Cantilever founder Aaron Skates.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy: Aaron Skates<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nMany of these new services also have written articles and editorial, intending to offer contextual deep dives for a more focused listening experience. \u201cIt\u2019s like a music magazine you can listen to,\u201d says Cantilever\u2019s Aaron Skates, an ex-record label worker and music writer who has launched the streaming platform. Skates has managed to pull in an impressive list of independent labels to work with too, such as Warp, Ninja Tune, Domino and Beggars Group labels such as Rough Trade, 4AD and Matador.<\/p>\n
By having a smaller roster of artists, it means they receive more money. \u201cThe pool is far less diluted,\u201d Skates says. \u201cWe\u2019re paying out a maximum of 30 artists for all subscriber revenue, versus the 100m tracks on Spotify. Also, we pay on a user-centric basis, so that means your fee will only ever go towards the music that you actually listen to.\u201d Skates gives me an example: if Cantilever was to get 10,000 subscribers at \u00a34.99 a month, that would result in albums on the service receiving \u00a32,000-3,000 each, which he says is \u201croughly the equivalent of a million Spotify streams\u201d. (Spotify did not respond to a request to comment.)<\/p>\n
So, is this all rooted in a revolt against the big companies? \u201cI\u2019m wary about saying that it is anti-Spotify,\u201d says Simon Wheeler, director of commercial strategy at Beggars Group. \u201cPerhaps more a disillusionment with the complete commoditisation of music. There\u2019s always a swathe of new entrants to the market, but there\u2019s more coming up that are talking about trying to provide an alternative. The tone of that conversation has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wheeler does not view these startups as major competition, though. \u201cSpotify, Apple Music, Amazon, none of them are going anywhere anytime soon,\u201d he says. \u201cSo it\u2019s more like: let\u2019s try and bring something in which is offering something a bit different.\u201d Skates echoes this: \u201cCantilever is not in any way competitive towards current major DSPs [digital service providers],\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a totally different thing. I don\u2019t expect anybody to cancel their subscription and just have this \u2013 it\u2019s an additional thing that tries to give additional value that wasn\u2019t there before.\u201d<\/p>\nA view of Nina Protocol.<\/span> Photograph: Nina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nPollard, on the other hand, \u201ccan see a world where Spotify doesn\u2019t exist in the future,\u201d he says. \u201cWhere people realise the options given to them aren\u2019t the ones that best serve them.\u201d Although the numbers aren\u2019t quite showing this yet, with Spotify revealing an additional five million paying subscribers in this year\u2019s third quarter report, that\u2019s not to say the interest in alternatives isn\u2019t rising. The five-person team at Nina Protocol is struggling to keep up with inbound interest and Skates says despite only launching a week ago, the interest and listener numbers for Cantilever have \u201csurpassed my expectations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pollard suggests there is a wider cultural sea change beginning to take place, one that leaves him hopeful of a brighter future for music culture in the streaming era.<\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s a growing awareness of how slop-filled everything is getting,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople are wanting a little more control of what they consume.\u201d He gives the example of users leaving X, formerly Twitter: \u201cThey realised, \u2018Shit, I don\u2019t need to be here any more.\u2019 Then you understand what it feels like to be more intentional about your choices, instead of just being on everything that you\u2019re told you need to be on to exist. I think people are waking up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The noise around Spotify this year has been louder than ever, from Liz Pelly\u2019s book Mood Machine \u2013 a biting indictment of the company and its alleged practices \u2013 to a slew of indie artists leaving the platform due to political and ethical reasons. There was even a recent music forum in California called Death […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2148836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2148835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\u2018I-can-see-a-world-where-Spotify-doesnt-exist-will.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2148835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2148837,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148835\/revisions\/2148837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2148836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2148835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2148835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2148835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}