Quick Hits: Mark Mulligan on Spotify’s updates; CNET on YouTube; Pandora on music therapy for cancer

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the Internet.

Spotify’s new competition: YouTube? Buzzfeed?: Music industry analyst Mark Mulligan looks at Spotify’s addition of video, and speculates about the the strategic intent. Is Spotify attempting to encroach on YouTube? Lessening its dependence on major label music agreements?

YouTube inspires love and hate in the music industry: CNET editor Rich Trenholm’s piece about YouTube’s business model, legal favorabilities, and experiments as a music service paints a picture of the music industry both needing and loathing Google’s gigantic content platform.

Finding therapeutic potential in Pandora’s Music Genome: Pandora’s chief musicologist Nolan Gasser is working with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on new efforts to provide musical therapies for patients.  Gasser is using his experience with Pandora’s Music Genome Project to look for song characteristics that will help ease cancer patients’ symptoms. He has also composed music called The Wellness Suite that was created with those soothing traits in mind.

Brad Hill