Artist spotlight: Nova Sounds, the 437-track archive behind the playlists and the radio

A quarter of everything on Nova belongs to one name. Nova Sounds is the official audio archive of the service: 437 instrumental pieces, background-driven and built for use, organised into thirty-odd themed albums. It is the backbone of most public playlists and of the radio stations, and the artist most venues on Nova Business play without knowing it. This spotlight explains how the archive is organised and how to get the most from it.

An archive, not a band

Nova Sounds does not have a single sound. It has a filing system. Each album is a brief, usually stated in the title, and the music inside keeps to it. That makes the archive unusually easy to navigate: if you know the kind of room you are in, the album is nearly always named after it. The families below are the main shelves.

The Lo-fi Sessions

Seven albums carry the Lo-fi Sessions name, each with a mood in front of it. Cozy is warm synths; Cosmic is piano and wide space; Ambient, in two volumes, nearly drops the beat; Lounge, also in two volumes, adds jazz; Enigmatic is bass-led and darker. Together they are around 120 tracks, and they fill Lo-Fi FM and the Cozy Work and Chill playlists.

The café and restaurant shelf

This is the part of the archive that Nova Business venues reach for first. Morning Coffee is nineteen tracks of acoustic guitar for opening hours. The Bossa Atmosphere trilogy is bossa nova on guitar and piano for lunch. Patio Sessions and its sequel add saxophone for terraces. Elegant Strings is strings and guitar for the afternoon, and After Hours Jazz Grooves, Blue Room Grooves and Grooves in the Background cover the evening. Our guide to jazz and bossa nova for restaurants uses this shelf hour by hour.

The atmosphere shelf

A set of albums paints places rather than times. Far East Lounge Sessions and Chill of the Far East are East Asian in colour; Japanese Journeys goes further in the same direction. Mizizi Na Midundo draws on African rhythm, Dune-bound on folk and desert space across 22 tracks, and the two Noir Synth Backgrounds albums on film noir electronica. Night Works is the late shift.

The newest shelf

The most recent Nova Sounds albums are also the most varied: Where the Sound Came From, led by drums; Cello over Four, a cello over funk; Mood & Motion; Storybook Instrumentals; and Songs From the Room, the archive's rare vocal record. They are covered in our round-up of recent additions.

How to use the archive

• By album title. The title is the brief. If you need music for a morning café, Morning Coffee is the answer; nothing is hidden.
• By tag. Nova Sounds tracks dominate the acoustic guitar, piano and tender pages, which is a quick way to cut across the albums.
• By playlist. Public playlists such as Elegant Coffee and Coffee Shop Lo-Fi - R&B are largely assembled from the archive.
• By radio. Every station plays Nova Sounds; Lo-Fi FM and Jazz FM most of all.

Why an archive like this exists

Nova is built on a catalogue that Loopcode Bilişim Yazılım Mühendislik Eğitim ve Danışmanlık A.Ş. (Lodos Nova) owns, and the archive is the clearest expression of that. Music made to a brief, tagged carefully and kept forever is what lets a venue subscribe once and play all day under a single licence, and what lets a listener find the right album for a room in one search. For the wider picture, start with the Nova catalogue explained.

A day built from the archive

Because the albums are named for their use, a whole day at a venue can be assembled from Nova Sounds alone. Morning Coffee as the doors open; Bossa Atmosphere through lunch; Elegant Strings or Lounge Lo-fi Sessions in the slow afternoon; After Hours Jazz Grooves as the evening starts; Blue Room Grooves and Night Works late. That is six albums and around a hundred tracks, enough for a long day with no repeats, and all of it covered by one Nova Business subscription with the public performance licence included. Many cafés run exactly this rotation, switching by hand at the natural breaks in the day, and the business playlist guide turns it into a routine with named lists.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nova Sounds? The official audio archive of Nova: 437 instrumental tracks organised into themed albums such as the Lo-fi Sessions, Bossa Atmosphere and Morning Coffee.

Which Nova Sounds album is best for a café? Morning Coffee for opening hours, Bossa Atmosphere for lunch, Elegant Strings for the afternoon and the Grooves albums for the evening.

Is Nova Sounds on the radio? Yes. All five stations play from the Nova catalogue, and Nova Sounds is the largest part of it.

Are Nova Sounds albums instrumental? Almost all of them. Songs From the Room is the main exception, with vocals.