Indie Labels Invest £250k in Curated Music Streaming Platform Cantilever

UK-based music app start-up Cantilever has raised £250,000 in pre-seed funding from a collection of independent labels and individual investors from those companies.

The investment:

• Investors include !K7, Because, City Slang, Domino, Everlasting, Exceleration, Hopeless, Ninja Tune, Partisan, Playground, Secret City, Secretly Group and Sub Pop.

• All are supporters of The Organization for Recorded Culture and Arts (ORCA).

• The £250,000 raise successfully completes Cantilever’s targeted pre-seed round.

• Cantilever Founder Aaron Skates says the funding will allow the company to make its first hires, improve the user experience, and accelerate growth.

What it does:

• Cantilever is a curated streaming platform that emphasizes quality over quantity.

• For £4.99 a month, subscribers get a selection of 10 albums to listen to, accompanied by long-form journalism and artist interviews, as per Music Ally.

• The selection is updated every month.

• Royalties from each subscriber are allocated based on their actual listening habits.

What they said:

• Aaron Skates, Founder Cantilever: “Cantilever was built to serve independent record labels and artists, so having over a dozen of the world’s leading independents backing us is the strongest validation we could ask for.”

• Christof Ellinghaus, Founder City Slang: “Independent labels have very few true partners left in the ecosystem. The platforms that make our music available follow their own agenda, which doesn’t always align with the interests of our community. When we came across Cantilever, we were thrilled to find a concept that 100% aligns with our values and is driven by heavy curation, fairness and enthusiasm for our artist’s music. That is something that all of us are truly happy to support. Still, our investment in Cantilever can only be seen as a tiny step towards a fair, artist-and-label centric streaming ecosystem. We still have many more steps to go.”