediately sprang to mind. It birthed a billion ‘ah, I haven’t heard that for a while’ journeys of rediscovery

However, a £949 screen slash ‘art display’ that impersonates a compact disc shelf, where you can swipe through the album spines saved in your streaming library, is looking to restore that pleasure. London-based Spine Music reckons streaming made our music collections invisible and wants to change that.

Loads of people already realised this and overcame it by reviving, sticking with and reinvesting in their physical media collections. However, splashing out almost a grand on a piece of hardware that neither benefits artists nor really restores the purely tactile intentional feeling of putting on a record or CD is another option, I guess.

“The albums are still there, saved, followed, loved, but buried inside an app. No shelves to browse No “I can’t believe you listen to this too!” moments. No covers on the wall,” the company says on the Kickstarter project page seeking (successfully I might add) to get the project funded. “Spine is a wall-mounted display that turns your streaming library into browsable album spines. The covers you know by heart, back in the room, where you can look at them and reach for them.”

By splashing out almost a grand on Spine, you can hook up to Apple Music, Tidal and Spotify, browse the items you’ve saved to your digital library, and tap any of them to play them on the speakers you already own (translation: it doesn’t have speakers). It’s like a really fancy hardware version of the Cover Flow interface from iTunes all those years ago, which sought to eliminate a similar problem on the iPod.

The design has a luxury feel with an aluminium bar and etched anti-glare glass and it would absolutely look fantastic in the right environment with that faithfully reproduced album artwork. I can definitely see the advantages of this 76cm bar – which can be wall-mounted to mimic a shelf or placed on an existing surface – as a communal device if you’re having people over a lot and love to share you music collection. Our guests enjoy flicking through the vinyl shelf and you can’t move me from other people’s either.

And enough people are committing interest to ensure it gets made. At the time of writing it has 148 backers pledging over £116,000 (about $148,000). Creator Ricardo Amorim only sought £10,000 (around $13,000) so it looks like it’s going to come to fruition.

Spine will retail for £949 (around $1,250), but you can pledge now and get it for £849 ($1,135).