Less, But Easier
On growing quietly, taking things away, and what you owe the people who give you their attention
By Rafi Mercer
Most mornings start at the window. I'm up at six, just before Oban, and I make a coffee and stand there listening until a sound for the day forms. Sometimes it's a record. Sometimes it's just the street waking up, a car door, the boiler catching. I don't hurry it. The day doesn't really begin until I know what it sounds like.
This morning the sound was quieter than usual. Not in a bad way. It was the sound of things going well.
They are, and I don't say that lightly. Something I started a little over a year ago with an essay and a hunch has become my full-time work. Members write to me from cities I've never visited, telling me where they found their first albums and what their home listening city sounds like. The letters keep coming. The book goes out in the post most mornings. On paper, every arrow points up.
When things go well, there's a voice that says: more. More pieces, more series, more channels, more of everything that worked, faster. It's a reasonable voice. It's also the one I trust least.
When I sat down to write down what Tracks & Tales was, its DNA, one line came out ahead of the rest: less but better. Make fewer things. Make them matter. Keep what's worth keeping. I meant it about records and rooms and the way we listen. I'm only now realising I also meant it about the thing I'm building.
This morning I went looking for the person who designed a Paul Bley cover from 1972. The trail led to Barbara Wojirsch, who shaped how ECM looked for twenty-five years. She described her method as taking things away until only what was essential was left. Not adding, removing. Her best covers feel effortless because she did the work of subtraction before anyone else saw them.
I've been thinking about that all morning, because it's the opposite of how growth usually feels.
Here's what I keep coming back to. Tracks & Tales asks something of people that most of the internet doesn't. It asks for three to six minutes of real attention. It asks you to sit with one album, start to finish, no skipping. That's a small rebellion against everything that wants your thumb moving. It's also a promise. If you give me your attention, I'll give you something back for it.
You can't make that promise and then waste the attention on friction.
Every unnecessary click is a small tax. Every page that takes a moment too long to load, every link that lands somewhere it shouldn't, every moment where someone has to stop and work out where they are or what to do next. None of these things are dramatic. Nobody writes to complain about them. They just quietly spend the attention someone brought to the door, and by the time they reach the record, a little of it has gone.
A good listening bar understands this better than most websites. When it's right, you don't notice the room working. You don't notice how the seat was placed, or where the light falls, or why the volume is exactly where it is. You notice the music. Everything else has been arranged so that you don't have to think about it. Someone did a great deal of thinking so you wouldn't have to.
That's the standard I want to hold the platform to. Not impressive. Invisible.
Some of this was decided early, almost by instinct. There's no member login. No account page, no password to forget, nothing to manage. If you want to leave, you email me and I'll sort it, and you don't need a reason. People are sometimes surprised by that. They assume a membership needs a dashboard. I didn't want one. I wanted joining to feel like being let into a room and leaving to feel like saying goodnight on the way out.
Those choices have held up. But a year of building, adding a series here and a page there, leaves a residue. Things accrete. A path that was clear when there were twenty pages is less clear when there are hundreds. Something I made quickly to test an idea is still there months later, doing a slightly worse job than it should. That's not failure. It's what happens to anything that's growing. A record collection does it too. One day you look at the shelves and realise you can't find anything.
So today I'm not making anything new.
Today I'm going to walk through Tracks & Tales the way a stranger would. Arriving from an ad in Canada, a newspaper in Sweden, a friend's recommendation. Clicking where they'd click. Joining the way they'd join. Reading on a phone on a train, because that's where so much of this actually happens. I'm going to notice every place where I hesitate, every moment where the platform asks me to think about the platform instead of the music. Then I'm going to start taking those moments away.
It's not glamorous work. Nobody will notice it's been done, which is exactly the point.
There's a kind of founder confidence that only measures itself by what it ships. I understand it, and I've felt its pull this year more than once. But I spent years buying jazz for Virgin, and the lesson that stuck wasn't about what to put in the racks. It was about what to leave out. A good buyer's real skill is the record they don't order. The shelf only works if there's room on it.
The same is true of a record. The best ones often feel like they could hardly have been made any other way, and that ease is usually the most worked-on thing about them. Space is designed. Silence is chosen. Someone took a great deal away so that what remained could land.
I'd like Tracks & Tales to feel like that. Easier to arrive at. Easier to stay in. Easier to find your way back to on a Sunday evening when you remember there's a record you meant to hear. If the platform does its job properly, nobody will think about it at all. They'll think about the album, the city, the room, the feeling of having given something their full attention for once.
That's what this is all for.
Tomorrow I'll be back at the window at six. Oban will be at the door before the coffee's ready. I'll stand there until the sound of the day forms, and then I'll get on with it.
For now, I'm going to go through the place I've built one room at a time, opening the windows, moving the chairs back where they belong, taking down the things that don't need to be there.
Less, but easier. It'll do for a Monday.
Why doesn't Tracks & Tales have member accounts or logins?
By design. Membership is meant to feel simple: you join, and the letters, the Listening Club and the writing come to you. There's no dashboard to manage and no password to remember. If you ever want to leave, you email Rafi directly and it's done, no questions asked.
What does "less but better" mean for Tracks & Tales?
It's one of the founding principles behind the platform. Make fewer things, make them matter, and keep what's worth keeping. It applies to the records we write about, the way we suggest you listen, and how the platform itself is built. The aim is never more for its own sake. It's more of what's worth your attention, with less in the way.
What is The Listening Club?
The Listening Club is a monthly Tracks & Tales listening session, held online on the last Sunday of every month and open to members anywhere in the world. We play one album in full, in order, without skipping, the way it was made to be heard, and talk about it afterwards.
If you'd like a letter like this each week, slow and unhurried, subscribe and it'll find you on Fridays.
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
