After Ron Pope, now Ben Berry of indie band Moke Hill has published an op-ed piece for Wired in support of Spotify, which he says “hasn’t been a negative, but an enormous positive” for his band. He cites figures showing that Moke Hill is being paid $0.00457 per stream after its distributor’s cut, and draws attention to deals with labels and publishers that may be reducing other artists’ royalties. “It isn’t Spotify’s fault that the money isn’t making its way to the artists,” he writes, before criticising Big Machine boss Scott Borchetta’s claim that making Taylor Swift’s music available for free on Spotify is disrespectful to fans who are buying it. “I might go so far as to say that it’s ‘disrespectful’ (to use his word) to force fans to buy CDs or use iTunes when they likely left that model years ago (or never joined it in the first place, in the case of many younger consumers).” It’s a well-argued piece, although we suspect its proximity to Pope’s similar article will fuel rather than quench the conspiracy theories of Spotify’s most fiery critics.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…