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When it comes to intentional listening, the algorithmic foundations of music platforms can sometimes reduce the joy that comes with listening to complete bodies of work. Enter Cantilever, the audio service that’s putting album-listening first.
Though it’s a relatively new addition to the pool of music streamers, Cantilever wants to make a difference with its approach. For £4.99 / $5.99 / €5.99 a month, the platform lists 10 albums each with a 30-day expiration date to encourage full-length listening, filling out the space with detailed accounts of each record from music journalists, on top of a user-centric payment system for artists.
It’s been a passion project for founder Aaron Skates since he began developing the idea in 2022, and he himself has worked his fair share of jobs in the music industry since the mid-2010s. During our in-depth discussion about the music start-up, Skates goes into detail about why he wanted to create the ‘Mubi for music’ and why there are good and bad sides to algorithmic music discovery.
From music writer to CEO
Cantilever stands in its own lane compared to the likes of the head honchos of music streaming, Spotify and Apple Music. It’s designed to blend audio with music journalism while embedding a structure similar to Substack, which was sparked by Skates’ own experiences working in the industry.
“I’d been working in independent music at independent record labels since 2019, and I'd also been writing since I was 17 and going to gigs doing university-related music journalism,” he tells me, adding “when Substack as a platform started to gain traction, I realized that it's not really a secret that many music websites weren’t paying the journalists that were writing for them”.
From there, Skates had a lightbulb moment. “It was maybe 2022 when I started formulating some of these ideas of ‘where is a good online space for music journalism and how can I kind of participate in that?’” he says. “It was also the same time we were seeing a lot of stuff around remuneration not being as good as it could be on streaming, and middle-tier artists were missing out”.
So Cantilever’s mission is multi-faceted. On the one hand, it’s dedicated to spotlighting independent artists and giving music journalists their flowers by including thorough written accounts of albums to provide context for the music, just like Substack. But where Cantilever stands apart from other music streamers is with its focus on intentional listening.
Albums aren't going anywhere
Instead of offering an extensive catalog of music, Cantilever operates as an album rotation, spotlighting 10 at a time, which remain on the app for 30 days. It works wonders for eliminating doom-browsing, which everyone is guilty of doing when navigating the best streaming services, but there’s more to it for Skates.
“There's an argument that the album is an anachronistic format, which is the reason that it lasts as long as it does. It's 45 minutes because there was only so much music that you could get two on two sides of a 12-inch record,” he says. “The album as an art form was invented because of a piece of technology and its limitations, and then we kind of just ran with that. When cassettes and CDs came along, we kept the album format, almost like referring back to the past”.
But things are different in the digital age. Now that it’s become easier to access individual songs from albums, there’s been a shift in the way consumers approach album listening. However, despite the algorithm, Skates is confident that the album as a body of work is timeless.
“The point is that it remains a format that people continue to gravitate towards even during this culture of playlists and algorithmic streaming. When major stars release their music, they release albums, and there's an excitement and a buzz around the album almost as an event,” he elaborates. “So it's not saying ‘album good, track bad’ but saying well, here's a space where we can celebrate this format and have that durational experience”.
“It’s a genuinely brilliant and exciting time for music right now. There's so much awesome stuff happening in every genre,” he concludes.
The ups and downs of the algorithm
Cantilever is very simple in its interface, so you won’t expect to see a slew of tools such as playlists or an algorithm that’s constantly spitting out music recommendations. If anything, Skates is looking to avoid this.
“Contrary to my previous point, I also think that there is a potentially negative downside to having algorithmic personalization across the board. It creates this personalized experience, but not necessarily one that fosters social connection,” he believes.
“At the same time, one of the things that the algorithm-generated playlists have over album listening is that they can foster this non-intentional listening,” Skates adds and, as someone whose entire relationship with music has been rooted in album listening, I completely agree. For Skates, it also makes him question the value it imposes.
“There’s this idea of ‘I’ll put something on in the background and just have it there’, and I personally don't think there's anything wrong with that, it suits a particular time and place, but then there's another question about the value that's ascribed to that: Is something that you're paying attention to worth more money than something that you're not really paying attention to? Is the music you listen to when you're asleep as valuable as the music that you listen to when you're awake? And the platforms that we currently have have no real way of making that distinction,” he says.
This is just the beginning
Though Skates is very much focused on keeping Cantilever’s in-app experience a simple one, that’s not to say he doesn’t have plans to develop it further and enrich the platform with more features.
“It's actually more media features than the features we might typically associate with digital service providers or streaming platforms. One thing is offline downloading. So, I really want to have it so you can listen to music on your commute. Another thing is that we're going to increase the number of albums that are on there. Right now it's just 10, and that's a capacity thing, and then for the app experience I want the media to be very similar to Substack,” he tells me.
When I look over the leading music platforms out there, Apple Music is one that’s winning on the editorial side. Its extensive collection of radio stations and exclusive artist interviews bridges the gap between fan and artist even more, and it provides rich context and background behind an artist’s music and their creative process. This is another thing that Skates wants to tap into.
“[Cantilever] will have video journalism, interviews even with the artists, and potentially live sessions that we film with artists. Those kinds of ways of telling an artist’s story that have previously been the purview of the media and bring that into the app,” he reveals.
As well as audio listening for in-app articles and diversifying the genres of its albums, one of the end goals for Skates is to shift beyond mobile. “The final feature is to have a web player version, so that it’s not just a mobile app but also a desktop version that can be more familiar with how news magazines and websites operate,” he says. But before he leaves, Skates reveals that he’s always keeping an open mind about the possibilities that could arise for Cantilever.
“We have all the music we could ever want for a very cheap price, and so it feels like the more we learn about the audience who want to use this, the more informed I'll be to answer that question of what do those people want, and what do they need and how can we best serve that community”.
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