Lowden Guitars: Craft Meets Analytics

Businesses in every category are seeking ways to increase the value provided to their customers with new ways of delivering services after the sale has taken place – gaining a customer for a lifetime. Lowden Guitars and Amazon Web Services and its partners have developed an extraordinary approach to enhancing the lifetime value of musical instrument ownership with a cloud-first approach and technology focus through a new customer-centric mobile app.

The new MyLowden App provides hitherto undreamed-of services and features to buyers of Lowden’s superb instruments. The story of the guitar, including the origin of its tonewoods and source material, certificates and assembly, is just the beginning of the proof of provenance narrative. The Lowden platform catalogues every individual element and component of the owner’s guitar, from the individual crafts persons’ involvement to the quality assessment of the finished product. This world-leading technology tracks not only the environment (vital to maintaining their condition) with built-in sensor technology but also identifies its location, condition and usage, all of which is written and stored on an immutable register for proof of ownership and offers a gateway to warranty and insurance services and for maintaining the instrument in its best possible condition. In this way, the platform also provides essential services to Lowden’s network of sellers for proof of sale, service records, and more.

These alone would represent a significant step up in convenience, but Lowden has gone much further by creating a digital twin for each instrument. Recognizing the very special relationship that owners of high-end instruments have with these signature assets. (See Tracking the Value for more on musical instruments’ unique world.) Guitar owners want to know what kind of wood their instrument was made from – and where it came from. This not only affects how it sounds but also how it is to be cared for – and Lowden has that covered as well, with features that will prompt the owner to seek parts and/or service (much like an automobile owner would) to keep it in its best condition.

Keeping track of all this information at the fingertips also provides an opportunity for the creators at Lowden to educate its customers and community members – enhancing their ability to share more information about the instruments and develop more digital services to support existing buyers while empowering the next generation of artists and community members.

The MyLowden platform and app also offers a record of the use of instrument for performers and composers, to identify when it was played – perhaps a concert or recording session that should be preserved for future research or documentation. This in turn can help the owner to develop their own connected community with their audience and collaborators, and even track the creation of a piece of music – “Where was I when I wrote that song?” – and the performances it was used for.

The creation of this breakthrough platform is itself a fascinating story of collaboration – among visionary product creators, the AWS team that facilitated and supported the design and delivery of the app, and the partner design and development teams at ubloquity and Storm Reply, who delivered the working code.

Designing The Future

Like most high-end guitar makers, Lowden has a story that begins with a man and his dream. George Lowden is still making guitars by hand himself 50 years on – his first trainees joined him in 1977. George and his son, Managing Director Aaron Lowden, now manage a thriving business that built its first factory in 1985 and continues to produce a collection of highly-coveted guitars, including Sheeran by Lowden, a collaborative brand produced with more automated processes designed to make the Lowden name more accessible for younger and aspiring musicians.

George has a personal handwritten ledger of every instrument he has ever made (something all luthiers tend to do) which he has passed on to Aaron. When you build a guitar, you source materials (often precious and highly regulated) from around the world, manufacture them to precise specifications, deliver them via a network of hand-picked dealers, and leave a continuing legacy through the instruments you create. What if that rich history could be immortalized on an immutable digital ledger and traced, added to – and used even more broadly for customer services across the Lowden global eco-system?

“Over the years we have found that the typical Lowden owner has dreamed of owning their custom guitar for years before they finally take ownership of the instrument,” Aaron Lowden said. “When the guitar leaves our workshop and falls into the hands of its player, that is when the real partnership begins, and we are delighted to offer Lowden owners a way of truly documenting the journey of their guitars through the MyLowden platform. We believe this added insight, knowledge, and ability to document milestones on their guitars will further enrich the treasured relationships between Lowden players around the world and their guitars.”

In discussions with Kieran Kelly at ubloquity, providers of digital asset identification, authentication and traceability about managing the information, it became clear that George and Aaron had far more in mind; Aaron was also thinking about other services, insurance, warranty, health… in addition to a way to showcase and track their products, “made in the UK and sold around the world.” They turned to AWS’ Northern Ireland Head of Commercial Fiona Simpson, who convened a Working Backwards Ideation Workshop. This is a hands-on event designed to teach or introduce practical skills to AWS customers, and it created an opportunity for all the players to brainstorm. “We usually leave an empty seat for the customer in the workshops,” Simpson says. “This time, we had a guitar.” They honed in on adding more value to the customer relationship as their guiding principle.

AWS provided assistance from its own team: Peter Trimble, AWS Senior Solutions Architect, was involved from the outset in ensuring the right components and services were brought to bear. Getting the other components assembled and the code developed required another key partner: Storm Reply, specialists in the design and implementation of innovative cloud-based solutions and services. The challenge for AWS, ubloquity and Storm Reply: come up with a working prototype in 8 weeks – in time for an Ed Sheeran tour, to leverage the opportunity to link into an already thriving community. (Sheeran has been playing Lowden guitars since 2012, and his popularity had already challenged Lowden to expand distribution to leverage his drawing power as a brand ambassador.)

ubloquity and Storm Reply’s teams delivered – putting together the sensor technology with open source hardware, GPS and nearfield technology, building the front-end UI and community features, integrating with ubloquity’s digital asset verification blockchain solution, and partnering with AWS to create a global platform. “There is no traditional infrastructure that could run this,” says Matt Mould of Storm Reply, an AWS Premier Partner. A large number of component services are required – and AWS had what was needed, and some are mentioned below.

The Technology

AWS offerings used in the creation of the MyLowden platform and app showcase the rich set of services that can be combined to deliver a seamless, intimate experience to users. The obvious choice of the user device is the phone – and AWS provides the necessary APIs and services to use native – unique embedded RFID, Bluetooth connection to the sensor, GPS for geographic services, data access to capture, store and retrieve ownership and services data, QR code APIs for a more effortless user experience.

Every instrument is fitted with a unique RFID chip, which is embedded at source, and a sensor that captures temperature, humidity, and vibration as well as location. This means the owner knows if the instrument is in an environment that preserves it in its best condition, how it is being treated in transit when shipped (even rough handling or impacts will be detected and tracked), and much more.

This data provides the insights that inform the owner when to do obvious things like changing strings (which are affected by how much they are used) and less obvious ones like having a technician reset the neck (which can go out of alignment, just like a car’s suspension, based on usage.) Even changing the battery on the sensor is covered – the user is alerted when it’s necessary – and for many owners – especially working performers – some guitars may be in storage while others are in use, so this is a huge benefit.

Much of the detailed software componentry is in well-established AWS offerings better known to developers. Customer identity is powered by Amazon Cognito, making it simple to rely on whatever authentication makes the most sense to the user. Global delivery – essential for the travelling performer and their teams – is provided by Amazon CloudFront. Amazon Simple Email Services (SES) helped tie the communications pieces together and development was facilitated by AWS Amplify. The AWS database Amazon DynamoDB is used for core information about each instrument, making quick lookups easy. And then there is the platform environment – Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to ensure that Lowden can offer a secure, contained network space.

ubloquity manages the distributed ledger and unique asset identification in AWS EC2 instances, which supports several microservices to manage and authenticate communications between Lowden’s manufacturing and shop floor data collection and Storm Reply’s services.

Lowden guitars are not just instruments but companions on a musician’s creative journey. By creating and incorporating this technology, Lowden elevates the guitar beyond its physical form, creating a rich tapestry of stories embedded within the instrument itself.

This emotional connection between the owner, the wood, and the artist is the true value proposition in the world of artisan guitars.

Sidebar – Tracking the Value

Musical instruments are a very special investment – at the high end, they are not just valued for their tone and playability, but also for their beauty. They are also an asset that appreciates over time, with concert instruments valued in the millions. Like any such asset, they are documented, although older ones can represent a challenge. The comprehensive catalog of every instrument known to be made by Stradivari – about 850 in all – is a great way to understand just how much people who value high quality musical instruments. Antonio Stradivari – The Complete Works is in six volumes and comes in six volumes – for £3900².

Owners and prospective owners of these instruments want to know when it was made, by whom, and who has owned it since its manufacture. In the case of concert instruments, they want to know when and where it was played – especially if it was used in famous public performances. The MyLowden app captures this information in a ledger file (an example is blockchain) that is also the basis for legal requirements that govern the export of the precious wood the guitar may have been built from. Some precious tonewoods are in short supply, and cannot be exported. Tracing the components of a fine guitar – and ensuring sustainable and ethical sourcing – can thus be a complex supply chain challenge when wood such as sinker redwood (see What is Sinker Redwood? for a bit of detail), Bois de Rose or Madagascar Rosewood is to be used. And it may need to be documented when export permissions are in play.

Today’s guitar market is an extraordinary place where instruments owned or used by stars command astonishing prices. Buyers of new high-end instruments have had no way to collect that information except in their own journaling – on paper, or their computers, laboriously by hand in whatever format they decide to use.

² Gramophone magazine, October 2024 Can The Best Be Bettered