Spotify has a new uber-curator on its roster: John Marks, who’ll be overseeing country-music programming for the streaming service. Marks joins from SiriusXM, and is the latest example of a radio veteran being tapped by an on-demand streaming service for a curatorial role. “Spotify has taken a different tack, in that they want human beings who are experts in genres to look at the country music genre in a global sense, global in a large picture sense, and construct playlists from that wide, expansive music,” Marks told Billboard. “You can be as narrow or wide as you can.” Alongside colleagues Tuma Basa, Mjeema Pickett and Austin Kramer and the teams they work with, Marks is the latest riposte Spotify has for claims by Apple’s Jimmy Iovine that the service is merely an algorithm-heavy “utility”.
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,…