Aether Download

Aether A private room for music

IThe name

AIOHP

aithḗr, the pure bright air above the clouds. What the gods breathed.

Music apps have come to resemble one another. AETHER began on a blank black page, and it looks like none of them. One glass. Three typefaces. No colour but your music’s own.

Plate I

Listen

The homepage is a gallery.

Twelve figures from antiquity, printed in dots. Every nine seconds each dot crosses the screen and lands as part of the next god.

Plate II

Now Playing

An instrument.

Where an album has a film, the cover gives way to it, in colour, fading along the arc of the dial beneath it.

Plate III

Artists

In their own hand.

A portrait in black and white, and the name set in the artist’s own lettering, where they have one.

Plate IV

Folders

Grey glass.

Playlists are folders of frosted glass. The only colour is the covers of the songs rising out of them.

IIIThe sound

Measured, never claimed.

AETHER prints what the decoder measured and nothing it didn’t. “Bit-perfect” appears only once your phone has confirmed the path. Turn on a tuning and the words take themselves away.

Apple AirPods MaxMeasured by oratory1990
± 12 dB

    IVThe hand

    Take it.

    A dial in place of a progress bar. Its red hand is the one colour AETHER owns, and the only colour on this page.

    1:27−2:29

    VThe metal

    Your listening, engraved.

    A charge card of what you play, in anodised black or brushed silver. Any song can have one of its own. Move across it, and the light moves with you.

    The Patron

    Most played

    Orpheus

    1. 02Sappho412
    2. 03Arion287
    3. 04Pindar161
    612 HR
    Of music
    9204
    Plays
    86
    Artists
    41
    Best streak

    On repeat

    Hymn to Apollo

    Your sound

    Lyric

    M. Aurelius

    Member since

    MMXXVI

    A specimen. Yours is engraved with your own listening.

    VIThe omissions

    What has been left out.

    1. Sine · PraeconiisNo advertising.
    2. Sine · ExploratoribusNo tracking. No analytics.
    3. Sine · TributoNo paywall. No upsell.
    4. Sine · MendaciisNo claim it can’t prove.
    5. Sine · InanibusNo button without a purpose.

    For the few who notice.

    Aether

    Edition II · MMXXVI

    Download for Android Read the source
    Edition
    2.3.0
    For
    Android 10 or later
    Weight
    42.5 MB
    Telemetry
    None
    Licence
    GPL-3.0
    SHA-256
    8c2f0385e20be9299a9c7f972aa983fa078f79b4324c0f1d33639eefb088bfe9