The Nova catalogue explained: 70 artists, 188 albums and how to find your way around

Loopcode Bilişim Yazılım Mühendislik Eğitim ve Danışmanlık A.Ş. (Lodos Nova) is a streaming service with a catalogue it owns outright: around 1,726 songs on 188 albums by 70 artists, about 30 public playlists, five radio stations and three podcasts. That is small next to the giants, and it is also the point. Every track has been listened to, tagged and placed with intent, which means the catalogue has a shape you can learn. This article is a map of that shape, written for people who have just signed up and want to know where to start.

Who makes the music on Nova?

The 70 artists on Nova come from Türkiye, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, France, Japan, Ghana, Iceland, Greece and the United States, among other places. A few of them carry a large share of the catalogue and are worth knowing by name.

• Nova Sounds is the house archive: 437 instrumental pieces across themed albums such as Morning Coffee, Bossa Atmosphere, Noir Synth Backgrounds and a long run of Lo-fi Sessions.
• Paper Lantern, from Germany, has 114 tracks of lo-fi, jazz-tinted and synth music, including the 32-track Lazy Lo-fi Chill.
• Calma Productions, from Italy, releases its music as a numbered series of Picks, gentle folk and new age with saxophone and violin.
• Thavernia writes music for an imagined tabletop world: strings, saxophone and melancholy across nine albums.
• Eldrvættir, from Norway, built ten albums around the nine worlds of Norse myth, a project we describe in its own article.
• Aurelion, from Sweden, makes quiet piano and ambient records such as The Wrong Kind of Silence.

Beyond these, the catalogue has room for rock bands such as Static Pulse and Cruisers, the gym-ready electronic project Core Frequency, jazz singers such as Louie Fontaine, and a strong group of Turkish artists, from Aylin to Doran Tan. The artists page lists all 70.

How the albums are organised

Most albums on Nova are short and focused: six to twenty tracks around one idea. That is deliberate. A title such as Far East Lounge Sessions or Solo Piyano 1 tells you what you will hear before you press play, and an album rarely drifts away from its premise halfway through. Some artists work in series, so if you like one volume there is usually a next one: Nova Sounds has three Bossa Atmosphere albums, Calma Productions is up to Picks 9, and Yumae has two volumes of Breath & Horizon.

Album pages on the website list the running order, the year and the artist, and each track has a 30-second preview. In the app, pressing play on an album queues the whole record in order, and the Up Next list follows it until you choose something else.

Playlists: the curated layer

Public playlists sit on top of the albums and cut across artists. Some are built for a situation: Cozy Work, Chill, Summer Vibes. Some are built for a place: Coffee Shop Lo-Fi - R&B with 58 tracks and Elegant Coffee with 41 are the two largest. Some are built for a genre, such as The Rock Spectrum, 52 songs wide, and Cassette Rock. And some belong to a single artist, like the ten Eldrvættir world lists or Project Ember - Reverie. The playlists page shows them all with their lengths.

Genres, moods and instruments

Every track on Nova has been analysed and tagged, and the tags are the fastest route into the catalogue when you have a feeling rather than a name. The largest genre families are new age (622 tracks), ambient (497) and electronic (486), followed by rock, jazz, soul, metal, classical, funk and house. Moods are tags too: tender, melancholic, happy, dark and intense all have their own pages. So are instruments: piano, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, saxophone, violin and strings. Open genres and moods and you will see the whole list with track counts; a page such as jazz or piano is a ready-made listening session.

Radio and podcasts

If you would rather not choose, five stations play around the clock: Rock FM, Lo-Fi FM, Jazz FM, World FM and Prime FM. Each draws on the same catalogue, so a song you hear on the radio is always one you can find, like and add to a playlist afterwards. We explain how the stations are put together in how Nova radio stations work.

Three podcasts round out the catalogue: Yapay Zeka Sohbetleri, a Turkish-language series on artificial intelligence with more than thirty episodes, DataCast, on careers in data, and LiderCast. The podcasts page has the details, and our guide to podcasts on Nova covers following, resuming and sharing.

Three ways to start

1. From a mood. Open genres and moods, pick a tag, and like whatever stops you. Your likes become the seed of your library.
2. From a playlist. Choose one of the situation lists, Cozy Work or Chill, and let it run. When a track stands out, open its album; the rest of the record is usually in the same vein.
3. From the radio. Put on a station while you do something else. Radio is the least effort and, in our experience, the best way to meet artists you would not have searched for.

A note on what you will not find

Nova does not carry chart hits or licensed major-label music, and it never will, because the catalogue is built from music Lodos Nova owns. That is what lets listening be free with an account and what lets a venue play Nova under a single subscription that includes the public performance licence. If that model interests you, the Nova Business pages and our article on background music licensing explain it.

Frequently asked questions

How many songs are on Nova? Around 1,726 songs on 188 albums by 70 artists, plus about 30 public playlists, five radio stations and three podcasts. The counts grow as new albums are added.

Can I listen to the whole catalogue for free? Yes. Listening is free with a Nova account on the web, iPhone, iPad and Android. The website plays 30-second previews; full songs play in the app.

Where should a new listener start? The genres and moods pages, the Cozy Work and Chill playlists, or any of the five radio stations are the quickest ways in.

Is the radio music the same as the catalogue? Yes. The stations play songs from the Nova catalogue, so anything you hear on air can be found, liked and added to a playlist.