A listening room, not an algorithm
Zubissou Sounds is a hand-built listening room on the web: 14,971 tracks chosen one at a time by one person, played back through eight knobs — mood, energy, era, density — instead of a recommendation feed.
There is no "Discover Weekly" here and nothing is optimised for how long you stay. You set the room to a state — melancholy and sparse, or euphoric and driving, or 1973 and cerebral — and the room finds records that belong in it. Every one of them was listened to and placed by hand before it was allowed in.
It is closest in spirit to a kissaten — the Japanese listening cafés where one person's record collection, one good system and a room full of strangers make an evening — except the collection is 14,971 tracks deep and the knobs are yours.
What is actually in the room
These are measured counts from the catalogue as of 27 July 2026, not estimates:
The deepest seams are jazz (1,823 tracks), psych rock (900), electronic (864), city pop (775), vaporwave (520), soul (369) and a large deliberately-uncategorised "eclectic" pool (1,874) that exists because good records resist genre. The spread by decade runs 1,308 tracks from the 1970s, 1,142 from the 1980s, 943 from the 1990s, 1,246 from the 2000s, 3,348 from the 2010s and 3,994 from the 2020s.
Roughly a quarter of the catalogue (3,870 tracks) has been through a BPM and musical-key census, and release years are corrected to the original release rather than the remaster date. That correction matters more than it sounds: streaming metadata routinely dates a 1969 record to its 2014 reissue, which quietly breaks any attempt to filter by era. Fixing it by hand is unglamorous and it is most of the reason the ERA knob tells the truth.
The eight knobs
Every knob is a continuous axis between two named poles, not a genre checkbox. They combine, so the interesting settings are the contradictory ones — euphoric but sparse, driving but cerebral.
| Knob | Runs from | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Mood | melancholy → euphoric | The emotional temperature of the picks. |
| Energy | ambient → driving | How hard the room pushes. |
| Fam · Exp | canon → unknown | Records you know versus records you don't. |
| Era | pre-1970 → today | Where in time the room sits. |
| Density | sparse → wall | Space between the notes, or none. |
| Head · Body | cerebral → groove | Whether you are thinking or moving. |
| Place | global → specific | Anywhere, or one scene in one city. |
| Muse | off → the artist | Pull the room toward one artist's orbit. |
There are also seven scenes that set all eight at once, for when you would rather not fiddle: Work (head-down focus), Rest (wind-down and sleep), Table (food, friends, low light), Listening (sit-down records — jazz, strings), Movement (the floor), Away (road, water, sun) and Chance (let the room choose).
How it differs from a streaming algorithm
A recommendation engine optimises a number — usually minutes listened, sometimes skip rate. It is very good at this, and the side effect is a slow narrowing: it learns what you tolerate and serves you more of it, because more-of-the-same is the safest way to keep a session alive.
This room optimises nothing. It has no model of you, no engagement target and no interest in your session length. It has a catalogue that one person vouched for and a set of controls that describe a state rather than a taste. The practical difference is that you can ask it for something you have never listened to before and it can actually comply, because "unknown" is a knob position rather than a risk to be managed.
The trade is honest and worth stating plainly: a 14,971-track room curated by one person will never have the coverage of a 100-million-track catalogue. If you want everything ever recorded, this is the wrong tool. If you want a room where someone has already thrown out the filler, it is the right one.
Common questions
Who made Zubissou Sounds?
Zubair Jeewanjee, one person, as a personal project. It is independent and non-commercial — no ads, no data sold, no investors. The curation is his own listening over many years.
Do I need Spotify?
Yes, and a Premium account, because playback runs through Spotify's Web Playback SDK — that is Spotify's requirement, not a choice made here. The room supplies the curation, the ordering and the controls; Spotify supplies the audio. Your Spotify password is never seen by this site; sign-in happens entirely on Spotify's own pages.
Is it free?
The private beta is free. Nothing is being charged for and there is no card involved.
Why can't I just open it?
Spotify caps how many people an app in development mode may serve, and that cap is small. Until the quota is raised, entry runs off a list. Joining it below is the whole process — no payment, no application, no interview.
Is it like In Sheep's Clothing or Aquarium Drunkard?
Same instinct, different form. Those are excellent publications — you read a piece and then go and find the record. This is the listening part, without the reading: the curation is expressed as a room you sit in rather than an article you finish. If you like what In Sheep's Clothing and Aquarium Drunkard do, this is built for the same ear.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. It installs as a home-screen app on iOS and Android, and it is built for a good pair of headphones and a quiet hour more than for a commute.