Albumary Press Kit

Founder note

A note from Marcel

I grew up in my grandmother's record store.

Radiohandel H. van der Horst, in The Hague. We lived above it; my playpen stood among the racks before I could walk. I started helping at six, once I knew the alphabet well enough to file the singles.

On Sundays the store was closed and I had it to myself. Just me and all that music. That's where I learned the thing this app is built on: music isn't only something you hear. It's somewhere you go, and something you hold.

Streaming gave us all the music in the world, instantly — and took the somewhere away. Everything became a list. Something that plays at you while you do something else. Nothing you play has to be paid for, or carried home. That isn't a failure of attention; it's what happens when everything arrives at once.

In May I started experimenting to find out whether a music library could be made into somewhere you go. Four months later, here it is. Albumary doesn't add a single record. It takes the Apple Music library you already have and gives it a room — shelves, bins, a counter, a back wall — and lets you wander it. Not the inconvenience of vinyl. The feeling of it.

That room is the first of three things it does. The second came from how we actually talked about records. My father — who met my mother across that counter — never discussed music by genre, and neither did my friends. It went sideways. Who played on it. Who produced it. What else that drummer turned up on. The map, the inner sleeve and the tags are there for that. You pull one record out, it points at another, and an hour later you're somewhere you didn't plan to be.

The third is the least romantic, and it wasn't planned. Using the early versions myself, the first thing I missed was a playlist — something to put on while doing something else. So parts of it exist for exactly that: an ordinary music player, including in the car.

The record you're holding belongs to you, and so does everything about how you listen to it. There's no server — nothing you do in the app reaches me, because there's nowhere for it to go. A record store remembers its regulars. It doesn't keep a file on them.

Albumary is also finished. Everything I could think of is in it, from day one, on every device you want it on, for a single payment. What you try is what you get.

What it doesn't do is know everything. The record knowledge comes from public sources and it's uneven — some records arrive thin, a year missing, a label unnamed. The store says so rather than guessing, which felt more honest, and closer to how the real one worked anyway.

— Marcel, Nuvole B.V. Albumary opens 3 November.

Photograph

The store, then

The shopfront of Radiohandel H. van der Horst, with records and a hit parade chart in the window. — Radiohandel H. van der Horst — Loosduinseweg 709–711, The Hague.

Fact sheet

Facts for reviewers

Embargo
3 November 2026, 12:00 CET. The launch date and time may be published from that moment, not before.
Price
€17.99 / $17.99, one purchase. No subscription. Free for 21 days from first launch: the whole app, nothing held back, no sign-up. Universal Purchase — buy once, use on Mac, iPhone and iPad. Family Sharing enabled.
Platforms
Mac, iPhone, iPad and CarPlay.
Launch
3 November 2026, 12:00 CET. That is 11:00 GMT, 06:00 EST and 03:00 PST.
Requirements
Albumary works with the music library already on your device. An Apple Music subscription is needed to play songs a playlist carries that aren't in your library, and to add albums from Apple Music to it.
System requirements
macOS 14.0 or later. iOS and iPadOS 18.0 or later. CarPlay requires a compatible vehicle or head unit.
Filing
The Main Floor files your whole library A–Z, by genre or by decade. In Settings, A–Z can sort artists on first name or last name.
Corrections
Genre, release year and filing year can be corrected on any record. An edited value is marked as edited and can be reverted in one tap. Corrections sync between your own devices through your own iCloud. Nothing is written back to your Apple Music library, and nothing is sent to Nuvole B.V.
Language
The app is in English. This website is also available in Romanian, Japanese, Spanish and French. Cassette names are the names of your Apple Music playlists, shown as Apple provides them, in the language of your account.
Version
Press are reviewing build 19 of version 1.0, on TestFlight for iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
About Nuvole B.V.
Albumary is made by Marcel van Tetering, an independent IT programme manager and management consultant, through his company Nuvole B.V. in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. It is his first app, built between May and September 2026.
Does not do
No downloading or storing of audio; playback runs through Apple Music. No server, no account, no tracking, no profile. What moves between your own devices goes through your iCloud, never through us. Record knowledge comes from public sources and is uneven — where the store doesn't know, it says so rather than guessing.