Happy Grammy Week! This issue we revisit the projected 2025 drop in music docs now that we have the hard numbers and rediscover that whole "less is more" thing with a boutique streaming service. As always, you can reach me at [email protected]
Music Documentaries Did Indeed Dip in 2025, and Unfortunately You Can’t Just Blame the Writer’s Strike
In the debut issue of Stems (now a collector’s item), we projected a year-over-year decline in music documentary premieres on the major streaming services based on the first six months of 2025. Now that it’s January, we’re following up as promised, and our projections have been borne out by the actual numbers: Media research firm Luminate has done their own count of music documentary premieres in their annual Year-End Music Report and verified that 2025 saw a 30% decline versus 2024.
But why? Luminate blames the decline on a ripple effect of the 2023 writers’ strike: Only scripted production was banned during the strike, which meant that streaming execs scrambling to fill their 2024 slates booked a lot of unscripted programming, i.e. documentaries and reality shows. That included a record number of music documentaries. When the strike ended, scripted production picked up again and bumped those music doc premieres down to pre-strike levels.
Source: Luminate 2025 Year-End Music Report
But music doc premieres didn’t return to their pre-strike level — they returned to the steady slide that’s been happening since their COVID-era peak, with premieres down 17% since 2022. To explain that, we’d point to the factors we discussed in September: fatigue with docs that were conceived more as a beat in an album promo campaign than anything else. Our hope would be that this inspires would-be music documentarians to emulate the best efforts of the last couple of years: docs that delivered actual revelations, creative approaches, and fresh angles into major artists’ lives. Because it looks like the market is going to keep tightening.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Hit me at [email protected].
Music Streamer Cantilever Has 0.0001% as Much Music as Spotify. It’s Wonderful.
As part of my 2026 resolution to give more attention to companies rethinking music streaming, I have been playing around with a new UK service called Cantilever. It’s the streaming equivalent of a high-end boutique with only three items of clothing for sale: For $6/month, you get a curated feed of 10 indie albums. You can use the service on any device, as long as it’s your phone — there’s no desktop, web, smart watch or smart speaker version yet.
Every album is presented with an essay from a music journalist or a written piece from the artist. When an LP cycles out after a month — two or three turn over every week — it’s gone. The curation is a UK-heavy mix of post-punk, post-classical/experimental and indie hip-hop — lots of 4AD, Partisan Records, Domino, Rough Trade, Matador; think Pitchfork if it had never discovered pop music or mainstream rap. Some of the albums are recent releases, mixed in with some ICYMI picks from the last 1-2 years, and maybe one oldie — this month it was a lesser-known (and excellent) MF Doom album from 2003, King Geedorah’s Take Me to Your Leader.
Cantilever’s spare UX
Not everything has been in my listening wheelhouse, but the experience is pretty wonderful. Cantilever forces you to put on figurative blinders and focus on the music in front of you. Ten albums is a perfect number; enough to keep you busy but small enough to get your head around. My favorite was the debut from Manchester indie rock trio Shaking Hand, who mix Sonic Youth-worthy interweaving guitar lines and gentle, shoegazy vibes. The capper is that Cantilever does ‘user-centric’ royalties, which are based on the percentage of time each listener spends on an artist’s music, meaning your subscription dollars only go to the artists you actually play.
Manchester’s Shaking Hand
Part of the appeal of Cantilever is that it doesn’t obviously “scale” — it’s niche publication, not Apple News or the New York Times. But I can imagine a world where its model becomes a platform like Substack, featuring a range of curators with different tastes; I would pay for a few of those. For now, they have created an experience that pays artists and reminds you that music sounds better when you’re encouraged to focus on it.
The World’s Finest Music-Themed Mini Crossword Puzzle: Grammy Week Edition
Tune into the webcast of a previously-filmed ceremony hosted by Lisa Loeb next weekend to see if this crossword wins Best Music Puzzle.
To learn more about Stems, visit the About page. To learn more about my consulting practice, visit here.
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: /in/nbrackett