Cantilever started as a blog in 2023, somewhere to share my music writing. While Substack is great for setting up paid subscriptions, I wanted to keep the blog free, with the idea that any paid version would also pass some value over to artists.

Today we’re launching the next evolution of Cantilever, which is our attempt to do just that.

Cantilever is a new music streaming service, priced at £4.99 / $5.99 / €5.99, the same level as a Substack paid tier.

We will provide users with a highly curated selection of albums to listen to — both new releases and intriguing catalogue. Each album lasts on the platform for one month, creating time-bound moments of community listening. Every few days a new album is put on the service and an old album is taken off. A bit like MUBI, Criterion, or BFI Player, but for music.

On Cantilever, albums are presented with deep contextual details — interviews with the artists themselves, or the why, the when, and the how written by engaging music journalists. Just like Cantilever the Substack, but with fully-licensed streaming built in.

In this way we can do two things: split royalty payments between a very small number of rights holders plus we can pay music journalists a fair amount for their contributions.

We pay artists on a user-centric basis. So your subscription fee only ever goes towards what you actually listened to. If you only listen to one album in a month, that artist gets their share of your full subscription fee.

Unlike many popular music streaming services of today — where artists compete with 100 million tracks to get heard and get paid — Cantilever prioritises deep engagement, independence, human curation, real music by real musicians, and fair remuneration.

We’ve signed licensing deals with many leading independent record labels including Warp Records, Ninja Tune, Partisan, Erased Tapes, Domino, XL, Matador, 4AD, Rough Trade, Young, state51, Memorials of Distinction, Untitled (recs) and more. We’re also going to be working with independent artists — with some astonishingly good records lined up for our first few months from this pool. All of our editorial is run by freelance music journalists who choose what they want to write about.

This newsletter will continue, while recapping what’s been featured on Cantilever each week.

In my view, this is an opportunity to shape what fairer music streaming could be like in the future, starting from the ground up. Any users of the app I would love you to email me directly with your thoughts and feedback: aaron@cantilever-music.com

Start your free trial today at cantilever-music.com

We’re currently available in the US, UK, and multiple EU countries. Please check your local app store for availability.

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