A Stockholm-based startup, Teenage Engineering, is pioneering its wireless “cloud speakers”. “It’s about a completely new experience when it comes to how you buy, browse, share, collect and find music”, says CEO and co-founder Jesper Kouthoofd.

The music industry is constantly in flux, and a number of Swedish companies, like Spotify and Soundcloud, have been major contributors to evolutions in the industry.

Teenage Engineering — known for its simplistic industrial audio design inspired by Swedish audio engineer Stig Carlsson — is pioneering its wireless “cloud speakers”, where music can be played directly from online sources.

Jesper Kouthoofd, CEO and co-founder of Teenage Engineering, calls it the future of home audio.

“We are going to see a lot more systems and solutions on the market in the future. We believe this is going to be the hi-fi system’s answer to the flat TVs, HD, 3D, 4K and all other mutations of the TV.

It’s also about a completely new experience when it comes to how you buy, browse, share, collect and find music.”

What other music industry trends do you see?

“The online store and creating playlists are dying. A new radio type experience will be the dominating way to find and buy music,” says Kouthoofd. “That’s what cloud music is all about.”

The technology media has praised your design. How do you connect engineering and design?

“We define ourselves as engineers, not designers. So we work really hard to engineer in an elegant, simple way instead of adding styling.

This way functionality, manufacturing and usability end up in total harmony. And the bottom line is that the user experience is cleaner, more direct and true to our vision. We try to minimize distracting elements”.

What are the advantages of being based in Stockholm?

“At the moment being located and creating things in Stockholm is actually really great. There’s a lot of talented people, good energy and surprisingly open attitude between similar companies.

“We also see that this attitude about working hard, to be honest about the actual value of your company, how much you really sell, etc, is coming back. We are not in the dotcom era anymore. We like that this down-to-earth mentality is back.”

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This article was sponsored by Stockholm Business Region.

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