Quick Hits: Beats vs. Spotify; a new streaming model

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

Beats vs. Spotify: We don’t hear much about Beats Music, save for rumors of how it might eventually be transformed in Apple’s music ecosystem. TIME disregards all that, and takes a critical look at the service as it stands now, using Spotify (world’s leading on-demand music service) as a benchmark. The review compares music libraries, the user interface in both services, and the computer desktop apps (in whhich it is pointed out that Beats doesn’t have one). Then, of course, the overall winner is proclaimed.

Emily White proposes a radical streaming model: Emily White of Whitesmith Entertainment placed a column in the Future of Music Coalition website, suggesting an unusual earning system for on-demand streaming music platforms. Rather than pay musicians for their accrued streams, White suggests dividing total service revenue equally among all musicians and songwriters. It would be an opt-in service where musicians upload whatever catalog they’d like treated this way. It would essentially be an artist-owned platform ruun as a cooperative.

Brad Hill