Why pay to listen to music? A new Santa Cruz lounge is betting on the power of vinyl

Sometime back in the 1990s, a downtown business on Pacific Avenue attempted to sell oxygen. There was a little corner booth at which you donned an apparatus to inhale oxygen infused with your choice of aromas for however long you wished — after which, of course, you left the store and continued breathing oxygen, for free. The business didn’t last.

Skeptics might look at what Jeremy Stone is up to with the same jaundiced eye. Why would I buy what I can easily get for free? This fall, Stone, a Santa Cruz producer, studio tech and entrepreneur, is opening another downtown business called Sonivore. And his product will be music — or more directly, the act of listening to music. 

Music, these days, is everywhere — cheap if not free, readily within reach, instantaneous, ubiquitous. For most people, both the public and the private realms are awash in it. With a well-charged pair of earbuds, it would be easier to get through a typical day with a constant flow of music than without hearing music at all. 

Sonivore is to be a “listening lounge,” in which music lovers can visit, choose from a wide variety of albums (vinyl only, of course), and sit in a space to listen to their chosen album on a turntable, with corded, non-Bluetooth headphones, as if it were 1979 all over again. (The business is in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to raise $75,000 for its opening. As of publication time, it’s about halfway to its goal.) 

Sure, there will be those who scoff at such a business plan and view it merely as Oxygen Bar 2.0. But music is not oxygen. It’s a beloved American art form — and for millions of people, a foundational part of identity and culture. For many, it’s as crucial for the nourishment of the soul as oxygen is to the survival of the body. 

What the skeptics ignore in this case is the enormous cultural trend from all over the world in recent years to restore the sanctity of music in our daily lives. The ease and pervasiveness of ambient background music has gradually devalued it and robbed it of its power. The return of the vinyl format at the expense of digital and streaming formats is not a fad. It’s been building for a couple of decades now. It’s an earnest effort to return to “intentional listening,” to rescue music from its current commercial state as a kind of chewing gum for the mind, an almost subconscious soundtrack to shopping for broccoli or waiting for a light to change.

Apparently, Sonivore is part of that cultural wave. Its name is a clever portmanteau, combining “sonic” with the suffix describing one’s diet, as in “omnivore.” But, given my own album collection and streaming services, what does Sonivore give me that I don’t already have?

“Access to a community of like-minded individuals,” said Stone, who started his business as a recording studio a few years ago on the Westside, “giving you an environment that is both outside your norm, and is specifically tailored for you to have a curated experience.”

We’re talking in Sonivore’s unfinished downtown space, at 701 Front St., in an elongated, heavily windowed retail space adjacent to the covered corridor linking Pacific Avenue and Front Street through the back of Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company and the El Palomar taco bar. Its neighbor is the spacious art gallery M.K. Contemporary Art, and right across the street looms Trader Joe’s (where the vaguely annoying background classic rock is clearly un-intentional listening). 

Sonivore is less an only-in-Santa-Cruz curiosity and more of a local example of a business model that is increasingly common in urban settings. San Francisco has a few. So does Oakland.

The idea of a dedicated music-listening space is neither new nor uniquely American. It has roots in Japan’s jazz kissa, cafes devoted to listening to recorded jazz that emerged in the late 1920s. 

Here’s how Sonivore will work: A customer comes in for a chance to browse the in-house LP collection — Stone hopes to eventually have up to 2,000 titles on hand — then pays $5 for a table on which is a turntable and a set of headphones.

What follows is the kind of ritualized listening that a teenager in the 1970s might have in a bedroom, minus the shag carpeting (uh, speaking from experience on this one). If you share your table, the price tag drops. Between sides, you can chat up other music fans, where you’re bound to get some recommendations and share your own, the kind of conversations that used to happen in record stores every day.

“The interesting thing,” said Stone, “is that [this kind of impromptu music conversation between strangers] doesn’t happen at a lot of places very much anymore. But I don’t think it’s because people don’t want it to. I think it’s because the pace and the nature of life has kind of shifted over the decades. People are searching for connection, and they’re searching for understanding and being able to relate to somebody else. And sometimes, they’re just missing the environment to be able to do it.”

Stone plans to have his staff function as “music sommeliers,” sparking those conversations and deep dives, and also to retrieve those vinyl LPs for curious listeners. He also plans to have some light food and drink available. Outside the earphones, Sonivore will also host regular DJ performances and, down the line, will be offering a recording studio as well.

On Friday, Stone and his Sonivore staff will be trotting out the concept at a fundraising event, in advance of his all-or-nothing Kickstarter campaign that ends Tuesday, Oct. 13. His goal is to “center the musical experience,” as well as create a comfortable and appealing hang-out place outside the vortex of bars and drinking holes. In coming months, Sonivore will be part of the First Friday events every month. Stone expects many collaborations with local artists and businesses, maybe even themed events. He is looking to tap into Santa Cruz’s natural love for music, as well as into the UC Santa Cruz community, and the burgeoning subculture of local musicians.

“I think it’s going to be pretty hip,” he said. “Actually, I know it’s going to be hip.”

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