Fresh from winning an IMPALA Outstanding Contribution award, Merlin boss Charles Caldas has been giving his views on digital music, including this stat: “We expect the streaming revenues alone for Merlin in 2013 to be somewhere around $60 million-$65 million.” Caldas tells Billboard that there’s still a need “to educate artists better on the digital music economy” to combat misinformation in the media. Meanwhile, he has some strong words for Universal Music Group’s growing activity in the streaming music market. “The fact that UMG is a proprietor in recently launched streaming services in Africa and Australia means that they are not only competitors, but potentially also our retailers, benefiting incrementally every time our music is used. That is a dangerous dynamic, it’s anti-competitive and disproportionate,” says Caldas. “And it was chilling to read Lucian Grainge recently state that ‘Power is the ability to stop new services. Power is the ability to create new services.’ I expect we will see many examples of this hubris at play in the year to come.”
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Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…